Juniors is a very different place.  Many players change just desire to move
from one culture to the other.  Although juniors players are ostensibly
attending high schools and colleges, their course load and the quality of
the institutions are not demanding.  The players have far fewer academic
distractions.  Due to age and the tight grip most juniors coaches keep on
them, they have fewer social distractions as well.
 
In terms of the quality of play, the single most obvious difference is that
the low end players on the junior rosters are superior to their collegiate
counterparts. Actually, I wrote a long post to hockey-l earlier this year
with a lot of additional comparative comments.
 
The attitude among juniors players and fans is that the college game is
inferior, but that's just the "hill people vs. valley people" parochialism
we hear with eastern/western hockey, between the conferences, etc...  For
example, I spent the weekend of the Memorial Cup educating people that the
juniors is not the only "amateur championship of North American hockey", and
mostly I got blank looks like "Boston College?  (long pause) Doug Flutie...
right?"  Um, right.
 
FWIW, a member of this year's WHL Spokane "Who own da..." Chiefs has elected
to transfer to North Dakota, so players do shift both ways.
 
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