Mostly it was that in the 1950's that the NHL closed its doors to college
hockey players.  It may have been that it was any non-Canadian hockey
players.  I can't say if there were no Canadian college players in the NHL
during that time.

It's hard to imagine that a player like John Mayasich was passed on by
the NHL.  He was the first college hockey player to use a slap shot.  With
it he averaged 2.7 points a game for four seasons at Minnesota during the
1950s.  I don't have a Frozen Four program in front of me, but I think he
still has at least one tournament scoring record.  Unfortunately, we will
never know how really good he was.

Prior to the 1950s there were U.S. college hockey players in the NHL.
The first that came to mind was John Mariucci from Minnesota who
played for Chicago in the late 1940s.  He was later coach for Minnesota.

Elywin (Doc) Romnes played for St. Thomas College in Minnesota.
During the 1930s he played for Chicago (where he won the Lady Byng)
and later the Maple Leafs.  Romnes was later a coach for Minnesota.

Frank Brimsek attended St. Cloud Teachers College, now St. Cloud State
University.  He won the Calder and Vezina trophies in his rookie season
on a Stanley Cup winning Boston team in the late 1930s.

Mike Karakis played for Eveleth Junior College and played for Chicago
during most of the 1930s, winning a Stanley Cup in the late 1930s.

Sam LoPresti played for Eveleth and for St. Cloud.  He played for two
years in the early 1940s for Chicago.  In a game against Boston, with
Brimsek in nets, LoPresti had a record setting 80 saves.

An interesting theme here is Eveleth.  All of the above players were from
there.  Several of them are in the Hall of Fame in Toronto.  In 1928-29,
the junior college there went undefeated and was the #1 ranked team in
the country playing against all the traditional (at least now) big time
college teams.  Their toughest opponent that year was the Eveleth high
school team.  From 1928-1940 the JC's record was 171-28-7.  From 1948
to1951, the Eveleth high school team (led by Mayasich) went undefeated.
Not much is heard from Eveleth these days, but they have a storied past.

Doug Peterson

On 10 Apr 2005 at 17:01, Clay Satow wrote:

The starting center on the last CC team to win the NCAA Tournament in
1957 was Bill "Red" Hay, who to my knowledge was the first college
player to make the NHL.  He played for the Black Hawks, and centered a
line with Murray Balfour and a guy named Bobby Hull on the wings.

He's currently the Executive Director of the Hockey Hall of Fame.





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