The Ottawa Senators seemingly trust the process that the University of North Dakota has with prospects. They’ve selected three in the NHL Draft that were committed to the school in the past two drafts– Jacob Bernard-Docker, Jonny Tychonick, and Shane Pinto. The question is now will they let those players see the process develop for more than half their term there.

A report out of the area had said the Senators were pushing hard to help the OHL’s Ottawa 67s gain the rights to Pinto in order to sign him to an entry-level deal; thus taking the freshman forward out of the UND pipeline. This comes after Pinto had an impressive World Junior tournament with four goals and seven points in five games for the US squad. After Saturday’s game, however, Pinto vehemently denied anything of the sort ever happening; proving the Ottawa media wants to get people to hope that he’d come to speed up the rebuild process.

While there hasn’t been a lot of noise made about Bernard-Docker, you’d have to think that Ottawa would want him to leave school after this season, considering his low-key breakout at the same World Juniors, playing more than any other Canadian during the tournament. Though, there might be a double-standard with bringing a defenseman out early and how much it takes for them to truly adjust to the professional game.

Ottawa is a rebuilding team and while they may like the way that UND is able to produce NHL, they probably also want to really get the players as their blossoming in their career. The Pinto situation seems familiar to the Tyson Jost/Avalanche situation, with Jost leaving after his freshman season at UND, with many saying Colorado was pretty adamant about Jost leaving after one college season. Though, Brock Boeser left after two seasons and did pretty good for himself by doing so, even though injuries have hampered both Jost and Boeser.

I’m all for these players going for the money if they feel it’ll be the most lucrative for them in the long-run. The goal for them is pro hockey and if they can reach it sooner and if the team wants them sooner– more power to them. The only hurdle is to make sure that they are, in fact, ready to make that jump. There’s cases for leaving too early and leaving too late, so it’s really a case-by-case basis.

North Dakota also doesn’t want to be looked at as a one-and-done kind of school and probably while it’s nice for them to have that aura of being a great developmental point for possible NHLers, it’s not the way they would want to be viewed overall if they only have talented youngsters for one or two years before they go off elsewhere and then UND gets behind because a player they thought they could build around for four years is only there half that time.

Sure, it’s the nature of college hockey and could happen with players who aren’t drafted, also; but in those cases– you’re getting three seasons from them and could actually have their replacement ready to go and a plan in place for it. In the day in age where the NHL is a younger players’ game with speed and skill, the college kids will definitely have a harder time wanting to stay if the idea of making a good amount of money without the schooling aspect is at their fingertips.

At the end of the day, each drafted college player is a case-by-case study of what they’re going to do. Some stick the whole four years, some leave after one, and some don’t make it to one year before moving to major junior; you can never know what could happen with each player.