The Graeme Roustan Show: Dan MacKenzie

The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 hockey business annual is available at THN.com/free, featuring the annual 100 people of power and influence list.

W. Graeme Roustan, owner and publisher of The Hockey News, sat down with special guests for peer-to-peer conversations also featured in the issue, including CHL president Dan MacKenzie.

Here's their full conversation in The Graeme Roustan Show:

Read along with an excerpt from their discussion:

W. GRAEME ROUSTAN: You’ve been doing this now for five years. How’s the last five years been?

DAN MACKENZIE: You know what? It’s been great. It has not been smooth. There’s been a lot of things that have gone on in the last five years. I started in September 2019, after I’d spent my career at NBA Canada, and I was recruited to become the first full-time CHL president. And the first six months were exactly what I expected they were going to be. The transition with David (Branch), Ron (Robison) and Gilles (Courteau), the (OHL, WHL and QMJHL) commissioners at the time, was well underway.

And then, in March 2020, COVID hit, and all of our worlds changed. The first few years after that, some of the initiatives were all about growth and how can our leagues work better together. It went from a very nationalistic view to hyper-local. “Can we play tonight because of what the pandemic’s doing?” It became a very localized phenomenon. But we got through it. With the leadership of our commissioners and our owners, as well as the commitment of our players, it was amazing. They ended up coming through, and we bounced back really well. But it has not been an easy ride.

WGR: For all of hockey, it hasn’t been an easy ride. In the last year-and-a-half, new commissioners for the WHL, OHL and QMJHL have come on board. In a way, it’s like a youth movement. And you’re the senior guy who’s been around five years. How has working with a whole new group of commissioners been for you?

DM: Dan (Near), Mario (Cecchini) and Bryan (Crawford) have been great to work with. It’s been a real transition because the former group of commissioners were around for so long, and they were very good to me. They gave me this opportunity, which I’m always going to be grateful to them for. But it’s been good to work with this group of individuals who are all in the mode of, “OK, we don’t have the history. We want to do things that are going to grow the league and make things better for the players and our teams.” There’s been a real focus on, “How do we do that? How do we grow? How do we go forward?” And there’s been some changes that have happened.

The biggest change in the near term has been this NCAA rule change. That kind of change is going to set us on a course that’s going to be really interesting.

WGR: It’s kind of unknown. There are a lot of unknowns with it, isn’t there?

DM: There are. I think anyone who tells you they know what’s going to happen and how player movement is going to work is just speculating. We have to see where it all goes. But I think for us, we feel pretty comfortable that our league is really good at developing elite hockey players, developing elite coaches, developing elite officials and developing elite people on the scholarship side. Not everyone knows that for every year that someone plays in our league, we offer them a post-secondary scholarship, whether that be university, college or trade school.

With our model, both on and off the ice, we feel really comfortable that when the dust settles and the chips fall where they may, a lot of elite young hockey players are going to want to play in the CHL. We also think that the demand to play in the CHL is probably going to increase. There’s going to be a bunch of families who never would have considered the CHL because they wanted to keep their NCAA options open. Now that you can play in the CHL and play NCAA hockey, there’s going to be a real desire to play in our league. We’re excited. But at the end of the day, we’ve got to make sure we’re focused on the player and that we help them develop.

WGR: You’ve got three new commissioners and a whole new runway ahead of you. When you wake up in the morning, do you have these massive lists in your head of things that you’ve got to do?

DM: It’s exciting and it’s energizing, right? It’s interesting. We had a meeting about a month ago where we got all of our owners together, all 60 CHL teams in one place. It was fascinating to see this room of people who are all invested in junior hockey and, in many cases, were meeting each other for the first time. The entire meeting was focused on, “How do we make the CHL better? How do we make the experience for our players and our fans better?” And that was really energizing.

When you look at some of the factors like the NCAA rule change and some of the momentum we have from our stakeholders, in terms of where they want to go, it’s really exciting in terms of what we can accomplish. I don’t know where we’re going to land. I don’t know what things we’re going to do yet. We, again, have a new set of leaders, and we’re just sort of putting our priorities together. Even though I’ve been here five years, in a lot of ways, it still feels like it’s Day 1.

For this and more interviews with a deep look into the world of the hockey business, check out The Hockey News' Money and Power 2025 issue, available at THN.com/free.