B.C.'s Gaudreau faces big decision

There were 4.2 seconds remaining in Johnny Gaudreau's junior season, maybe in his collegiate career, and over that time he did everything his considerable hockey skills would allow to earn himself a few more precious ticks of the clock.

Boston College was down by a goal to Union College in the Frozen Four's first semifinal game Thursday, a center-ice faceoff separating Union from Saturday's NCAA championship game, and everyone in the Wells Fargo Center knew that the Eagles had one chance to force overtime. They could win the draw back to Gaudreau - out of Carneys Point, N.J., and Gloucester Catholic High School, the leading scorer in Division I hockey - and let him weave through Union's five skaters for a single desperate shot on goal.

Everyone knew what was coming, and still Gaudreau dipped and swerved and got off that shot at the buzzer, and still Dutchmen goaltender Colin Stevens had to make a blocker save, and only then, with Union's 5-4 victory complete, did Gaudreau have to confront the choice that will chart the course of his future.

The Calgary Flames had selected Gaudreau in the fourth round of the 2011 NHL draft, and now he has to weigh whether the time is right to turn pro.

"Got to figure it out - the next day or tonight," said Gaudreau, who had a goal and two assists Thursday, finishing the season with 36 goals and 80 points in 40 games. "I'll be able to talk to all my family members about that. We'll see what's best for me and what's best for my career."

Gaudreau's decision cuts to the core of a debate that's been raging for years among NHL talent evaluators: whether it's better for a North American prospect to prepare for professional hockey's highest level by playing major-junior or in college. Over the last decade, the question has set off something of an arms race between the Canadian Hockey League - the organization that oversees the country's three major-junior leagues - and the NCAA.

From 2003 to 2009, the number of American-born players in the CHL went from 67 to 137, a surge that precipitated the creation in 2007 of College Hockey Inc., a nonprofit group dedicated to encouraging adolescent players to go to college. Its counter-campaign has been working. During the 2011-12 season, 300 former college players suited up in at least one NHL game, the most in league history and a 39 percent increase since 2001. This season, 294 players with college experience appeared in the NHL.

"When you're in college, you're in a more structured environment," said Paul Kelly, the former president of College Hockey Inc. and the former executive director of the NHL Players' Association. "You're there for as long as you want to be there. You're not subject to being cut."

Gaudreau took such factors into consideration when he chose to attend Boston College. Even now, he is listed at just 5-foot-8 and 159 pounds - his skates kick up ice chips that have greater mass and density - and at 20 he has a face that suggests a razor is a superfluous item in his carry-on bag. College offered him the opportunity to mature physically and emotionally: fewer games, more practice time, the academics. The sheer grind of major-junior, the 15-hour bus rides, the billeting, a vagabond's existence that approximates that of an NHL player - they might have turned him to dust.

"I'm a small player, so my chances are a lot slimmer than those big players," he said. "I realize that. I have to get an education just in case I don't have hockey to fall back on."

Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine his returning for his senior season. The Flames sent a cameraman and interviewer here to make sure their fans could see and hear Gaudreau's postgame comments on the team's website, and knowing that so many people are hanging on his decision has to be, in even a small sense, intoxicating. Besides, B.C. won a national championship in 2012, Gaudreau's freshman season, and he is expected to receive the Hobey Baker Award on Friday, given annually to the NCAA's top player.

What worlds are left for him to conquer in college?

"There are always little things you can accomplish in your individual game, whether it's here or it's somewhere else," he said. "I've got a tough decision."

He had come so close to giving himself a bit more time to make it, and this much was certain: As he stood in the somber silence of that Boston College locker room, still wearing his sweat-soaked uniform, Johnny Gaudreau would have given anything for that chance.