Maryville, a private university located in St. Louis, announced its intent to add Division I college hockey in early March of 2026. The current plan for the Saints is to play a hybrid season in 2026-27, with a goal of competing in 20 games at the Division I level, before fully moving up to the Division I level in 2027-28. Since the school’s announcement, a handful of hockey players have already pledged their commitments to play college hockey at the university. One of those who decided to take a leap of faith and commit to Maryville is Minnesota native Will Subject.

Subject, who played a little bit of high school hockey at Wayzata, is a seasoned pro in junior hockey at this point in his career after spending two-and-a-half years with the Vancouver Giants of the WHL and a year-and-a-half with the Nanaimo Clippers of the BCHL. The 2005 birth year defenseman first connected with the Saints program about two weeks before they made their announcement official about adding Division I hockey and he committed to the program about 24 hours after the school made that decision public.

“I am extremely proud and honored to announce my commitment to continue my academic and athletic career at Maryville University to play Division I Hockey. I extend the most sincere thanks and gratitude to my family for their unwavering support, endless sacrifices, and constant belief in me. Without them, I would not be in the position I am today,” Subject said as part of his commitment post on social media.

“I’m honored that they considered me for their program,” Subject said in an interview with APX Hockey reporter Sydney Wolf. “Bringing in any guy to a new program you want the right characters in that locker room and so I’m honored that they said that they wanted me to come in there and to help set the culture of what it means to be a Saint, so it’s a big honor for me.”

The whole process went fairly quickly for Subject, who had been talking with a handful of Division I and Division III programs over the past year and a half. The Saints came in contact with him about two weeks before their official Division I announcement and it didn’t take long for the Minnesota native to pledge his commitment to the Saints. The 20-year-old hasn’t taken a visit out to the campus in St. Louis yet since it isn’t necessarily an easy or short journey to get out there from Nanaimo, British Columbia, especially with his busy junior hockey schedule, but he is hoping to do sometime soon in the future.

Maryville hasn’t just recruited Subject either as the coaching staff has been busy picking up commitments from various guys throughout North America at the moment, including plenty of familiar faces that Subject is excited to play college hockey with in the future. This includes one of his best friends at the moment in Tanner Bruender (who is also from Minnesota), who is one of his teammates in Nanaimo and who lives in the same billet house as Subject, and another fellow teammate in Landon Pappas, so a lot of these guys will already be pretty familiar with one another once they move out to college later this summer since they are all 2005 birth years and do not have any junior hockey eligibility left after this season.

Committing to play college hockey in the United States is something that Subject didn’t originally think was going to be a possibility until the rule change last year that made those who competed in Canadian Major Junior leagues eligible for the NCAA when they had previously not been allowed. Since the defenseman had been playing with Vancouver of the WHL for a large portion of time, he had thought that his only options for the future would be to eventually sign some kind of professional contract, if it was available, or to join Canadian college hockey in USports, but becoming eligible for the NCAA again changed everything.

Competing in Major Junior hockey is something that was not a traditional route for most Minnesotans at the time that Subject moved out to Vancouver back in 2022 but Subject has found plenty of success in the sport despite following a bit of a nontraditional path for skaters from the ‘State of Hockey’. The 20-year-old originally grew up in the Twin Cities suburb of Plymouth, although his hometown now is listed as the nearby town of Medina, and no one in Subject’s family was really into hockey when he was young, in fact - his older sister was a Division I gymnast at Denver, so he wasn’t really inspired to try the sport of hockey until he won a Mighty Ducks movie one Christmas after playing a game with family and falling in love with it after watching the film. He eventually played for the Wayzata association for a little bit before mostly competing with the Minnesota Made program for a majority of his youth hockey career.

Subject’s path through hockey brought some ups and downs throughout his time in high school at Wayzata. He spent his sophomore and junior seasons with the Trojans fairly split between JV and Varsity, but he made the sections roster each season and he made a state tournament appearance with the team back in 2021.

The Minnesota defenseman was eventually invited to attend a WHL camp with the Vancouver Giants in the summer after his junior year of high school. He didn’t think much of it at the time and didn’t have his hopes set too high about the opportunity but he thought that it would be a great experience to go and explore the city and to learn more about junior hockey. Everything changed once he actually got out to camp though and had an incredible showing there.

“I go to camp and I just had a really good camp, an amazing camp, and they ended up keeping me and decided that they wanted to take me on their team out of camp,” Subject said. “They offered me the contract and they said like ‘listen, you’re not going to be able to play college hockey, at least in America, you could play Canadian college hockey’ but for me it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.”

Subject was blown away by the opportunity and was extremely excited about the fact that he had made the Giants roster in the WHL. It was a big decision to make though because joining the team meant that he’d be forgoing his senior year of high school hockey at Wayzata, he’d be moving across the country as just a 17-year-old, and he would lose his college hockey eligibility (or so he thought). After thinking it over, it just seemed like too good of an opportunity to turn down.

“The coach at the time, he had just won a gold medal for Canada with the World Juniors team [Mike Dyck], he was like looked at by numerous NHL teams, so he was like the highest caliber coach you could imagine, so it was just an opportunity that I felt like I couldn’t decline for my development,” he said about his decision. “It was something that I just couldn’t turn down, it was too good.”

Subject wound up transferring from Wayzata High School to a local school in the Vancouver area, so he actually finished up his high school degree in Canada. He ended up appearing in 49 games for the Giants in his rookie season in the WHL and registering three assists.

“It was a lot of fun, it was definitely a massive jump from junior varsity/varsity hockey to the WHL and playing against guys who are kind of household names now that are playing in the NHL, guys like Connor Bedard, guys like Logan Stankoven, so it was a big adjustment for sure but it was something that was just like amazing for my development and really got me to where I am,” he said about making the adjustment to Major Junior hockey.

The Minnesota native eventually made Vancouver his home away from home after spending two and a half years within the Giants organization and then another year and and half in Nanaimo - which is located on Vancouver Island. Around the time that the rule change happened for Major Junior players to become eligible in the NCAA is when Subject wound up moving from Vancouver to Nanaimo. There were many factors that went into the decision to switch teams and leagues but it just seemed like there would be a bit more opportunity for him to be a big time player in the BCHL with the Clippers than there would be in Vancouver and he wanted to get his name out there again to college coaches who may have previously crossed his name off of their recruiting lists when he signed in the WHL a few years prior.

“I was in the WHL and then the rule change happened and it kind of just changed the perspective of the way I looked at it, like okay I can play college hockey now so going to the BCHL might actually be really good for me to play in a bigger role and to be a bit more of a contributor in those critical moments of the games, and then also just getting a different side of development for me and hopefully opening up some eyes at the college level of like ‘okay, this guy is playing a bigger role here in the BCHL than he played in the WHL,’ things like that, so the rule changed had a lot to do with it for sure,” he said about moving from the Giants to the Clippers.

The move from one team to another went quite smoothly for the most part. Subject wound up posting 10 points in 23 games with Nanaimo in the second half of the season in 2024-25 and he is now captain of the squad in 2025-26 and has 13 points through 45 contests.

“Everyone in Nanaimo has been really welcoming to me, the coaching staff has been incredible, and the city is a beautiful place, it’s a little bit slower paced than Vancouver, and it’s an unreal spot and I love it out here,” he said.

The Clippers have been a solid team in 2025-26 as well, already having clinched a playoff position as the second-best team in the Coastal West division.

“The expectation is pretty high for the Clippers [this season], we’ve got a really mature group, we have a lot of older players, a lot of guys with a lot of junior experience, so the expectation is to do pretty well moving forward,” Subject said about the Nanaimo squad. “We’re trying to put ourselves in a position to succeed going into the playoffs and just trying to be as dialed in with the details as possible and I’m looking forward to this last playoff run here as a junior hockey player because we’ve got a really special group.”

After the season for the Clippers is over, Subject will prepare to move out to St. Louis to join the Maryville team for its transition season into Division I hockey this fall.

“Some of my strengths are my grittiness in the corners, I’m not afraid to get in a battle, I’m not afraid to throw the body around, and I’m also a pretty good skater, I move well on the ice, and I’m a guy that’s going to be able to play 200-feet of the ice,” the 20-year-old said about the style of play that he’ll bring to the Saints next year. “I’m not just an ‘offensive-defenseman’, I’m not just a ‘defensive-defenseman’, I like to be somewhere in the middle of that, but I pride myself on my abilities in the d-zone.”

The current recruits for the inaugural Maryville team in 2026-27 include the aforementioned Will Subject (Wayzata, MN), Tanner Bruender (Chaska, MN) and Landon Pappas (Airdrie, AB), along with Hunter Sawka (Cochrane, AB / Okotoks BCHL), Tanner Winegard (Bright’s Grove, ON / Brooks BCHL), Nikita Mescheryakov (Moscow / Blackfalds BCHL), Ethan Woolcott (San Diego / El Paso NAHL), Greye Rampton (Chilliwack, BC / Simon Fraser Univ.), Zac Maxwell (Sherwood Park, AB / Simon Fraser Univ.), Anthony Hall (Sherbrooke, QC / Cowichan Valley BCHL), Adam Timm (Chetek, WI / Waterloo USHL), and Ridge Dawson (Kelowna, BC / Simon Fraser Univ.).

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