So if it wasn't clear before, it's abundantly clear now that the BCHL is staking its claim to being the main route for Canadian junior age players who want to focus on a path to the NCAA.
Realistically the BCHL's geographic footprint won't expand all that much, they've entered Alberta but it seems unlikely that they will go beyond that anytime soon.
What I am wondering now is whether any eastern junior A leagues are poised to follow suit? You would think there would be a market for an "eastern BCHL" so players in Ontario and points east could pursue a similar path without uprooting themselves across the country at 16?
1) Quebec is barely producing players that get drafted out of the QMJHL, let alone an excess for a good NCAA pipeline to emerge on top of it.
NCAA Players by Birth Province (2023-24) (birth province is not necessarily where they grew up/developed, but decent enough proxy for that without a deeper dive). Source is QuantHockey.
Ontario: 172
Alberta: 106
British Columbia: 98
Quebec: 50
Saskatchewan: 23
Manitoba: 23
Nova Scotia: 10
New Brunswick: 6
Newfoundland and Labrador: 5
Yukon: 1
Prince Edward Island: 1
Northwest Territory: 1
Grouped by CHL region
WHL: 252
OHL: 172
QMJHL: 72
So in many ways, the BCHL and best teams of the AJHL are well equipped to serve as an NCAA feeder because there's the most demand and mutual interest amongst Western Canadian players and NCAA D1 teams already. A big reason for this is travel. The OHL travel schedule is not that bad, the WHL travel schedule is tough, more kids would rather cut that out and control their own fate, which they can via BCHL -> NCAA.
2) I think we can, and likely will, see a consolidation of Junior A Hockey in Ontario. Currently you have the SIJHL in Northwest Ontario with 7 teams, the NOJHL in Northeastern Ontario with 12 teams and the OJHL in Southern Ontario with 22 teams. So that's 41 Junior A teams to service Ontario players across the 3 Leagues.
A couple of additional factors in play - the USHL teams are not far from Ontario's border. The USHL is the primary feeder into the NCAA and many Ontario kids that want to play NCAA Hockey will head down south. And now with the BCHL going outlaw, they will be age restricted on recruiting Ontario kids into their league that also are seeking the NCAA path, and so we'd likely expect a few more high-end kids to get poached out of Ontario Junior A.
I don't know how much that is going to make sense going forward, in terms of being enough demand to service and how economically viable it can remain on a go-forward basis. If those 3 Leagues merge together and consolidate down to something smaller, that would raise the level of play and could have a resulting increase to act as a counter to the BCHL's status as Canada's premier NCAA feeder league. The headstart of the BCHL and USHL though means there would be quite a bit of catching up to do.
Here is the data, which is a few years old (article from June 15, 2020, here
Paths to NCAA Show Need for Patience - College Hockey, Inc.) on NCAA players in the league they were playing in before College,
USHL - 575
BCHL - 272
NAHL (Tier II USA for those unfamiliar) - 262
AJHL - 99
OJHL - 82
USPHL (breakaway USA, after getting rejected for Tier II status) - 69
CCHL - 56
USNDTP (single team per age year, premier American players) - 50
US Prep Schools (about half in Massachusetts) - 32
SJHL - 19
High School (almost entirely, but not totally exclusively Minnesota) - 14
MJHL - 11
GOJHL - 4
a few others miscellaneously scattered here and there 
