All of us Providence College basketball fans are feeling pretty good about the transfer portal right now. Coach Kim English has seemingly mastered the new recruiting world of the transfer portal and has garnered commitments from some impressive hardwood hoopsters.
Like many long-time Friar fans, however, I am having trouble warming up to the transfer portal, and the name, image, and likeness (NIL) $ are fueling the movement of players from one team to another. Will any college basketball player ever finish four years at one school? Do we no longer pat ourselves on the back about the graduation rate of PC basketball players? Will NIL $ eventually permanently create first and second-class programs in Division 1? What about those players who entered the portal and weren’t taken? Do they crawl back to their teammates seeking forgiveness? I suspect it is still too early to answer these questions, as chaos will continue to reign for a while in college basketball recruiting.
The college basketball transfer portal has gotten all the ink nationally and locally. With almost 1,100 players diving into the portal pool and 351 Division One schools involved either on the giving end, receiving end, or just window shopping, the flurry of rumors and signings provided daily reading for college fans. Now that the basketball portal has closed, I began to wonder whether chaos has also occurred in college hockey.
The college hockey transfer portal just closed on May 14th. With only 60 Division One college hockey teams and no national NCAA tournament TV $ like basketball, I expected the college hockey scene to be pretty much devoid of transfer chaos. Well, it turns out that I was wrong. In the past 3 months, those 60 D-1 hockey teams have produced 336 entrants into the transfer portal!
What has driven so many college hockey players to look to transfer to another program? The reasons are many. Playing time, more prestigious hockey programs, schools perceived to have a better path to an NHL signing, schools with more position opportunities (like the need for a goalie or more blueline players), even a more exciting fan base. So far, at least, NIL $ are not significantly driving the college hockey transfer portal.
How has PC hockey roster fared this spring since its season ended in mid March? The hockey Friars have experienced a massive roster turnover. Eleven of its twenty-four 2023-24 players are gone—almost 50% of its roster no longer on the team. PC only scored a hundred goals this past year in its 35 games. Forty-eight of those goals were from the players now leaving the program.
Typically, you expect to have about one quarter of your roster to leave each year, generally through graduation or early entry into professional hockey. Why has PC needed to replace almost half of its roster for the coming season?
A major factor was that last year’s team was heavy on graduate players. But this year PC also got bit by the transfer portal with 4 of its undergraduate players transferring to other schools. Let’s breakdown the roster loss.
Graduation/Completion of Eligibility, (5). PC had an unusually high number of graduate students playing this year. Luke Krys, Cam McDonald, Craig Needham, Cal Kiefiuk, and Jamie Englebert have all gone on to professional hockey or to new endeavors.
Early Entry to NHL, (2). Junior Riley Duran signed with the Boston Bruins and was playing this spring for their AHL team, the Providence Bruins. And Jaroslav Chmelar gave up his last two years at PC to sign with the New York Rangers.
Transfer Portal, (4). The following players transferred: Rhode Island native, Brady Berard to Boston College; Bennett Schimek to Arizona State University; Liam Valente to Western Michigan; and backup goalie Marcus Brannman to Clarkson University.
The departure of Schimek is the most significant loss in this transfer group. He will likely be a 20+ goal scorer with the relatively new program at Arizona State. Brannman’s transfer is not unexpected. He is a freshman and was doomed to be a backup for the next two years to PC’s #1 goalie, Philip Svedback. Liam Valente’s transfer is a good example of a player going to a lesser program to get more playing time.
The transfer portal taketh and giveth. PC has gained 4 new transfer players to help bolster the roster for next year and all will be graduate students with just one year of eligibility remaining for the Friars. Logan Will from Colorado College and Ryan O’Reilly from Arizona State are goal scoring forwards and will help to replace the loss of goals from the departing players. Carl Fish is a rugged defenseman from the University of Minnesota. Finally, Zach Borgiel from Merrimack will be the new backup goalie.
The most important development for next year’s roster is that PC’s 3 graduating seniors—Nick Poisson, Chase Yoder, and Connor Kelly—have all agreed to play another year as graduate students for the Friars. Poisson and Yoder were the #1 and #3 goal scorers, respectively, on this year’s team.
To round out next year’s roster, PC will still need to get 7 more players from its freshman recruiting class. PC has approximately 7 commitments for its entering class, but it maybe June or so before the entering class is finalized. In any case, with 7 or more freshmen and 4 new transfers—a total of 11 new players, Coach Leaman and his staff will have an intense pre-season figuring out player combinations on offense, defense, power plays, and penalty killing.
Additional observations:
–With 7 graduate students on the roster next year—4 transfers and 3 graduating PC seniors, the PC hockey team may have as many graduate students as the PC Philosophy Department.
–With 11 new players on the team—4 transfers and 7 likely incoming freshmen, Coach Leaman will have the most challenging pre-season in recent years getting players trained in the PC hockey culture. I hope he has an early forgiving schedule to accommodate the new players.
–With 7 or more freshmen and 7 graduate students, the PC roster will have the most unusual class makeup of any PC roster ever.
–Coach Leaman and his staff decided not to replace his 4 undergrad players leaving the program with 4 new undergrad players. Rather, he is rolling the dice with seasoned players, even if it means they only spend one year at PC.
The recruitment of college hockey players has evolved over time—from high schools, to prep schools, to juniors’ programs, to “hockey academies.” The transfer portal is now a major new wrinkle in the college hockey recruitment menu. It is still too early to determine how it will affect college rosters throughout the country. One of the smaller programs in Hockey East, Merrimack, has seen 9 of its players transfer this year. The impact of the transfer portal on the PC program has not been so drastic, but the Friars’ roster has experienced a significant change. An experience that perhaps that will be the new normal going forward.
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