MEN’S PORTAL ANALYSIS

Every year since the Covid-19 pandemic, the NCAA transfer portal has been a hot topic in college hockey. The mysterious portal seems to attract more and more athletes each and every season. So, what players make up the transfer portal? Which conferences seem to benefit the most from it? Those questions and more will be answered here. (Consider making a donation to Clean Sheet Hockey to support my work! NO paywalls and NO annoying pop-up ads!)

There were 349 total players in the portal this past year (by my count… raw data spreadsheet below!).

So… who are these players? Are there any patterns in their position, year in school or home state?

Well, for year in school, there were mostly seniors and sophomores in the portal in 2024. Seniors led the way with sophomores closely behind them. It’s not surprising that seniors were the majority, considering many of those players may want to go somewhere new for their extra year of Covid-19 pandemic eligibility OR their program may not have had room for them with the amount of incoming freshman OR they may have been competing for a program that doesn’t allow graduate students in athletics or doesn’t have any graduate programs in general. There was a number of freshman in the portal too, followed by juniors with the least number in the portal.

When you look at the portal by position, it’s not surprising that forwards took up the majority of the portal, followed by defensemen and then goaltenders. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

When discussing home country, it is unsurprising that Americans represented the largest portion of athletes in the portal with over 60% coming from the USA. Canada took up over a quarter of the portal players, while those from other international countries took up the other remaining portion. For the US, 28 total states were represented, with Minnesota having the most number of players on the list (39) followed by Massachusetts (28), Michigan (26) and New York (25). As for Canada, the province with the most athletes in the portal was Ontario (31), followed by Alberta (23), but there were eight total provinces/territories represented. For non-US/CAN skaters, there were 13 other countries represented (Belarus, Czechia, Finland, Great Britain, Hungary, Japan, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland and Kazakhstan). Sweden had the most out of that group with 14.

Many people on the internet love to make a big deal of the portal, and while it is affecting college hockey in a major way, when you look at the stats of the athletes that are actually in the portal, many of them aren’t actually impact players. Going through the list of names, only about 1/3 of the portal entrants were skaters with greater than 10pts last season or starting netminders, the rest are mostly athletes who are trying to secure a change of scenery or who may drop down to the DIII level since they underperformed in years prior.

There were 36 total NHL draft picks in the portal this year, but again, many of these athletes are guys who were lower round picks who have underperformed and now are looking to find their spark again. There are exceptions, of course, such as guys like Matthew Wood or Eric Pohlkamp who had plenty of hype behind their names, but you can view the names of all the NHL drafted guys below. There were also just under 40 two-time transfers, or guys that are now on their third school, you can also view those names on the spreadsheet below.

(*drafted players on page one, switch to page two at the bottom to view two-time transfers)

So, as a whole, where did the players in the portal end up? Most of them found new homes in Division I (just over 70%), but the rest went sort of all over the place. Of those who did not find a new home in DI hockey, the largest portion went into Division III (almost 11% of the total portal entrants) and another large portion went into USports or decided to turn pro (in various overseas leagues or in the ECHL). Only about 5% of athletes that I had in the portal this year did not end up somehwere/decided to hang up the skates. Most of those 5% were seniors in the Ivies who may have just wanted to see if they had any options elsewhere.

Which schools used the portal the most and the least this season? There are plenty of schools that added and/or lost plenty to the portal, but there was surprisingly only one program that I didn’t have anyone transferring in or out of - Cornell!

The schools with the most losses to the portal are as follows*** (*for the following data, I am not including players who entered the portal but then decided to return to their respective programs)

-Northern Michigan: 19 (not surprising with the coaching changes)

-Alaska Fairbanks: 13 (UAF, Lindenwood and UAA don’t surprise me since independents typically have high turnover)

-Lindenwood: 12

-AIC: 11

-Alaska Anchorage, UMass-Lowell: 10

-Colorado College, Merrimack, Niagara: 9

-Arizona State, Ferris State, Sacred Heart: 8

The schools with NO losses to the portal, or very few, are as follows:

-Bowling Green, Canisius, Cornell and Ohio State: 0

-Augustana, Bentley, Dartmouth, Denver, Harvard, North Dakota and Notre Dame: 2

The schools with the most additions from the portal to the 2024-25 roster are as follows:

-Northern Michigan: 10

-Merrimack: 9

-AIC, Sacred Heart: 8

-Robert Morris, Lindenwood: 7

(+a LOT of schools with 6…)

The schools with NO additions from the portal, or very few, are as follows:

-Air Force, Army, Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Yale: 0 (not surprising, Ivies and service academies…)

-Bentley, Boston College, Dartmouth, Minnesota Duluth, Penn State: 1


On average, which conferences gained/lost the most from the portal?*

You can look at the chart below, which shows (on average) how many players each schools added/lost per conference. I calculated this by taking the total number of athletes who entered or left a conference and divided it by the total number of schools in that conference to get an average per team. It’s not surprising that the Independents lost the most athletes on average per team, but on the other hand they also added the highest average of athletes as well, so there is overall just a ton of portal movement there. As you can also tell, every conference lost more than it gained, since there are plenty of athletes who left Division I hockey for something else altogether. The ECAC schools added, on average, the least amount of skaters, which isn’t a surprise since those schools include the Ivies and other programs that are tough academically to transfer into and many of them cannot accept graduate students. The Big 10 and NCHC were the most balanced, with a fairly even differential of their adds and losses.

*I primarily considered Arizona State an NCHC school in most of these statistics but if anyone wants a breakdown of considering them as an independent vs. as in the NCHC, let me know…

What was the most popular destination for skaters in each conference?

-Atlantic Hockey tended to drop down to Division III or transferred to another Atlantic school. There was a wide margin of destinations for AHA skaters though.

-Big 10 athletes typically went into the NCHC but some also chose the CCHA or went back into a different Big 10 school.

-The ECAC had the highest number of players that I couldn’t find any record of them playing somewhere this season out of all the other conferences, but I’m not surprised by that since so many seniors from the Ivies try their luck in the portal but likely just hung up the skates all together. Otherwise, these players typically left for Hockey East.

-Guys from the CCHA went kind of all over the place. There wasn’t a clear majority conference destination but many chose Hockey East, the NCHC or Atlantic Hockey, but plenty wound up back in the CCHA, at an Indepedent, or in Division III.

-Hockey East athletes usually stayed in Hockey East, unless they made the switch to an Independent, the NCHC, or the Atlantic. There were many other destinations as well though.

-Those from the NCHC also typically stayed in the NCHC, otherwise many went to Hockey East, Atlantic Hockey, the ECAC or to the Big 10.

-Last but certainly not least, Independent portal entrants mainly wound up in the CCHA or going into USports or Division III. The Atlantic was also a popular landing spot as well.

So overall, who won the portal this year? There are many schools that had a handful of decent additions, or just one or two really good ones, but I personally think that Arizona State did a really nice job in the portal this offseason. If you look at their additions and how they are impacting the roster this year, it is pretty impressive. Noah Beck, Ryan Kirwan and Bennett Schimek are all portal players and they are the current top-3 scorers for the Sun Devils right now (a combined 64pts between the three), a team that has been very solid as of late. They also have Artem Shlaine, who is a top scorer as well right now, over a point-per game despite missing some games with injury earlier in the season. Cruz Lucius also has tons of potential and already has 2pts in 4gp back from injury. Along with those skaters, ASU added Luke Pavicich in goal who has been a rotating starter alongside Gibson Homer. I think it’s safe to say they did very well for themselves in the portal and addressed some of their key needs before the start of the season. I could easily discuss many other teams though too who did a great job adding top prospects or found ‘diamonds in the rough’ or guys that were simply buried on another teams roster.

Are there any other statistics you want me to calculate or break down? Let me know! I’ll be running the portal spreadsheet once again this spring so keep an eye out for that!

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