NAHL TENDER ANALYSIS

This is officially the second year that I collected information on NAHL tenders that were signed (info from Year 1 - here). In this post, I’ll be calculating data and crunching numbers on all things related to the topic. This dataset pertains to tenders that were signed throughout the 2023-24 season between a player and a NAHL team for the 2024-25 season. 

DISCLAIMER: Not every team makes their tenders public, so while I did my best to collect all the information that I could - there are likely names missing from this list. If you have any names or information that I missed, please shoot me an email and I can update the infographics.

A reminder that this is the only place on the entire internet (that I know of) that keeps track of this information for free for the public to keep track of throughout the year. If you enjoy looking at the Tender Tracker throughout the season or enjoy reading this story, please consider donating to Clean Sheet Hockey to help keep this website and this data going for many years to come. I believe it helps to keep teams accountable and honest, and it helps players and families make decisions on where they should take their career next.

You can view the master spreadsheet that I kept for last year below, along with a color-coded team-by-team view that shows you where each individual player ended up playing this season (as of mid-December, 2024). You can view this years master spreadsheet here. Green means that the player was on the roster (when I checked in December…), Red means that they were NOT on the roster, and purple means that they are on the roster either on a different team in the NAHL, are playing up in the BCHL or USHL, went to college, or returned to their HS/Prep team.

Q: How many tenders were you able to find from last season? 

A: 407 

Q: How many players that signed tenders made the roster for that respective team this season? 

A: 179* - which is about 43.98% of the total number of tenders that were signed.

(*on the roster as of mid-December when I wrote this story…)

Q: Why is that number only about 50/50? Where did the rest of the players end up? 

A: A portion of these players wound up playing for a different NAHL team that wasn’t the one they originally tendered with (about 35 or so). They could’ve either been traded, didn’t make their original teams’ roster so they looked elsewhere, or they may have just found a better fit someplace else. Another large portion of players wound up playing in the NA3HL this season (most players that signed a tender from the NA3HL stayed in the NA3HL and did not advance up to the NAHL…) and a different large portion are now playing in the NCDC. There was also a significant amount of players that went back to competing for their 18UAAA teams or those who simply decided to instead go to college or are athletes who hung up the skates altogether (after likely not making the roster). There were players that wound up everywhere though, a small few made the jump up to leagues like the BCHL and USHL, some went up to Canada in the AJHL, MJHL, SJHL, QJHL and CCHL, some overseas athletes continued to play overseas in U20 leagues, and a couple are currently in the USPHL Premier, EHL or returned to their Prep/High School teams. 

Q: Which teams had high numbers of tenders that made the roster? Which had low numbers?

A: This is a bit hard to answer since there are some organizations that do not regularly publish their tender information to the public. For example - I only found two tenders for El Paso so I can’t comment on them very accurately compared to, say, North Iowa or Northeast who I had 16 tenders for. Johnstown I had going 0-for-8 on their tenders that I found, Springfield went 4-for-12 and Rochester and Maine went 3-for-10, just to name a few. For high numbers, Kenai River and Maryland had 8-for-12, which was high for the list. A high or low percentage of players can mean a lot of different things though, so don’t just automatically assume a low percentage = bad team/organization or a high percentage = good team/organization.

What other questions do you have about NAHL tenders? Let me know on Twitter (@sydneyisawolf or @CleanSheetHKY) or by email and I’ll be sure to add your question into this article with an answer.