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The Transfer Portal - "Beam me over there, Scotty."

T

The Sicatoka

Kicizapi Cetan
There will be winners. There will be losers.

Your thoughts on the whole implementation of the NCAA one-time transfer rule? And the next few years will be especially exasperating (for portal traffic) as everyone who played this year has an extra year of eligibility.

Do you think the one-time transfer rule (the portal) helps/hurts hockey and/or your team?
 
Looking through Sean Pickett's list of coaching salaries, I am OK with players, many struggling to find a spot or maybe having their scholarship at risk (because they're not guaranteed), having some minimal leverage than a coach earning $500K per year, guaranteed.

And heck, a few might even be getting an education, heaven forbid, in the NCAA.

I would, however, limit undergrad transfers to one-time. Seeing some kids leave a school mid-year in the pandemic, and now look to transfer to a new school, is a bit much shopping.
 
North Dakota had eight seniors plus three early signings. Only one senior is using their "Covid" year (Thome to St. Thomas) so far. Most of the rest have signed pro deals or are looking to.

UND had eleven (!) roster slots to fill. (EDIT: Twelve. A sophomore forward has entered the portal.)

The portal has been good so far in that it solved the goalie issue (both Thome and Scheel gone) with Zach Driscoll (BSU). It solved a problem at center (lose Adams and Pinto) with Connor Ford (BGSU).

And it took a defense of Frisch, Sanderson, Kleven, and Moore (a Jr and three Sophs in the fall) and added Chris Jandric (UAF, Jr in fall) and Brady Ferner (RPI, Jr in fall) to it.

It'd say it's working well for UND. It's making up for under-recruiting this cycle.

But in the long run, it feels too much like "free agency" and not like amateurism.
 
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I’ve no objection to it under the COVID rules, where this last year was weird as hell and left a lot of teams not playing (at all or come tourney time).

I’m not sure how I feel about it as de facto free agency, although NCAA Watcher’s point about leverage is an excellent one.

Thus far for UW, the impact is:

2 Early Pros (likely 3 before you know it)
3/7 Seniors returning for 5th year
4/7 Seniors leaving for good
1 outgoing transfer
2 incoming transfer

Thats a net of -2, plus a relatively large freshman class (1 G, 3 D and 5 F last I saw).

I’ve a feeling things are still going to change here.
 
It's going to keep BC from suffering a 2016 style disaster when every underclassman ran for the doors at the same time. Now they've been able to replace a good portion with experienced, proven players from other programs.

But just because it is benefiting the team I root for doesn't mean that I like it. I don't especially like the haves poaching top players from the have nots. I don't like the fact that a smaller or mid-level school can find an under recruited gem, develop him and then the BCs, BUs, NDs, Minns of the world can just scoop and in say "thank you very much." The non-name brand programs have to work a lot harder to find talent. Now this makes is far harder for them to keep the talent they work hard to find.
 
In the case of BC getting Dop and Kruse from Bowling Green, both were seniors. I read that Ty Eigner has a full class coming in and these guys were not coming back to BG regardless. That would have required BG spending more $ for scholarships and not every school is gonna do that. Pretty sure I read UMass is not taking advantage of the extra scholarship opportunity which probably explains Philip Lagunov going elsewhere for another year.

BC is still in the "market" for more transfers but nothing else official at this point. I think the biggest ripple effect will actually be for any incoming recruits. A lot of these kids didn't get to play a lot of games in a key developmental year for them. That alone could lead to schools looking to delay a recruit a year. But when you add the transfer situation on top of it, incoming recruits over the next few years is the great unknown. I would imagine a lot of kids end up getting squeezed out. But that's life. You're not guaranteed to play college hockey,
 
NCAA watcher said:
Looking through Sean Pickett's list of coaching salaries, I am OK with players, many struggling to find a spot or maybe having their scholarship at risk (because they're not guaranteed), having some minimal leverage than a coach earning $500K per year, guaranteed.
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I generally agree, but I think it could be a bit of a mess on the other end of the talent spectrum. Every year, there are players that are told they are surplus-to-requirements and have to find another place to go. I think that group of players will be significantly larger this year and, depending on the timing, it may be a bit of a scramble to find new teams.
 
I think it’s a positive for the players — the rule is set up as a one time, no questions asked to undergrad transfer, and allowing kids the flexibility to find the right fit is important.

The portal is going to help more teams than not, IMHO.

As for the Mavs, they dipped in last year and are back again — the timing of the portal becoming available to undergrads coming off a Frozen Four trip should continue to help the Mavs.
 
Don't they have to go through the application process, though? You can't just say you're going to a school. You have to apply to it. How does that timing work?
 
Scarlet said:
Don't they have to go through the application process, though? You can't just say you're going to a school. You have to apply to it. How does that timing work?
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It certainly varies by school, but I think it is fair to say that Division I athletes generally enjoy courtesies in the admissions process unavailable to the average student--including a streamlined application process. I think the NCAA does need to iron out when the transfer waiver will expire, i.e. what day do you have to be in the portal by in order to qualify for a no-penalty transfer.
 
I have zero problem with graduate transfers. If a player can pick up a degree and move on to get a master's (or at least a leg up towards one), then more power to him/her. But I have a big problem with the kind of unrestricted free agency into which the portal is morphing. The whole thing is being driven by P5 football and basketball, which has found a convenient way to dispose of their underperformers and replace them with kids who were previously overlooked or were significantly developed by coaching staffs at institutions with far fewer resources. The rich get richer. And don't get me started with the new reality motivating some (not all) athletes to play for the name on the back of the sweater instead of the name on the front.

Also annoying is the fact that the very people who are pushing athlete rights completely discount, ignore, and dismiss as irrelevant the value of the underlying scholarship (currently north of $65K/yr at my undergrad school). There are unintended consequences to all of this "liberation" and that is the athletes who don't have a legitimate degree to fall back on if they don't get drafted, don't get signed as a free agent, don't make the cut at the next level, and thus never make the "big money."

There are more than a few once-famous college athletes who ended up selling shoes or driving delivery trucks when the dream didn't materialize. It's a scandal and almost nobody cares.
 
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Scarlet said:
Don't they have to go through the application process, though? You can't just say you're going to a school. You have to apply to it. How does that timing work?
Click to expand...

The portal is an "I'm available" statement more than anything. Coaches still swipe left or right.

And yes, they still have to meet admissions requirements.
 
The Sicatoka said:
I bet the majority of folks in the portal have made some grandiose announcement on social media of their entrance to the portal, but this is what the NCAA worries about. Good grief.
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I think the journalists rely on leaks in addition to the social media sources you identify. I think there is a concern that the leaking of the information (or giving the password) might violate federal student privacy laws (FERPA), so the NCAA might feel compelled to act to address it.
 
I haven't kept up with how much it's being utilized by the men's programs but it's become a massive free agency for women's hockey in my opinion and even more so with the Ivy League sitting out last season. I had a thread on the portal on the women's thread "Transfer Portal - Good or Evil?" There were more than a few responses worth reading.
 
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