On the transfer portal, small schools, and college hockey

Shayne Gostisbehere and Sean Walker discuss the transfer portal.

The 2024 Frozen Four is a coliseum for college hockey’s traditional nobility.

When Boston College, Boston University, Denver, and Michigan square off in St. Paul today in the national semifinals, they’ll enter with a combined 28 national titles.

Michigan and Denver both have nine, an NCAA best, while the Boston rivals each have five. A national title this year will either mean someone reaches double-digits for the first time, or one of the Boston schools finally pulls ahead of the other.

It’s four schools that have helped define the sport, and never drop too far in so-called power rankings. The No. 1 pick and Hobey Baker winner came from Michigan last season, this year the No. 1 pick will come from Boston University, so could the Hobey Baker.

To be clear, those schools have earned that history and built legacies, there’s no shame in that.

It’s also put them in the ideal spot to continue to build and profit off college athletic’s new Wild West that features NIL (name image and likeness) money and the transfer portal.

This isn’t a complaint, it’s just an observation. But everything is setup for the rich to keep getting richer.

For example, Matthew Wood has been one of college hockey’s best teenagers the past two season at UConn. He’s been just below a point-per-game player as an 18 and 19-year-old, and was a first-round pick by the Nashville Predators last June.

One of the reasons he went to UConn was for the early opportunity to play college hockey as a teenager, something that he benefitted greatly from. Now when larger and more traditional programs came calling, he’s transferred to Minnesota for next season.

RIT goalie Tommy Scarfone had a .925 save percentage this season and was one of college hockey’s better goalies. He’s parlayed that performance into a transfer to Wisconsin for next season.

It’s another example of smaller schools, college hockey’s middle ground effectively becoming minor-league teams for the major programs. Players prove themselves at a smaller school, then head to the larger stage when the time is right.

I talked to both Shayne Gostisbehere and Sean Walker about it this week. Both played so-called smaller schools around the same time.

Gostisbehere spent four years at Union, won an NCAA title in 2014 and was the most outstanding player in the Frozen Four.

Walker played at Bowling Green (my alma mater) and spent four years there, including two as the captain.

Both players, had they played in the transfer portal era, would have been prime candidates to move to larger and more traditional hockey power after their sophomore seasons.

“From the current player perspective, I get it, you always are trying to better yourself, better your situation,” Walker said. “But it’s also hard to see what these smaller schools can do at all to remain relevant in college hockey. If a player has a great tournament for a small school, they are going to be snapped up by a bigger school now.”

Let’s use Gostisbehere’s 2014 season as a small case study. Union was the No. 1 team in the country, deservedly so, but it was a roster that was built over time and not on NHL picks. Gostisbehere was the only NHL pick, and the roster featured 14 upperclassmen.

Union’s three leading scorers, Matthew Bodie, Daniel Carr, and Daniel Ciampini, were all upperclassmen that went through growing pains at Union before all hitting at the right time. In today’s college hockey world, Gostisbehere admits, at least one of them likely would have been plucked off in the transfer portal by a larger school.

Gostisbehere is less aggressive about calling for change/being worried about college hockey falling apart. But he said he’ll always have a soft spot for the success of smaller college programs in the NCAA.

“I think if you pay attention to college hockey, you are well aware of the ECAC schools or the other ones that are smaller, not known to the general college sports fan,” Gostisbehere said. “I remember we would go to those big programs, we would win against those big programs — we knocked out BC in back-to-back years — we went to Michigan, they didn’t come to us, but we would prove ourselves there.”

And maybe that’s one of the biggest changes, which Walker brought out. It used to be those non-conference games between haves and have-nots were showcases for the team, and in many cases they are now simply showcases for top players to maybe switch sides in the portal.

“And how can you not think about it that way as a player?” Walker said.