You can refer to it as the second season.
It’s a period of time following the conclusion of the 2025-26 campaign, and it’s upon us in college hockey.
And the landscape of the second season has permanently changed in college sports across the country.
In hockey, it used to revolve around the recruitment of incoming players and the departure of those signing pro contracts. Now the process includes the NCAA transfer portal and bidding wars for players.
Amateurism has been replaced by professionalism in college sports, which has led to a flurry of offseason activity that mimics trades and contract wars in pro sports.
Players no longer have to sit out a season if they transfer to another school, so they can change schools on a yearly basis. And players can be paid directly by their schools or earn money through Name Image and Likeness contracts.
The Beach Boys song “Be True to Your School” has been replaced by the J. Geils song “First I Look at the Purse.”
Newport basketball phenom Cooper Flagg, potential NBA Rookie of the Year from the Dallas Mavericks, made a reported $28 million through NIL deals in his first and only year at Duke.
Penn State paid left wing and probable first overall National Hockey League draft pick Gavin McKenna a reported $700,000 to play for the Nittany Lions this season.
The University of Maine has had six players enter the portal and has added six from there.
This past season was the first year that players from Canada’s three Major Junior Leagues were eligible to play NCAA hockey so everyone was intrigued to see how they would impact the college hockey landscape.
UMaine brought in nine Major Junior players, and five have entered the portal, including third- and fourth-leading point producers Justin Poirier (18 goals, 11 assists) and Miguel Marques (10 goals, 13 assists).
Poirier, a fifth round draft pick of Carolina, led the team in goals and was fourth in the country among players at the 63 Division I programs in goals per game at .67. But he scored only one goal in his last eight games and missed the final eight games due to injury.
Marques was a third round pick of Nashville.
Goalie Mathis Rousseau, who won the starting job late in the season from struggling 2024-25 second team All-American Albin Boija, also entered the portal.
It’s no big deal.
First of all, you don’t want players in your program who don’t want to be here.
Nothing ruins team chemistry and culture faster than disgruntled players.
That’s not to say Poirier, Marques or Rousseau were disgruntled or weren’t well-liked by the coaches and teammates.
But they obviously don’t want to play in Orono any more.
In fact, Marques has transferred to Northeastern.
Northeastern? The Huskies don’t even have a rink. It was demolished this year. He will be playing home games in empty arenas.
Do you think money was involved?
Maybe they all want more money. That’s the world we live in now.
Or perhaps they didn’t like living in Orono or the school itself, or their teammates or their coaches.
Or the intense practices, which some have said are more demanding than the games.
Major Junior teams play anywhere from 56 to 68 regular season games a year before playoffs, and they have some long bus trips. So practice time is scarce.
You are allowed to play only 34 regular season games in college.
But all of them want to play in the NHL someday, and UMaine certainly prepares players for the next level. Probably as well as any program in the country.
But you have to be willing to put in the time, maybe even extra.
Fifth-year head coach Ben Barr is a demanding coach with high expectations, but it has paid off.
In the 2023-24 season, Bradly Nadeau was the team’s leading scorer as a freshman and signed with the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes after the season. He was their first round draft pick.
He went on to become just the sixth teenager since 1940 to score 30 goals in an American Hockey League season and third in the last 50 years when he tallied 32 goals for the Chicago Wolves in 2024-25 to go with 26 assists in 64 games. He has 26 goals and 27 assists in 51 games for Chicago this season and has had some call-ups to the Hurricanes, where he has scored three goals in 12 games.
Taylor Makar produced just 15 goals and 7 assists in 85 games at UMass before transferring to UMaine, where he notched 18 goals and 12 assists in 38 games in 2024-25.
Makar, a seventh-round draft pick of the Colorado Avalanche, has already played in 12 games with the Avalanche along with 50 games with the Colorado Eagles where he has scored 14 goals and picked up 10 assists.
Harrison Scott had two non-descript seasons at Bentley, producing 12 goals and 14 assists in 65 games.
He transferred to UMaine and had 33 goals and 29 assists in two seasons covering 75 games.
He signed a free agent contract with the Dallas Stars organization, and in his first full season this year, he has racked up 17 goals and 14 assists in 70 games. He has four goals in his last 10 games.
For Barr, there isn’t a trait more important than work ethic. His teams take pride in outworking their opponents, who often have more talent.
If you have a scenario where talented players earning extra money aren’t working as hard as their blue-collar teammates, that is not conducive to good team chemistry.
Not making the NCAA Tournament this season after making it the previous two years for the first time since the 2005-06 and 2006-07 campaigns didn’t sit well with Barr or his staff.
The incoming players will be workers, and he will restore the necessary team culture that was missing at times this past season. However, goaltending was another major issue in the team’s disappointing season.
There was certainly a learning curve for Barr and all the Division I coaches.
Former UMaine defenseman Arthur S. Demoulas’ generous $500,000 donation to the hockey program through the Black Bear Student-Athlete Fund is a start to competing against the larger schools with more resources like the Big Ten schools.
UMaine will never be able to compete with those schools financially, but if it uses its money wisely, the electric game-night atmosphere at Alfond Arena, the $50 million renovation to the arena, the positive culture and the valuable player development should make Orono a desirable destination for a long time.
