It’s less and less surprising these days when college coaches peek through the NCAA transfer portal.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with just looking, either, as second-year Colorado College coach Kris Mayotte can attest. But he refrained in the last offseason from signing anyone through those means, and that’s helping a Tigers team (6-9-1 overall, 3-4-1 NCHC) that has doubled its win total from this time last year (3-10-3, 1-6-1).
“It’s our vision for how we want to build this, and one of the things it’s done is that when we tell a player in junior about the opportunity that they can come in and we can see them fulfilling, they can trust us,” Mayotte said. “If we tell a Noah Laba (seven goals and four assists, leading all CC freshmen in scoring) we think he can come in and be a top-six center for us, he can trust that that’s actually going to be the case, and that we aren’t going to bring in a fifth-year guy or a 23-year-old from another program to take that opportunity and that development away from him.
“We’re focused on bringing in good people in a good freshman class, work to develop them and not use the quick fix of the transfer portal. We’re focused on investing in the guys we think we can pull out a lot of return on, and who will be here three, four, five years. I think we’re willing to sacrifice a couple of wins, maybe, this year, but we’re putting all our resources and energy into making sure that the guys that are coming in, our freshman class, are getting the attention they need, and that the guys that are here are getting coached the right way.”
That isn’t to say every current CC player began their college hockey career in Colorado Springs. Shortly after Mayotte was hired, now-junior forward Danny Weight came in from Boston College with four remaining years of eligibility, and now-senior forward Noah Prokop had three left when he arrived from Omaha.
“We knew we could invest in those guys, develop them and get them in our culture where they could have an impact,” Mayotte said. “After two or three years, they can show the next guy what it’s about.
“We always check in on (the portal) and see if there’s something that’s going to be the right fit, but for us, the priority is to invest in guys where we believe, in the long term, it’s going to pay off. A grad transfer or a (transfer) senior, something like that, that’s just not our blueprint, and that’s not our value right now.”
CC finishes its first-semester slate this week with a home series against Prokop’s old team, before hosting Princeton on Dec. 30-31. The Tigers are fresh off consecutive splits with Minnesota Duluth and local rival Air Force, and nearing into the holiday break, Mayotte wants to see his squad keep building toward a strong push in the new year.
“We’ve got to evaluate what we are,” Mayotte said. “We’ve got to find ways to be a little more consistent and do it on back-to-back nights. There’s a big discrepancy between our Friday and Saturday nights, and to be a really good second-half team, you have to be able to get sweeps and avoid getting swept.
“You can have splits mixed in there, but we really want to see the growth, and we’ve given our young guys a lot of opportunity, and in the second half, we’ll start to see that pay off.”
