Clay Satow writes:
 
>The Hockey East Tournament hasn't always been so well attended.  And even
>this year, by son got a ticket on the day of the finals.  The finals set an
>attendance record, but it was less than the hockey capacity of the Fleet
>Center.
 
The Fleet holds almost 19,000 for hockey.  The Bruins don't even sellout
the nosebleed sections, especially at the prices they charge.
>
>Is it possible that part of the WCHA attendance problem was that there
>really wasn't much at stake?  One of the features (some might say
>disadvantages) of a numbers based objective system that the NCAA uses for
>determining the tournament participants is that league tournaments can be
>rendered pretty much irrelvant.  North Dakota, CC, and Denver were pretty
>much in the NCAA tournament before the WCHA semis, weren't they?
>
>The same applied to HE, so I was a little worried that there might be some
>"going through the motions"  UNH, Maine, and BC had pretty much locked up
>their slots.  But according to my son, there were no signs of "going through
>the motions" on the part of the fans, and it was apparent to me from
>watching the games on TV that there were none on the part of the teams
>either.  If you're going through the motions, you don't come back from 4-1,
>and you don't look like the UNH guys did when they lost.
 
I agree, there was a lot of emotion in this game despite the fact that only
Providence was really playing for an NCAA bid.  For UNH it was winning
their first ever HE tourney championship and, for BC, it was redemption
after a pretty mediocre season, considering the talent they have.  A BC-UND
matchup to get to the Frozen Four is very intriguing.
>
>I would dearly love to see UNH, Maine, and BC in Anaheim (I'd call the first
>two likely, the last possible).  BC has been sort of inconsistent vs.
>mediocre teams, but against the other two, BC is 4-3-1, UNH is 3-4-1, and
>Maine is 4-4.  Three Hobey finalist, two of them among the front-runners.
>Doesn't get much more competitive than that.
 
Who, pray tell, is the other "front-runner?"  It can't be Larocque, it
isn't Gionta and it won't be Kariya.  There is only one legitimate
candidate in the East - Jason Krog.
 
Greg Ambrose
GO UNH BLUE!!!
JASON KROG IS HOBEY!!!
 
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