At 11:21 AM -0400 8/22/96, Paul Gentile wrote:
> The absolute longest trip any of the Hockey East teams has to make is
> about 3 hours (Maine to Providence). Five of the nine teams are within 30
> minutes of each other ... and 3 of those are less than ten minutes apart.
 
Actually, I think the longest trip would probably be UMass to Maine, about
6 hours.  Providence to Maine might be about the same.  But except for
Maine, the real outlier, no one has more than about an hour and a half or
two hour drive to any other school.
 
It is definitely true that Eastern fans and HE fans in particular have an
advantage in that they can not only see more of other teams' games, but
they can also easily travel to most or all of their own teams' away games.
For example, this year I expect I'll be at all of Merrimack's 34 games, and
only four of those will involve weekend road trips.  We can combine both
(Colgate/Union, Syracuse Invitational) with visits to Heather's family in
Syracuse.  Every other game, we can go up and back on the same day (though
we'd probably go to Orono the night before for a Sunday afternoon road
game).
 
I certainly do count my blessings when I think about the fact that people
at many of the Western schools have almost no chance to see anything other
than their own team's home games.  Not to mention those people in areas
where there is no college hockey at all.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                   [log in to unmask]            *HMM* 11/13/93
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