Hi All,

Bill makes some important points about the ECACHL. (please stop me if
all you folks want to do is talk about the WCHA dominance!) .... being
out here on the left coast, I am not privy to all the details, so maybe
someone could answer the following:

1) Does the ECACHL have any official, or unofficial, or any type at all,
connections to the ECAC?
2) Are they tied to the dumb acronym name? Why not make a clean break
and call it ECHA?
3) Any chance they could convince the Ivies to start earlier and go up
to 32 or 34 games? I think that is very important for the image of the
league, and I would hope the Ivy coaches themselves would push for it.
It is nt so much the number of games, but they don't start practicing
and playing until the rest of the nation has been playing for weeks.
Either you play D-I or you don't, IMO.

With 3 berths this year, the ECACHL was 3rd out of 6, not too bad. One
would hope that eventually, each of the six leagues would get 2-3 per
year with an occasional 4.  I hope the ECACHL realizes its past image
and on-ice problems and is working to fix them.

Cheers,
Tony Buffa
RPI '64

=============================

Bill Fenwick wrote:

>And the ECACHL, after lagging behind most of the rest of Div. I hockey for
>years, is at long last taking some steps toward improving itself.  Breaking
>away from the monolithic ECAC organization, FINALLY appointing a full-time
>commissioner (now *there's* a concept), making some decent attempts at
>publicity, etc.  Continued efforts in this direction should signal better,
>more competitive times ahead.  It wasn't that long ago that the Ivies
>limited themselves to 26 regular-season games and the (then) ECAC as a
>whole was limited to 30.
>
>Which is not to say that the ECACHL as a whole will suddenly start
>dominating college hockey.  As long as the Ivies have a big hand in running
>the ECACHL (and they're not going anywhere any time soon), there will be
>some restrictions in place, and in some ways, the ECACHL will remain what
>it is today -- a league that, first and foremost, has *got* to come up with
>a better acronym.
>
>
>