Sean wrote:
>Greenie wrote:
{snip}
>> As far as Minnesota goes... aside from the Gophers agreeing to
>> schedule a game with BU, why would Minnesota "wish" to play BU,
>> while other teams wouldn't? Over the last few years, the Terriers
>> have routinely beaten the Gophers. Michigan just crushed BU -- why
>> would they not want to play them again? The Wolverines seem to have
>> no problem taking on Maine. What about Lake State? The Lakers have
>> had more success than failure against BU, IMHO (crushing them in a
>> title game versus losing in a 2nd round game after a looong overtime
>> game the night before).
>
>Since BU and Minensota have play during the regular season two years
>ago and will again this year, I assumed that Minnesota wishes to play
>BU.  I apologize if I am wrong in my assumption.
>
 
I think there are a couple other factors to consider:
   1)  At the risk of being maligned as a Canadian-basher, let me point out
that this is the "US Hockey Hall of Fame Game".  If you were to set up a
college hockey game celebrating US hockey, I suspect Minnesota and BU would
be the first two teams you would pick, since both teams consist primarily
of US-born players.  (Yes, there are others, including St. Cloud, but these
are arguably the two most prominent...)
 
   2)  Woog and Parker are, I gather, friends.  Perhaps they like playing
each other and want to take the opportunity to build up/prolong a friendly
rivalry.
>
>As much as I like having BU play Wisconsin and Minnesota, or Denver
>and Colorado College, I also want to be able to see them play those
>teams at Walter Brown Arena.  If BU must always go out west to play
>those teams, then I prefer to see teams willing and wanting to play
>BU in a home-and-home scheduling agreement, like BU is finishing this
>year with North Dakota.
 
   I can see that, BUT, in this case, part of the purpose of the
Hall-of-Fame game is to raise funds for the Hall.  Maybe they won't get one
of those 9500-count crowds like against CC last February, but I'm guessing
that it's a pretty good bet the crowd will be bigger at Mariucci than it
would be at Walter Brown.
 
This is also a big factor in the NC scheduling game:  $$$$$.  Face it, most
WCHA teams can draw much better with conference games than they could with
the non-conference opponents they'd be able to schedule.  (Remember, the
WCHA averages well over 5000 fans/game, most teams averaging over 90% of
capacity.)  I don't have any inside information about this, but I'm
guessing that Minnesota and Wisconsin would LOVE to cut a few games off the
32-game conference schedule, as they'd be able to find good competition
elsewhere, but the same can't be said for smaller schools like Northern
Michigan, St. Cloud, etc.
 
Pam Sweeney
Go Gophers!!!
Ski-U-Mah!!!
 
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