---------------Original Message---------------
Lee Urton wrote: . . . . .. .
There is more to it than just time. If we look at UAA record last season,
we see the following:
 
Home: 9-6-3
Road: 0-17-2
 
These look like two different teams. There is such a thing as a "home ice
advantage", but this goes beyond that . . . . . . . . .
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We don't know what happened this year with the road trips. Our first year in the conference when we finished sixth, the team (our impression) did better on the road than at home -- in fact, we wondered when they would gain that "home advantage" everyone talked about. Last year was much more mixed -- they played some outstanding games on the road, but also some awful ones. This year was terrible and even worse when they stayed out for a full week. Brush didn't know the answer and he's traveled with teams for 17 years. Whatever they tried simply didn't work. Perhaps the "monkey on a shoulder" got to them and it became self perpetuating. More or less 'officially' it was when they lost team displine and reverted to playing as individuals (typical when they got ahead).
 
My opinions are that it relates to being mostly a freshman team and the fact that road trips are economized beyond reason (3 to a room, very low meal allowance, a general cutting of all possible expenses [which, by way, isn't necessary from a HOCKEY TEAM profit standpoint, but may relate to equality among all of the other non-revenue teams] and so forth.
 
The bottom line, I don't think one can chalk it up simply to travel -- it's more complicated than that. Even more of a bottom line, if you can't adjust to it you have no business being a Division I College Hockey Team. Also, many of our players have come from the "Juniors" and that travel is even harder than a college team as well as being away from home in the late high school years. Finally, the whole travel scene is an evolutionary process -- at each level it increases, gets harder, and becomes more a "part of the game". The good teams make the best of it and the poorer teams (whether high school, juniors, college, or pro) point to it as an excuse.
 
Your statistics were interesting and much appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to post them. As you can tell, they caused something in my mind to "click". I do get a little disgusted with all the comment about "Alaska Travel" and none about other travel -- to Nevada, California, East Coast, horrible weather conditions, canceled games, and so forth. Admittedly, our travel is somewhat more arduous (lengthy) than some of the other long trips, but not significantly so. For example, we seldom have 'severe' weather (almost no winter storms).
 
Mostly, I think that travel is a mental issue far more than a physical issue. And, much of that is how the coaches, school, and players "talk about it". If one wants, it can be manufactured into an impossible problem or treated as business as usual and approached as a challenge. Certainly, the more we talk about it here and sympathize with the players the easier we'll make it for UAA and UAF to win home games so maybe I should shut up.
 
In any case, a few thoughts on the issue.
 
Lowell King, Anchorage
 
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