At 2:18 PM -0500 11/5/96, Wayne Smith wrote:
> Joe LaCour <[log in to unmask]> wrote, in part:
> >You're right.  In the first few years of the HEA, they
> >played an interlock with the WCHA.  I thought it was
> >dropped because of the NCAA restriction on game #'s.
>
> That's probably a simplification of what happened.  HEA teams were very
> poor "draws", especially in the WCHA arenas.  Travel costs were higher;
> more time on the road.  As much as we liked it, and HEA needed it to
> grow at the time, it couldn't be justified in these days of watching
> $s&cents and missed class time.
 
Joe and Wayne are both right.  First of all, to answer Steve Klein's
question, the interlocking schedule agreement between the WCHA and HE
lasted for five years from 1984-89.  In the first two seasons of the
agreement, teams from each conference played a two-game set against teams
from the other conference - either both home or both away.  The last three
years, just one game apiece was played against teams from the other
conference.  All of these games, including of course the ones against teams
from the respective conferences, counted in the  regular season standings
for each league.
 
Around the 1988-89 timeframe, St Cloud was accepted into the WCHA for the
1989-90 season.  At that time, there were 7 HE teams and 8 WCHA teams.  The
NCAA DivI limit was 38 games.  HE teams played 26 league games - 8 against
the WCHA and 3x6=18 against HE teams.  WCHA teams played 35 league games -
7 against HE and 4x7=28 against WCHA teams.
 
The addition of St Cloud wouldn't have affected HE, but it would have put
WCHA teams over the limit just with conference games (1x7 + 4x8 = 39).  The
WCHA could have opted to cut back on the number of games against each conf
opponent (4), but it was unwilling to do so because of several factors
which Wayne mentioned.  Travel costs were already high, players missed
class time, and games against teams from the other conference usually did
not draw as well as games against conference rivals.  This was the case
even in HE when WCHA teams came to town, with few exceptions.  I recall a
Wisconsin at Northeastern game in which Wisconsin fans actually outnumbered
the hometown followers.
 
HE was willing to continue the agreement as I recall and tried hard to do
so, but the WCHA was not.
 
This was also what led to Merrimack joining HE earlier than they had
planned.  HE was to be left with just 18 league games (3x6) and there was a
division amongst the schools as some wished to up the total to four games
per league opponent, while others wanted to stick with 3 (most notably the
Beanpot schools, I believe, since a BU-NU Beanpot matchup plus a possible
two or three meetings in the playoffs could have resulted in as many as 8
games a season between two teams).
 
Thus, once the WCHA gave the thumbs down, Merrimack was invited to join HE
immediately (1989-90) and accepted at the end of January, 1989.  This was
not difficult to maneuver since Merrimack already had two games scheduled
against each HE team anyway for that season; only one additional game had
to be added.
 
There is a whole other side topic of how this likely affected the Merrimack
program and made their move to fulltime DivI more difficult than it already
would have been.  Merrimack was effectively being kicked out of the ECAC
East following the 1988-89 season and hoped to spend two years as a DivI
Independent and then apply to enter HE for 1991-92.  The time frame was
sped up rapidly and resulted in Merrimack entering HE right at the time
that they had graduated almost their entire team from the 1987-89 years in
which they were quite dominant (90-20-0 in three years; 1988 team upset HE
champion Northeastern and eventual NCAA champion LSSU in the NCAA tourney).
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the 1988
Merrimack team had competed in HE.  Several players from that team went on
to play in the NHL.
 
In fact, for that first HE season, Merrimack was forced to skate virtually
an entire team made up of young players who were not ready for DivI or JV
walk-ons who had never before played varsity.  Recruiting for that first
season was affected as the school could not tell PSAs until late January
that they were going to play in HE; one player who Merrimack had a
legitimate shot at but lost to a HE school, perhaps in part because of
this, was legendary Maine star Jim Montgomery; Montgomery was not highly
recruited at the time.  Thus Merrimack's upset playoff win over Boston
College in Game 2 of the 1990 HE Quarterfinals (BC won the series, 2 games
to 1) remains a part of Merrimack hockey lore to this day.  Andy Heinze's
natural hat trick in the third period of that game is still a HE playoff
record for the fastest three goals ever scored by one player.
 
There will be a question on this subject on the HOCKEY-L final at the end
of the semester. :-)
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                [log in to unmask]               *HMM* 11/13/93
*****   (Part-Time) Color Voice of Merrimack Hockey  WCAP 980 AM    *****
*****       Unofficial Merrimack Hockey home page located at:       *****
*****   http://www.tiac.net/users/machnik/MChockey/MChockey.html    *****
>>>    U.S. College Hockey Online http://www.uscollegehockey.com/     <<<
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.