>It's probably no coincidence that the Badgers are involved in two
>in-season tournaments (College Hockey Showcase and Badger Showdown)
>for a total of four NC games.  After all, if the two UW-UAA games were
>to take place in Madison, then UW would not be able to play in both of
>those tournaments.
=================
I am not aware of any official arrangement between UAA, Wisc, Minn, and the
WCHA, but you make a very compelling circumstantial argument. Playing in AK
might be viewed as a win-win situation, as the Anchoragites get a chance to
see 2 good teams at home and the Wisc and Minn teams get a chance to play a
couple of extra games and hold on to some big gate receipts from the
tournaments.
 
Is it "right"? Depends on what your priorities are, I guess. Is it "fair"?
Of course not. At least not to the other teams in the WCHA. The CCHA
arrangement with UAF, which calls for a visit to Fairbanks every other
year, is much more equitable.
=================
>After all, LSSU was forced to relinquish a spot in at least one and
>possibly two in-season tourneys when the CCHA scheduled LSSU to host
>UAF three times this year, rather than the other way around (which
>would have enabled LSSU to play 3 extra NC games).
=================
BUT, don't forget that LSSU got extras games for playing 3 here in the
Great Alaska Face-Off in 1993, and went on to win the NC$$ that season (as
Maine had the year before).
=================
>This also raises the question of whether it is time to remove the
>exemption for Lower 48 teams playing in Alaska.  It seems unfair that
>now that UAA and UAF are full-fledged conference members, the only
>teams that get to take advantage of the exemption and play extra games
>are the non-Alaska teams in the WCHA and CCHA (those 5 CCHA teams playing
>at UAF each year).  It's an exemption that isn't available to the
>Eastern teams or the 5 CCHA teams that have to host UAF in a given
>year, and it's also an exemption that has never been and will never be
>available to UAA and UAF
=================
Maybe. But I think that the exemption probably ought to remain for a few
more seasons, until everybody is comfortable with the idea of playing at
and against the Alaska teams. Once it's "something we've always done," the
exemption can go.
 
A related problem concerns to the conferences' feeling that it's necessary
to play so full a league schedule each year. UAF,used to play UAA several
times a year in a rivalry that was, well, "spirited". Now, league
committments reduce it to a trivial home-and-home pair of games at the
start of each season. We in Fairbanks have come to enjoy hosting many of
the East Coast teams (Brown, Yale, Harvard, Merrimack, Lowell, Army, Maine,
UMass-Amherst, in the past few seasons) and we've grown quite fond of the
Great Alaskan Face-Off tournament at Thanksgiving. Conference membership
gives us so many mandatory league games that we have to sacrafice these
non-conference goodies in order to comply with the NC$$ limit.
 
On balance, you've got to give a little to get a lot, and we're thrilled
and honored to be in the CCHA as full members. But some of us will sure
miss Sean Walsh (and Imes, Kariya, Martins, Sbrocca and even Greg Bullock).
And, damn, that was a great tournament we used to have!
 
--Jeff Partnow
--Fairbanks, where UAF begins full membership in the CCHA in '95-'96