Howard wrote:
>I've found the "Hockey East Best?" thread quite interesting -- not for what's
>been said, but what isn't being said.  I was expecting a bunch of people to
>jump all over the announcer's comments and defend their respective leagues as
>being better than Hockey East, with specific examples, of course.  The fact
>that the discussion quickly moved toward determining how to judge each league,
>and away from which league is better, leads me to think that alot people have
>it in their minds that Hockey East just might be "the best" from top to bottom
>(using their individual criteria for "best").
 
Actually, it's more likely that most of us didn't want to get into a flame war
about "my league is better than your league."  I dare say you would find many
that don't "have it in their minds" that HE might be the best from top to
bottom.
 
Without rather extensive interconference play, which is impossible these days
with the number of game restrictions and large number of conference games being played (e.g. 32 per team in the WCHA, which leaves 4 open for interconference
play if you play two in Alaska, or 30 in the CCHA, which leaves 4 or 7 depend-
ing on playing three in Alaska), no one's going to be able to say conclusively
that Conference A is better than Conference B or Conference C or D.  Even the
NC$$ Tournament can't be used as a criterion since only the "best" in each con-
ference make the tournament.
 
What we can judge is how competitive conferences are within the conference, and
you can judge that by how often some of the "bottom-dwellers" knock off some
of the "top teams."  Given that, I'd say the most competitve conference in the
past few years has been the WCHA (and this coming from a CCHA fan).  Very
rarely in the past few years have you seen "bottom-dwellers" knock off the
top teams in the CCHA (though there have been a few good shockers here and
there).  Now, this may be changing somewhat in the two Eastern conferences,
but remember it wasn't more than 3 years ago that Maine blew the doors off of
everyone in HE.
 
So, when an announcer in HE, who most likely hasn't seen too many WCHA or CCHA
teams play recently, says that HE is the best conference top to bottom, most of
us laugh it off, just as I usually do when the CCHA calls itself "the premier
college hockey conference" or something to that effect.  Without a lot of inter-
conference play, it's all spitting in the wind.
 
G. M. Finniss
Michigan State University 3-2-0, 5-3-0
Home of the Paul Bunyan Trophy until at least October 1996 (and the city of
East Lansing is still intact, amazingly)
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.