Thinking about the ECAC without Vermont, I see three possibilities about how
they could make it work.

1.  Find a 12th team.  Keep present home and home.  Obviously the preferred
option, but it does limit out of conference games (although at present, more
out-of-conference games is not an ECAC problem as the league schedule is the
fewest of the four big conferences.  More out of conference games would require
other conferences (WCHA especially) to reduce their league games, which is
doubtful).

2.  Go with 11 teams and two game sets each weekend.  In my opinion this is a
very poor option.  It means you would have a very unbalance schedule in terms
of who you play at home, and who you play away.  (Imagine this year, with the
teams so close, home ice could have come down to who drew Princeton on the
road and Colgate at home vs a team that had the reverse.  There is no doubt that
one scenario would be much more beneficial.)  The WCHA has had the unbalanced
schedule come in to play a couple times in the past, and they only do it for
two teams, not the entire league.  In addition, imagine not seeing a
SLU-Clarkson, Harvard-Cornell, RPI-Union, Harvard-Brown, at your home barn.  That would
stink for fans.  Some have suggested using non-conference games for the
return match, but that just undermines the idea of more non-conference games vs.
other conferences.  Overall this is a bad option.

3.  11 teams, home and home.  This would be based on a 20 game league season
where everyone plays home and away one game.  The present travel partners
would need to be modified a bit into revolving partners, but it would just require
a little organization by the league office (then again, that may be asking
way too much).  Teams would still make some of the same roadtrips (SLU-Clarkson)
but would take advantage of the closeness of other teams to mix and match
weekends i.e. Dartmouth can be paired with Harvard, Yale, Brown or even the
capital district teams.  None of those trips is impossibly long, although you might
see a few Sunday afternoon games needed.  Similarly, Yale-Brown-Princeton,
Harvard-Brown-Yale, Colgate-Union-RPI(-Cornell) could be possible pairings.  The
trick would be to avoid having a road team play a rested home team the second
night, which could probably be avoided.  Many ECAC teams already do these
type of split weekends due to exams and the Beanpot, which generally has Harvard
about 6 games further into the conference schedule by mid January.  It would
take planning, but it could be done.
    To apply this idea, either you try to keep all 11 teams in action each
week (Friday SLU @ Brown, Clk @ H, Dart @ Yale, Cor @ RPI  col @ Union, Team X @
Princeton non-league.  Saturday Cor @ Union, Col @ RPI, D @ P,  Clk @ Brn,
SLU @ Y,  H off ), or you have one team off, with the other 10 playing two game
sets, say for example (D-H at Cor-Col, Y-Union at SLU-Clk, P-B home and home,
RPI off).  Given the close travel distances, it can be made to work either way
or a combination of both.  The trickiest part of this idea is when one team
visits the North Country alone (as must happen once in this scenario).  But
pairing this team with a non-league opponent probably could be planned.
Certainly this would be more fair than the very unbalanced plan.

Just my ramblings,


William Sangrey
Cornell '87&'94
Let's Go RED!!!