"Mark J. Sonnier" <[log in to unmask]> writes
 
>I think you may be pleasantly surprised.  Depending on the teams, you could
>see a sellout.  Despite the Great One's departure, they are nuts about
>hockey in SoCal.
 
        I'm afraid I'm skeptical here, judging from the turnout at
last year's Great Western Freeze-Out.  I suppose Maine and Miami don't
have tons of alums out here, but BC and MSU didn't exactly pack the
Forum.  Perhaps Margie can comment on the numbers when BU and Notre
Dame were involved.  But the big problem out here is the media.  The
LA Times has negligible coverage of College Hockey most of the year,
and come NC$$ time or even the Freeze-Out, all they can muster is a
few paragraphs from the wire service.  I don't know if they'll even
send a photographer in '99.  Add to that Prime Ticket's disinterest
when it comes to picking up the live Prime feed for the CHGoTW, and I
doubt many folks in SoCal are even aware of College Hockey.  (Granted,
it's worse here in Santa Barbara, where we don't even have ice, but I
think it holds for LA as well.)
 
        And imagine, for the sake of argument, a Maine/Lake
State/Lowell/CC Phinal Phour in Anaheim.  I'd say a sizable fraction
of the folks out here would have heard of *none* of those schools.
 
                                        John Whelan, Cornell '91
... who will be in Salt Lake City in '97 and '98, but has no idea
about '99...                            <[log in to unmask]>
        <http://www.physics.ucsb.edu/people/john_whelan/jphock.html>
 
1996 Cornell Hockey: Ivy League Women's Champions
Ivy League Men's Champions/ECAC Men's Champions
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.