I'll finally through my opinions into this fray.  With all that has been
said, I find myself favoring the idea of the ECAC moving its tournament
to Albany.  This is mostly based upon the reasons of a more central
location and that the ECAC could structure the tournament to allow for a
day off in between the semis and the final in the name of fairness to
both finalist.  (you can use this past tournament as an example.)  One
thing that the ECAC would HAVE to do would be provide television
exposure.  NESN does a breat job and covers a wide audience.  The Empire
Sports Network (or whatever it is) is quite lacking when compared to
NESN.  The main aspect that has been over looked is that Boston is more
of a hockey town than Albany is, by several orders of magnitude.  In
this respect, there a probably hundreds of more non-collegiate
affiliated hockey fans that would go to all of the games at HockeyFest
than those in Albany who would go to the ECAC games.  Albany does have
RPI and Union, but Boston has Harvard, BU, BC, Northeastern and
Merrimack as Div. I schools that would provide a certain number of fans
regardless of whose playing.  Finally I would guess that 75% of the
ECAC people who would go to Albany, would also go to Boston.  So I don't
think that there would be a large influx of fans.  So I guess that I'm
back to supporting the ECAC staying at the Garden.  With my time horizon
of 9 years, I predate HE and remember all of the Eastern schools
shooting for the Garden.
 
Mike Zak
Clarkson '87, '90... (Aug. '92)
 
p.s.  I HATE the term "politically correct" and its acctepted newspeak.
   It is such blatant pandering (Pander Bear) and cow-toeing to special
   interest groups.  (How did all of that slip out?)