Glen Keeney writes:
>I believe Western Mich hosting West Regionals is for 1997.  The 1996 West
>Regnl is at MSU, East Lansing.  I don't know anything about the Grand Rapids
>Arena, but they have had pro hockey teams in Grand Rapids.  Western Michigan
>is located in Kalamazoo, so the Grand Rapids arena is not their home rink.
>However, their home rink has relatively small capacity (don't remember
>exactly but in the 3000-4000 range.
 
I'd think the Grand Rapids arena would have to be bigger than Lawson
(otherwise, why not host it there).  Capacity of Lawson is 4,000 from
the TeamInfo file.
 
>And I think Grand Rapids has pretty decent
>Air Service for those teams farther away.
 
About two months ago, I was looking into flights to the Kalamazoo area
for a possible trip Heather and I were going to take there this
summer.  (to visit family - hers - although I have been to K'zoo once
before in 1992 when Merrimack opened at WMU.)  Anyway, Grand Rapids
was one of the airports I looked into, and if I remember correctly, it
was not easy to find a flight there from *Boston*.  In fact, we had
all but decided that if we were going to go (we did not), we'd
probably fly to Detroit and then rent a car to drive to K'zoo.
 
I don't understand why someone like Minnesota-TC :-) hasn't offered to
host the West at Mariucci with its ~9,000 capacity.  It seems to me
that the most attractive sites are the ones where the host team tends
to always draw a seed in that regional (like BU in the East) and where
the area has a strong tradition of supporting college/amateur hockey.
Minnesota certainly fits those criteria and more.
 
Does anyone have any history behind the WMU bid?  I was a little
surprised and hadn't even considered them as a host until seeing
Wayne's message.
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                                            [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93