Hi.  I've been a lurker on this list for a couple of months.  I have not
written in thus far due to work schedule conflicts mostly, but also because
nobody seems to discuss the teams I follow, or at least followed when I
lived there, namely the West, and the WCHA in particular.  Even more
particularly, the Denver University Pioneers.  Come on!  I can't be the
only DU fan out there -- Denver is a big city, after all.  I live in
New Joisey now (for the last year), but used to follow DU even when I
lived in California and other West Coast states, because you could find
WCHA stats. if you searched hard enough.  This is one lady who *loves*
her college hockey!
 
So, come on WCHA fans -- let's beat back this East Coast skew on this mailing
list with some vigorous posting from westerners.  Hey, would the fellow
who is a fan of Colorado College write again?  Let's keep it up.  "Cornell,"
indeed! :-)
 
Now, on another note:  I graduated from the U. of Cal. Berkeley, and I know
that way back when, Cal had a college hockey team.  Does anybody know anything
about it, how it did, who it played against, when it disbanded, etc?  I want
to see West Coast hockey make a comeback.
 
On the Olympic hockey discussion that has been going on, I have a few
comments.  First, the NHL should indeed allow its players to be on Olympic
teams for their respective countries, but as for paying them during the time
they are on their Olympic squads and unavailable for NHL play, I don't
think so.  That would be tantamount to paying them to play in the Olympics,
which is a bad precedent.  Sure, they'll get promotion money just for appearing
in the Olympics, but that is a side-effect, not as much a direct paycheck for
being in the games themselves.  On second thought, though, I could see that
the NHL would benefit from the players being in those Olympics, so perhaps
they *should* pay them for being the ambassadors of the NHL that they
would be.  I dunno.  Essentially, I think that the NHL season should also
go along as scheduled.  Sure, with most of the superstar players away on
Olympics teams, the season's results would be likely a bit different than
it would be normally, but the benefit for the NHL from the good publicity,
and the feelings of good will toward the NHL management that it would create
in the players themselves, would be worth it, once every 4 years.  After
all, every time a strike happens, the season is different as well.  Besides,
the best players would all be back in time for the late-season games and the
playoffs.  They'd probably be better puck passers than had they just spent
the season in the NHL, too.
 
I'd also like to say that I really think that college hockey should get
more media coverage.  It is much, much preferable to NHL hockey, as the
players actually pass the puck and chase it, rather than checking and
dumping all the time.  It is definitely more like Olympic hockey, which
I also prefer to NHL hockey.  I got bored with the NHL 10 years or so ago,
due to the dull style of play and all of the violence, that is so strongly
*encouraged* by the league.  The NHL will never get back the following it
used to have, and a US national TV contract, unless it deemphasizes the
voilence in the game.  NHL hockey used to be considered one of the 4 major
sports, equal in scope and prestige to baseball, football, and basketball.
Since it lost the TV contract though, professional hockey is largely
considered to be a minor sport, not really as important as these other three.
The only way to get back to the top echelon is to make the game more
appealing to the *average* person, which means it has got to concentrate
on the game, and not violence for violence's sake -- the TV contract is
critical, and I know that none of the big 3 networks will touch the NHL
now, as the game is played currently.
 
I remember when I was a young girl that the NHL games were tough, but not
flat out bloodfests like they are now.  Their was not the overt encouragement
by management to make fighting a regular part of the sport, as is the
unfortunate case now.  When they decided to open up the violence aspect,
the many, many fringe fans left, leaving only the die=hard fans (who don't
like the changes either, but love the game too much to quit).  The league
needs to be able to draw those fringe fans to be really successful.
 
I think that this encouragement of violence is also carrying over to the
colleges, unfortunately.  There is more NHL-style fighting and overt attempts
to hurt the opponent than there ever used to be, and I think that is a really
bad thing to see -- the NHL has a responsibility, as the leader of the
hockey world, to influence a change back to a purer form of hockey, especially
as it was responsible for influencing this ugly shift in the style of play
in the colleges.
 
All in my opinion (humble or not).
 
 
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