This "story behind the story" of the ECAC tournament move to Lake Placid
comes from _The Intercollegiate Hockey Newsletter_, edited and published by
Don T. Birkmayer.  Although the majority of information found in this news-
letter also shows up on HOCKEY-L, it's a pretty good publication (Don is in
his 40th year of putting it together!).  It comes out every 2-3 weeks during
the hockey season and covers all of Division I, with scores, brief game
summaries, and other assorted notes.
 
Anyway, the story is this:  The ECAC's lease with Boston Garden ran out last
spring, and the Garden could not offer dates for future tournaments that
were acceptable to the league.  Neither the ECAC nor Hockey East were parti-
cularly interested in continuing the HockeyFest format, and the Garden chose
to give Hockey East first crack at scheduling its tournament.  This is
understandable, since Hockey East holds a lot more interest for fans in the
Boston area than the ECAC does.  Of the eight Hockey East schools, only
Maine is an appreciable distance from Boston -- compared with the ECAC,
where only two or three schools are near Boston.
 
Well, we all know what happened after that.  It looked for sure like
Albany's Knickerbocker Arena was going to wind up hosting the ECAC tour-
nament, but Lake Placid came up with a late bid which was approved by the
ECAC's 12 athletic directors (the Newsletter says "by a narrow margin").
--
Bill Fenwick                        |  Send your HOCKEY-L poll responses to:
Cornell '86 and probably '94        |  [log in to unmask]
LET'S GO RED!!
"I took the SATs on peyote -- I got an 1800.  I answered questions that weren't
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