<Kevin J. Cummings writes>
> >    Notre Dame and RPI into Hockey East as its 9th and 10th members.
>
> No, Somehow I don't think so.  The major division that resulted in the
> Hockey East break from the ECAC was because the ECAC wanted to change
> the scheduling of its games to provided less disruption of classes
> (ie they wanted to eliminate weeknight away games which kept the
> hockey players away from classes for 2 days).  The ECAC also wanted
> to limit (some might say severely) the number of games a team could
> play during a season.  The Hockey East teams disagreed with the rest of
> the ECAC teams and the result was the Hockey East league.
>
I believe that there is also a stricter recruiting policy having to
do with academic standing in the ECAC.  Mike Addessa, before his
departure, was pushing for a move to Hockey East so he could recruit
different people.  The way I heard it, teams in the ECAC have to apply
the same academic recruiting standards to hockey players as the rest
of the student body, although athletic scholarships are allowed.  Those
of us in the non-puck part of the student body were very against special
academic favors for hockey players.  The actual engineers on the squad
always had a special place in our minds-eye, regardless of their play
on the ice, because they were going through the same academic torture
that most of the student fans were.
(speaking of which, it seems Joe Juneau was an Engineer - is that still true?)
 
> And with Union College moving up in the ECAC from Div 2 to Div 1, they
> are less than 15 miles from RPI!  Maybe RPI the school never wanted
> an RPI/Union Hockey rivalry (could be because Union almost always
> blasts RPI for the Dutchmen's Shoes trophy in Footbal!),
but of course RPI almost always blasts Union on ice, and we seem to play
every year anyway.  I say, bring on the rivalry - it would definitely
be good for the Tri-City area, as well as the students, and I imagine
the competition would get better when Union recruits div I.
>
> No, I think you will find that RPI would rather continue to align itself
> with the academic league over the athletic one.  I know that RPI does
> give out hockey scholarships, but they did not when I attended ('74-'78).
> In fact, that was a major selling point of RPI back then, that they could
> field a Div I hockey team without ANY scholarships.  But, alas, that
> changed with one of its previous new coaches (Mike Addessa?).
>
Well, we built a winner in '85 without lowering the academic standards.
I hope the administration stays the course, even though they are worried
about lower admissions.
 
/matt
--
RPI '89
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