Kevin Cummings writes:
>> Notre Dame and RPI into Hockey East as its 9th and 10th members.
>
>And I respond:
>
>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.
Whoa, time out. That's not why the five HE charter members left the
ECAC. They left because the Ivies spearheaded a charge to force the
entire league to abide by the Ivies' academic standards. Teams like
BC, BU, Providence, NU, and UNH were becoming more and more competitive
with the Western teams and realized that remaining in the ECAC would
be completely against their own best interests. Recruiting against
the Western teams would become more and more difficult. This was the
main reason the HEA was formed - the afore-mentioned teams aspired to
reaching a higher visibility within the world of college hockey. The
Ivy limit of 26 has not been forced on the non-Ivies in the ECAC and
many ECAC teams have traveled to play HE teams, for example, on weeknights
since the split.
However, it is true that one of the advantages of HE is that 7 of the 8
teams are within an hour and a half drive of each other, and teams
can play weeknight games with players missing no classes and little study
time. The ECAC is much more spread out.
> The only question I had
>was why did Vermont stay with the ECAC?
Vermont is one of those teams that I think would fit in well in HE, but
it is a pseudo-Ivy league school and identifies itself more with the
Ivies; the administration would never sanction a move to HE. Too bad,
because there are some decent rivalries with UNH and Northeastern;
also BU to some extent.
>And with Union College moving up in the ECAC from Div 2 to Div 1, they
>are less than 15 miles from RPI!
We have to wait and see if Union does indeed make the move, first. I
agree that if Union jumps up, that should do it for any talk of RPI
joining HE (which I never took seriously, anyway). If they don't,
then it wouldn't make a difference what league RPI was in as to the
Union-RPI rivalry.
>No, I think you will find that RPI would rather continue to align itself
>with the academic league over the athletic one.
I agree 100%. That is the way the administration has always perceived
itself. That's one of the (behind the scenes) reasons Addesa got the
axe. Hockey was becoming too big and overshadowing academics. Plus,
there was the attitude of the students towards the players (I was there
for a while - I know). It was really sad how some students considered
players to be stupid if they weren't engineering majors like them. Maybe
they should take a look around the country; most students ARE business/
management majors. Maybe not at RPI, but the school does have a school
of management that isn't very easy. I saw a lot of the hard work that
most players put into school when I was there, and I can say that as much
as I may know about my major, they know a hell of a lot more than I do
about business.
Remember that calling the ECAC "the academic league" and HE "the athletic
one" is an insult to the eight excellent schools that make up Hockey East.
All are very respected in New England. Not every school can be a Harvard
or Cornell, but that doesn't mean other schools should be slighted. As
much as some ECAC fans would like to believe it, the fact that the ECAC
implements the academic index does not make it "better" than any of the
other conferences. And as we have seen, unfortunately, it has resulted in
the ECAC's plummeting to the bottom of the four conferences
competitive-wise. Like I've said, the top six ECAC teams can play with
anyone in the country, but the bottom six are far, far below them.
>As for Notre Dame joining Hockey East? It would be VERY expensive travelwise
>since all of the Hockey East teams are in the Eastern New England area
>between Providence and Portland.
Yes, this seemed a bit odd too, but if you consider the number of road
trips teams take each year anyway, it wouldn't be that expensive to
just have one of those be to ND each year. If the three-game schedule
vs. each opponent were maintained, then teams playing one game at ND
could couple that with a game at a CCHA team, perhaps. It would be more
of a strain on ND, which would effectively need to take four or five road
trips to New England each year (although some of the games could be played
over the break, allowing them to spend two or three weeks on the road).
I don't expect either team to suddenly jump to HE, but I thought I'd
throw it out to wake some people up. :-) The comments have been
interesting.
- mike
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