As pleased as Mark may be, I must say I am not as thrilled with the outcome of the weekend. While I appreciate the need to make sure that the regionals are well attended and therefore having the host or nearby home school sent to a specific site, I still feel a bit frustrated to see my team keep being knocked out of the tournament by home or near home teams year after year. In their last 14 appearances the RED have been knocked out at least 9 or 10 times by teams playing within an hour or two of their home rink. 1981 @ Northern Michigan (Cornell won second game of one of those dreadful total goal series)1986 @ Denver (again Cornell won game two of total goal travesty)1991 @ Michigan (lost series 2-1) 1996 LSSU in East Lansing2002 UNH in Worchester (not sure how far away Durham is, but closer than Ithaca)2005 Minnesota @ Mariucci2006 Wisconsin in Green Bay 2017 Lowell in Manchester2018 BU in Worchester2019 Providence in Providence Admittedly sometimes Cornell was the lower seeded team, but more than a few times they were not. Just makes me wonder when Cornell is going to have a good team line up with regionals closer to Ithaca. Of course our luck would be to have regional in Rochester the year RIT wins Atlantic bid! All this is just to say I can appreciate the feelings of teams like Mankato who seem to repeatedly draw short straws with seeding. The system is not perfect, but I much prefer the idea of neutral regionals over home games. I would like to see, however, some sort of caveat that 4th seeded teams only get to stay near home if they are the host, not just because they happen to be in the neighborhood. Good luck to those going to Buffalo, and better luck to the rest of us next year. William Sangrey Cornell '87 & '94 -----Original Message----- From: Mark Lewin <[log in to unmask]> To: Hockey-L <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tue, Apr 2, 2019 12:13 pm Subject: regionals comments Needless to say, I am quite pleased with Providence College's success yet again at the regionals held in Providence. I am really torn in the debate whether PC should have been given the home ice "advantage" even though they were not the sponsor of the regional. Clearly, the partisan crowd helped them tremendously this past weekend, just as they were helped back in 2015. And clearly, the placement of the Friars in Providence greatly enhanced the attendance. Northeastern, after many decades of poor attendance, has finally developed a hockey following, no doubt helped by their resurgence into the Hockey East upper eschelon (and the fact it's only an hours drive from Boston to Providence. And Cornell always travels well. For years, I attended Cornell-RPI games in Troy and it was always difficult to tell by the crowd noise, which team was playing at home. The problem is philosophical, of course. Do you avoid placing a number 4 seed at home, giving them an advantage? Guess you would have to decide whether the goal is attendance or crowd neutrality (seems to be mutually exclusive). As far as placing PC in Providence even though Brown was the sponsor, would placing Brown at home be any different? I know the NCAA rules about sponsorship, but would placing Brown in Providence be any different than placing Providence at home? Only difference is that Brown paid a "bribe" to the NCAA to gain that advantage by offering to sponsor. Anyone know exactly what sponsoring a regional entails? Is it organizational work? Is it money (Brown is a much wealthier school than PC)? Is there something else? My last comment concerns the serving of alcohol at NCAA events. I am against it. It's not that I don't enjoy a beer now and then. I thought it made the lines at the men's room much longer than in the past 😁 PS I miss the old days when comments and discussions would be flying back and forth in this forum during the tournament. Oh, the good old days..... | | Virus-free. www.avast.com |