Here is my reply to Mike's poll. > 1) Do you think the change by Hockey East from three 20-minute > periods to two 25-minute periods is a good one? Why > or why not? > 2) Do you think your perception of Hockey East or the teams > in the league will change? If yes, for better or for > worse? Why? The answers to both of these are related. I think that it is a crappy idea for HE to change to this system and will effect how they are perceived as a league. First off, the pros aren't playing two twenty-five minute halves, why should the colleges. Aren't most of the better HE players hoping to play professionally. What are the scouts from the pros going to think? How are they going to compare a HE player to a player from another league? If a choice had to be made, I would guess that the HE player would lose out because of this silly rule change. This leads up to the point of recruiting. Now these kids who have been playing "normal" hockey are going to look at the HE schools differently. The difference in game style and the difference in professional playing possibillities. He will lose kids to the other leagues. The style of play is going to change. I would guess that the pace of the game might slow down if a team has only three lines which must play for twenty-five minutes. Either that or the quality of play will decrease because of "the dreaded" fourth line. This will also screw the HE teams up when they play non-league games, which better be in the normal fashion. Everyone knows how important these games are in the rankings. So if the HE teams go into these games unaccustomed to playing three twenty minute periods, they might end up losing games against weaker teams which will bring down that team, and the other HE teams through the league games. As for TV, screw them. How can they say that the hockey games are too long when the last TWO minutes of a NCCA basketball game can take TWENTY minutes, the lenght of a non-HE period. Well, I guess that HE has to do something different to try a seperate themselves from the rest of the "lower" (in their opinion) leagues. > 3) Should HE teams receive less consideration for an NCAA > berth than non-HE teams, given all other things to > be equal, because their league games are shorter? They shouldn't be given any less consideration. However, if they start losing non-legaue games because of this rule it is going to hurt them in the polls. Mike Zak Clarkson '87, '90 and...