Announcing... The Second Annual College Hockey Discussion List preseason poll! Since the TSN staff have weighed in with their opinions on who the top teams in college hockey will be this year, I'd like to run a preseason edition of the HOCKEY-L poll. For those of you who are new to the list, the HOCKEY-L poll is a poll of the top 15 Division I men's ice hockey teams and is open to all HOCKEY-L or HOCKEY-D subscribers. This is a private poll, and ALL RESPONSES WILL BE KEPT STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. The only information that will be released will be a composite of all the responses that were received. As always, responses that appear to be frivolous will not be counted; however, if your vote happens to contain fewer than 15 teams, go ahead and send it along. From Mike's composite, it appears that the first games of the new season will be played on October 15th, so I'd like to set the deadline for sub- mitting poll responses for Monday, October 11th at midnight. The composite will be posted the following morning. Responses received after the deadline will not be counted in the preseason poll. I expect to start the regular- season version of the HOCKEY-L poll a week or two after the preseason one comes out (more on that later...) Please note: The HOCKEY-L poll will have a slightly different Email address this year. Please Email your rankings to: [log in to unmask] ^^^^^ Feel free to attach comments to your rankings as well. Again, the indi- vidual responses WILL NOT be made public. Complete background and voting instructions for the HOCKEY-L poll are now available in the archives (thanks, Wayne!). If you want a copy, send a mail message to: [log in to unmask] and in the *body* (not the subject) of the message, include the line GET HOCKEY-L POLLINST Other questions about the HOCKEY-L poll can be sent to me at: [log in to unmask] At last count, there were 43 Division I teams (i.e. teams eligible for the NC$$ Division I tournament). They are: ECAC Hockey East ---- ----------- Brown Boston College Clarkson Boston University Colgate Maine Cornell UMass-Lowell Dartmouth Merrimack Harvard New Hampshire Princeton Northeastern RPI Providence St. Lawrence Union Vermont Yale CCHA WCHA ---- ---- Alaska-Fairbanks Alaska-Anchorage Bowling Green Colorado College Ferris State Denver Illinois-Chicago Michigan Tech Kent Minnesota Lake Superior Minnesota-Duluth Miami North Dakota Michigan Northern Michigan Michigan State St. Cloud Notre Dame Wisconsin Ohio State Western Michigan Independents ------------ Air Force Army * UMass * * Note: Independent teams Army and UMass are not eligible for the NC$$ Division I tournament this year, since they have not scheduled the required number of games against Division I competition. Have fun! Hope to hear from you. -- Bill Fenwick Cornell '86 and probably '94 LET'S GO RED!! In honor of Charles M. Schulz's induction into the US Hockey Hall of Fame: "Well, we lost the first game of the season again. I shouldn't let it bother me, but it does. We always seem to lose the first game of the season and the last game of the season... AND ALL THE STUPID GAMES IN-BETWEEN!" -- Charlie Brown, in "Peanuts"