the relevance of this to college hockey is that Denver University is a
member of the conference, and DU athletic director Jack McDonald was
at the meeting.  The press release on the new DU ice hockey coach will
be out to the media tomorrow, but Jack plans to air it on hockey-l
tonight.
 
I picked up several tidbits, and hope i'm not letting any cats out of
the bag here, but....
 
Jack wants very much to see the WCHA get stats on line via a wcha
equivalent of hockey-l.  He really has the vision that e-mail and
internet file transfer will be more efficient than faxing and retyping
stats around the country.  It really only takes one appropriately
placed person at each school to make that work.  With the regulars
on this list from most of the wcha schools, that should be fairly easy
to accomplish.  Since we don't have a listserv here, I didn't
volunteer.
 
The nc$$ may be moving towards on line access to compliance rulings
and sports statistics.  They really need a telecomunications
technology group to address some of those issues.
 
look for some cooperative scheduling between CCHA and WCHA as
conferences down the line.  This may have some implications for the
two alaska schools and may make travel issues less onerous.
 
there may be a movement to assure that both the conference regular
season champ and conference tournament champ are guaranteed slots in
the championship tournament, with the remaining 4 to 8 slots filled
with "at large" selections.  Had that been the case this past year,
CC fans would have been happier, but the reverse would hold true for
one of the schools that made it.  (this week's poll involves
speculating on who would have been out in the cold had the proposed
scheme been in place.  Winners receive the usual ceramics (-: )
 
look for the Denver cup to be played at big mac  (oh, you aren't from
Colorado...  well, that's mcnichols arena. big mac is in the same
complex as mile high stadium, home of the denver donkeys, and is
normally the home venue of the denver nuggets, a pituitary ball team
that has somehow managed to retain life for a while longer, and is the
proposed home of the new IHL hockey team)
 
look for the Denver cup to regularly include CC, DU, USAFA, and a
designated punching bag.  My personal take on this (no offense jack)
is that it isn't a good idea to have 3 teams always in the same 4 team
tournament, especially when two are in the same league.  The big draw
would presumably be a DU-CC final, possibly involving the gold pan
trophy, but that can't be guaranteed, and it doesn't make sense to
have DU play CC in the first round as it guarantees one of the two
local teams won't be in the championship game.
 
charlie shub
[log in to unmask]  -or-  cdash@colospgs (BITNET)
(719) 593 3492               (fax) 593-3369