Today, Hockey East held its annual pre-season Media Luncheon at the Blades and Boards Club inside Boston Garden. Each team was represented, as was HOCKEY-L by at least myself and new Mass Lowell radio color man Sid Whitaker (traitor from BU :-)). Commissioner Bob DeGregorio began the proceedings with a recap of the league's first ten years and introduced the coaches, ADs, SIDs, and some players from each team. Tim Burton, Director of Marketing and Media Relations, introduced the presentation of the 1994 Hockey East Media Award to longtime Boston Globe columnist Bob Monahan. The award is voted on by the sports information directors of each school and has been presented in the past to Larry Mahoney of the Bangor Daily News (1992) and Bob Whitelaw of NESN (1993). Northeastern head coach Ben Smith recapped the 1994-95 Coaches' Pre-Season All-Star Team, followed by New Hampshire head coach Dick Umile with the 1994-95 Coaches' Pre-Season picks. Both are listed below. Basically, there was nothing new to be learned today :-), but it was nice to see everyone again. 1994-95 Hockey East Coaches' Pre-Season picks NO TEAM PTS 1 Boston University 11 2 New Hampshire 25 3 Northeastern 26 4 Maine 31 5 Mass Lowell 52 Boston College 52 7 Providence 62 8 Merrimack 65 9 Mass Amherst 72 NOTES: Teams received one point for a first place vote, two points for and one third place vote; no word on who received the other first place vote (but my uneducated guess is it was cast by Jack Parker)... voting was tabulated several weeks ago...interesting that many coaches have been quoted as saying that Merrimack's selection seemed low, but then, who cast the ballots. :-) 1994-95 Hockey East Coaches' Pre-Season All-Star Team POS PLAYER/SCHOOL G Derek Herlofsky, Boston University D Kaj Linna, Boston University D Rich Brennan, Boston University F Jacques Joubert, Boston University F Greg Bullock, Mass Lowell F Chad Quenneville, Providence (tie) J.F. Aube, Northeastern (tie) NOTES: The 1994-95 Hockey East Yearbook shows Maine's Mike Latendresse as one of the three forwards along with Joubert and Quenneville; Quenneville and Aube had tied for fourth in the balloting, which was completed several weeks ago...all of the players except for Quenneville and Linna were named All-Hockey East after the 1993-94 season...an interesting omission on defense is Maine's Chris Imes, and he and Northeastern's Francois Bouchard make up a formidable second team defensive pairing...Bullock was last season's Rookie of the Year and is the only non-senior on the team. Regular season nonconference play begins Thursday, October 20, when Maine travels to Alaska-Fairbanks for the first of three games in three nights. Hockey East conference play begins Saturday, October 22, when the league's newest member, Mass Amherst, plays at rival Mass Lowell. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] Cabletron Systems, Inc. *HMM* 11/13/93 <<<<< Color Voice of the Merrimack Warriors (station TBA for 94-95) >>>>>