On Mon, 22 Apr 1996, Lowell D King wrote:
 
> We don't know what happened this year with the road trips. Our first
> year in the conference when we finished sixth, the team (our impression)
> did better on the road than at home -- in fact, we wondered when they
> would gain that "home advantage" everyone talked about.
 
Yeah, I got the same impression when they came into Mariucci and swept
the Gophers in their new building. Sheesh.
 
> The bottom line, I don't think one can chalk it up simply to travel --
> it's more complicated than that.
 
Yes, but travel very definitely has something to do with it. The
statistic that surpriseed me the most was that Anchorage had not been swept
at home, by anybody, including national runners-up Colorado College. This
says to me that the road trip is hard on people who go there, just as
hard as the trip south is on the Alaska personnel. I am sure that all the
schools that travelled north did not do the same scrimping and saving on
the road that Anchorage did.
 
What you say about a young and inexperienced team may very well be true,
and we shall see what happens next year. Certainly the same pattern was
not nearly so evident in the Fairbanks team. But adding in the pressure
of a new coach, and it may be another long season for the Seawolves.
 
> I do get a little disgusted with all the comment
> about "Alaska Travel" and none about other travel -- to Nevada,
> California, East Coast, horrible weather conditions, canceled games, and
> so forth. Admittedly, our travel is somewhat more arduous (lengthy) than
> some of the other long trips, but not significantly so. For example, we
> seldom have 'severe' weather (almost no winter storms).
 
You raise an important point here. There was a game played in Las Vegas,
Nevada last year, as well as the Great Western Freeze-out every year. The
biggest difference I see for these games is that ALL teams have to make
the trip, so there is no obvious advantage. For Anchorage or Fairbanks,
there is an obvious advantage when playing at home, and an obvious
disadvantage on the road. But it is all part of the hockey equation.
 
I don't recall the last time that a game was snowed out in either
Anchorage or Fairbanks. In contrast, how many New England games needed to
be re-scheduled this year because of bad weather?
 
                                -Lee-nerd
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"It is not written in the stars that I will always understand what is
going on - a truism that I often find damnably annoying."
                                -Robert Heinlein
 
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