At 7:00 PM 4/17/96, Lee Urton wrote: >I think the WCHA would jump at the opportunity to play more non-conference >games. Why not? Their record in non-conference games is healthy (the few >that they have). They have an opportunity to make a little more money for >important matchups (i.e. currently Minnesota-Wisconsin vs >Michigan-Michigan State or Anchorage vs Fairbanks). Other than attempting >to make the four game per conference opponent schedule work out, is there >any evidence that the WCHA is actively interested in reducing >non-conference match ups? I don't know that this is evidence of the same, but in 1989, the WCHA had an opportunity to reduce the number of games it played against WCHA opponents in order to keep the interlocking schedule with Hockey East alive. It decided to end the agreement and continue to play four games against each league opponent, with St Cloud coming in. Actually, at the time, that decision did reduce the total number of conference games the WCHA played, since WCHA teams played each of the 7 HE teams once and each of 7 WCHA opponents 4x (35 games). In 1989-90, the WCHA played 32 conference games. But all were against WCHA teams. A few years later, the WCHA did opt to switch to the 7x4 - 2x2 schedule when it accepted UAA, maintaining the 32 game league schedule. At that time, it also could have cut back its conference schedule, by doing something like 6x4 - 3x2 or whatever. It does look to me as if the WCHA learned from the interlocking schedule with HE that more conference games is better. I don't necessarily disagree with this. It is always nice to have the big in-season matchups like Maine-Michigan and BU-Minnesota. But there aren't that many of these matchups. The lesser teams suffer because they rarely get to play the big names in NC action; it's a case of the haves playing the haves. I can say that after several years of watching the situation from the Merrimack standpoint, it is definitely true that the HE games seem to mean more and draw more interest. It is nice to play teams from other conferences and go to different places, but the games usually don't seem to mean as much. This could be different for teams that are seriously vying for NCAA tournament bids, where they know that every game is important. But despite Merrimack finishing last in 1995-96, they went 4-1-3 in their NC DivI games (and have done extremely well out of conference since 1989) - yet there still isn't that air of anticipation as with HE league games. The interlocking schedule with the WCHA (which was in place when I was at Northeastern) was nice because everyone had to play everyone else. What I would like to see is some kind of agreement where, say, groups of HE teams rotate playing a couple of teams from the WCHA or CCHA, such that after a few years everyone would have played everyone else in NC games. But I don't think this is likely. >Going to two divisions in a conference in which any team plays an >unequal number of games with a significant portion of other teams in a >conference makes having a conference worthless at best, and absurd at worst. I don't like any unbalanced schedule. The WCHA already has problems, I think, because the regular season standings are decided after just such an unbalanced schedule. For example, would CC have finished first in 1994 (by one point) if they had to play Minnesota 4x instead of only twice? (Maybe they would have been better off not finishing first and drawing MTU that year, but that is another story.) HE's experiment with an unbalanced schedule caused problems. The league was divided into divisions of 4 for scheduling purposes only, and teams played 4 teams 3x and 3 teams 4x for 24 games. But the divisions were based upon the combined league records for the couple of years prior to the experiment, and they stayed that way both years. It would have been better to change the divisions each year, at least. Because of the way it worked out, Northeastern and Merrimack were stuck playing BU and Maine 4x each. In 1992-93, Merrimack went 0-8 against BU and Maine, and 8-8 against everyone else. And the standings were based upon the entire schedule, even though some teams played 8 games against BU and Maine and others played only 6. I believe that when the ECAC split into three divisions in the late 70s-early 80s, teams played divisional opponents twice and non-divisional opponents once. And standings were kept by division, although playoff seeding was a little unusual (I think each divisional winner was guaranteed a slot in the top 4 for home ice in the quarterfinals, regardless of overall league record). Another issue with the WCHA's format is that it seems that only some teams benefit from playing at UAA (and thus getting to pick up two extra games). When Minnesota and Wisconsin have only had to play UAA twice in a season, they have always gone to UAA. Thus, it seems that they will play in Alaska every year and get to keep both of their lucrative NC tournaments (Mariucci/Badger and Showcase). Does everyone else also get to go to UAA when they are only scheduled to play UAA twice that season, so that they can also schedule two extra games? You'd think that over 9 years, everything would even out and everyone would play UAA twice each, with one set in Alaska and one at home (thus you lose the exemption once). But Minnesota, for example, has already had two years in which it played UAA only twice, and both times Minnesota went to UAA. Now, if I remember correctly, one of those times Minnesota was due to host UAA and they opted to play on the road instead so that they could get the exemption. I don't know if the league had to okay this, and if all of the other teams also have that option. I doubt anyone else would complain if someone wanted to give up two home games with UAA to play them in Alaska. But you still have the problem with some teams playing both of their two game sets against tougher teams while comparable opponents - ones they are fighting with for similar spots in the standings - end up playing both of their two-game sets against weaker teams. Of course you cannot easily predict ahead of time how various teams will do in order to try to balance out the scheduling (play one good team only twice and one weak team only twice). And this is why once you go to an unbalanced schedule, however it is done, you almost have to split into divisions for fairness. >Hockey East and the ECAC are thinking of an >"interlocking schedule" in the next few years, and Hockey East and the >WCHA had one as well. It doesn't require all the teams be in one conference. I'm not sure that the HE-ECAC rumor will come to pass (that each team would play a group of 3 or 4 from the other conference, thus playing everyone over three years). I haven't heard anything official about it. It could be one of those things that some people said would be nice and then it became a story. At any rate, I don't think it would be a true interlocking schedule, since the games would not (and should not) count in the standings as with the HE-WCHA agreement. BTW, I think that once I asked HE Commissioner Bob DeGregorio about the idea of setting up such an agreement between HE and another conference, and he said that it was a nice idea but (at that time) the league did not get involved in scheduling NC games for the members. This situation would presumably have to change for a HE-ECAC or any other agreement to come about. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] *HMM* 11/13/93 >> Co-owner of the College Hockey Lists at University of Maine System << ***** Unofficial Merrimack Hockey home page located at: ***** ***** http://www.tiac.net/users/machnik/MChockey/MChockey.html ***** HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.