This topic has been discussed a bit in HOCKEY3 but not here, so I thought I'd raise it for discussion. Quinnipiac College notified the ECAC recently that it was giving athletic scholarships in hockey this year in preparation for its transition to D-1 in the MAAC next year. In response, the ECAC N/C/S executive committee ruled QC ineligible for post-season play in the lower level D-3 conference and its games will apparently not count in conference standings. Thus, QC becomes essentially a D-2 independent for the year. What is significant about this is that most schools in the MAAC hockey conference currently play at the non-scholarship level and had intended to continue to do that when the MAAC started operation in 1998. QC thus has served notice that it takes this new hockey conference very seriously and will position itself to claim any NCAA bid which might come the way of the MAAC during the next few years, be it automatic or at-large. There are also rumors coming out of QC that they will be putting a new hockey building on campus. If true, that would be a further manifestation of QC's commitment to the sport. What I find so interesting about this development is that it will probably have a domino effect which would very quickly solidify the MAAC into a viable conference perhaps even on an almost equal footing with the other four. Hockey scholarships at QC will very quickly pull scholarships into other MAAC hockey programs just to keep the other schools competitive and that will raise the standard of competition significantly. That in turn might very well also pull other schools such as Niagara, Army, and Alabama-Huntsville into the MAAC. With a year-end tournament showcase at the Hartford Civic Center, the MAAC could very quickly develop into an attractive option for prospective student athletes. Somehow I suspect that Jack McDonald, the former AD at Denver University, had a lot of this in mind when he convinced QC to upgrade their sports programs. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. -- Dick Tuthill HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.