Like I mentioned last night on
twitter, remember when I said in
my blog on Monday about the polls and the pairwise and bracketology and that it all boiled down to this being a very important time of year in NCAA hockey because ever game matters???
Well....I wasn't lying. Last night, Massachusetts-Lowell lost 1-0 to Providence (who is hanging out in the NCAA basement) and the Riverhawks dropped from #3 in the Pairwise to #10. That's going from a #1 seed in a regional to a #3. Every. Game. Matters!
It was also announced yesterday by the StarTribune, that
there's a deal in the works for an annual tournament between the D-I programs in Minnesota - very similar to the Beanpot in Boston. It will start in January 2014, which is the first season of realignment when the five programs will be in different conferences, and will take place at the Xcel Energy Center.
While it's a lovely idea with the presumption that one team would sit out every year in a rotation, with the exception of Minnesota, for a four team field, I'd love to figure out a format to be able to include all five teams. Maybe there's a "playoff" for the final spot between the teams with the lowest winning percentage in the first half of the season. You could run it like the Final Five used to be when the WCHA only had 10 teams - play-in game on Thursday, semis on Friday and the championship & consolation game on Saturday or Sunday or one on each day if you are so inclined. I'm not sure about the logistics of that, but I do know that I never liked how the College Hockey Showcase featured only four of the five Big Ten programs and always felt bad for Ohio State for being left out.
On the flip side, there was a lot of backlash towards the Gophers when this news broke. First, why should they be the only team that participates every year? But the more important issue is that it doesn't solve the problem it was intended to fix. With Minnesota joining the newly formed Big Ten Hockey Conference, the other D-I programs wanted to make a deal to ensure they'd play the Gophers every season because it definitely helps with their ticket sales. So while Minnesota sees this as a way to play the other MN schools, it seems they're only willing to do it if it's good for them, which might not necessarily the best for the other schools as well.
Bemidji State, St Cloud State, Minnesota State and Minnesota-Duluth don't just want to play Minnesota every year...they want to guarantee a game against Minnesota at home every other year, at the very least. Whether that be a home-and-home series every season or a weekend series that flips locations every other year or some combination of the two. So while this proposed Minnesota Cup is nice and is sure to be a good event, it doesn't solve the problem.
It also gave some steam to the rumor that big name schools, like Minnesota, were aiming to have at least 20 home games. With only 34 regular season games (Some in-season tournaments, special games and games played in Alaska are exempt from the 34-game NCAA limit.) that means only 14 road games or just seven weekend series.
It sparked some discussion, sometimes heated, about how the scheduling would work after realignment in 2013 and it was suggested that there should finally be some scheduling requirements across the board and, I readily admit that I'm a huge fan of this idea.
Right off the top of my head, I'd like to see every team play at least one game against a team from every other conference (This doesn't necessarily mean a weekend series. It could be part of a mid-season tournament like the Ice Breaker or the Denver Cup) and I'd like to see an equal number of home and road games, not including any neutral site games. The later is rather simple to implement, but there are some issues with the logistics of my first suggestion.
There are 12 teams in the ECAC ,12 in Atlantic Hockey, soon-to-be 12 in the WCHA and soon-to-be 11 in Hockey East. That means teams in the Big Ten (six teams) and National Collegiate Hockey Conference (eight teams) will have to play at least eight non-conference games which isn't bad when you consider they will need 10-14 non-conference games to fill out their schedule, but it severely binds the schools in the larger conferences who will only have 6-8 non conference games at their disposal and is a major issue for the Ivy League schools who have a self-imposed limit of only 29 regular season games.
So while my requirement suggestion needs some extra planning and consideration, I think it's a great way to ensure that every program (even the smallest of the small) gets a shot at the so-called big boys every season.
What requirements would you like to see implemented in NCAA scheduling?
**********
With the NHL shutting down on Wednesday night for the All Star Break, if you need a live hockey fix, there are three NCAA games available nationally via National and Regional Sports Networks on Friday:
Colgate vs Cornell - CBS Sports - 7pm ET
St. Cloud vs Minnesota - Big Ten - 7pm ET
Yale vs Harvard - NBC Sports - 7:30p ET
If the NHL Skills Competition doesn't do it for you on Saturday night, there are two NCAA games available for your viewing pleasure:
Maine vs BU - CBS Sports - 7p ET
Minnesota vs St Cloud - Fox Sports North - 8pm ET
There are four more games on Friday and six on Saturday that are available on local networks, so be sure to check your local listings and if you have any questions about specific players or programs, let me know and I will do my best to answer them for you.
**Edit: it has been brought to my attention by the always helpful, Brad Davis, SID for the Merrimack Warriors, that those of you with DirecTV can watch the simulcast of their game on Sunday against Providence at 4pm ET on Fox College Sports Atlantic (Channel 617 incase you're too lazy to look it up yourself). You can also watch Wisconsin and North Dakota play on Friday at 8:30pm ET and Saturday at 8pm ET on the same channel. **
Julie
[email protected]
Facebook
Join the Discussion:
»