That's the typical Comm Ave distorted view of the world. Hockey East has been dominated by the 2 Comm Ave teams, BU and BC, with those two respresenting 60+% of HE champs and Frozen Four participants. Of course, others rise up based primarily on the quality of their coach or a star player but a fall is inevitable. There was the Shawn Walsh era in Maine, now we are seeing the Norm Bazin era at UM-L (anyone think that's a big-time hockey school once Bazin moves on?) and the Nate Leaman era at PC (after well over a decade of bad hockey at Schneider), etc., but year to year it's been the Comm Ave schools dominating the top with someone else joining for a while. The rest of the league has played mostly for scraps. UNH is probably the closest to a consistently competitive non-Comm Ave school, and even they've only won two league titles during over 30+ years and have fallen off a recruiting cliff in recent years. Merrimack rose up for a couple of seasons but they are back to being with the conference dregs as God intended. Last year, HE was 6 very good teams (including ND) combined with 6 bad ones. It was as if an insurance company was red-lining the good and bad districts in Hockey East.
Scouts? Sure they are plentiful at the Comm Ave games, but there aren't many at the typical UVM-UMass game, certainly no more than you'd find at many ECAC games, and fewer than you'd likely find at a typical Harvard, Yale or even QU game. The scouts go where the talent resides. Since they are drafting 18 year olds the majority of draft scouting is at junior games anyway. They go to college games to see the literal handful of top prospects that started college young (e.g. McAvoy, Thompson, etc.), another handful of late round prospects that slipped through during their draft year, and, mostly, potential free agent pickups. Most drafted college players were actually drafted in junior hockey and scouts from their teams will also catch some games to track them through college to determine when, or if, they should be signed.
But what about the number of drafted players? The overwhelming majority of HE players that aren't playing home games at Agganis or Conte are undrafted. UM-L has been one of the best teams in the league in recent years - they had one draftee on their roster last year. Northeastern won the league title with a handful of draftees, mostly late round guys. Counting draftees, beyond the first and second round guys that overwhelmingly go to the same couple of HE schools, doesn't guarantee much about a team's results. In fact, building a roster around 4 year guys (rather than the 1-3 typical of high draft picks) is the better path for those schools not fortunate enough to be on Comm Ave.
Front-loaded OOC schedule? Only two ECAC league games in October? Who cares? Most schools front load their OOC schedule. BU opens with 2 exhibitions, followed by 5 non-league games. Wow! They don't open their league schedule until November (a two game series with NU) and then turn around and play another non-league series with Michigan. But wait, the other HE schools must play a massive number of October league games, right? Wrong. The entire HE plays a whopping 8 league games in October, all in the last 6 days of the month. Talk about a useless point.
It's all distorted by one's view from the Hub and a need to claim some form of universal superiority that really doesn't exist. If you only take the seats at the top of the mountain, I guess it's easy to think that everyone lives in the clouds. The bottom line is that it's not clear that joining HE is better for QU's program growth. They've done pretty damn well without the benefit of HE affiliation. Furthermore, joining HE would be no guarantee of on-going success - after all, no HE team has come consistently close to the Comm Ave pair over its 30+ year history (if anyone, UConn probably has the best chance to make it a Big 3). In the meantime, QU, the educational institution, certainly likes being associated with Yale and its brethren. So, it may not be a pure hockey decision anyway.
