More hockey realignment? | Page 9 | The Boneyard

More hockey realignment?

Status
Not open for further replies.
upstater said:
And the definition of Tri-State is not what you think it is.

In other words, Rochester and Enfield are not Tri-State towns. Tri-State refers to NY Metro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area
Expand ...
Not to mention the two kids from New Canaan had no chance of cracking the lineup this season without significant injuries, neither of whom are on any type of scholarship. Only two players on the BU roster, Fortunato from Long Island and Piccinich from Paramus, are legitimaetly from the Tri-State area and actual contributors and scholarship players.

NYC Metro is a secondary recruiting area at best for hockey players. It's produced a few, but pales in comparison to New England, Minnesota/upper Midwest, and Michigan, not to mention recruiting in Canada. It's miles and eons behind all four of those places.
 
brasssbonanzaa said:
Not to mention the two kids from New Canaan had no chance of cracking the lineup this season without significant injuries, neither of whom are on any type of scholarship. Only two players on the BU roster, Fortunato from Long Island and Piccinich from Paramus, are legitimaetly from the Tri-State area and actual contributors and scholarship players.

NYC Metro is a secondary recruiting area at best for hockey players. It's produced a few, but pales in comparison to New England, Minnesota/upper Midwest, and Michigan, not to mention recruiting in Canada. It's miles and eons behind all four of those places.
Expand ...
And yet there are three pro hockey teams in the NYC area. The only thing that matters is it's NYC and thanks to this invention called cable, people can watch on TV.
 
UCONN13KC said:
And yet there are three pro hockey teams in the NYC area. The only thing that matters is it's NYC and thanks to this invention called cable, people can watch on TV.
Expand ...
I agree, I'm only saying for recruiting purposes, playing games in Brooklyn is only a marginal advantage. Hockey recruits care about facilities and if the coaches can develop them into NHL talent. The vast majority of college players worthy of being drafted come into college already having been drafted, so college is not a showcase for them to potential programs. It's about developing them to be ready to step in and be offered a pro contract out of college. Therefore, the facilities and coaching reputation are the two more important things to a recruit, by far. Cav has a great reputation from his time under York at BC, so UConn has a good setup there. Improving practice and arena facilities will go a long way to growing the program as well. The scouts of their drafted team will see them no matter where they are. These higher profile games help, but not nearly as much as in baskteball and football.
 
UCONN13KC said:
I know what Tri-State means but you know what? CT is small enough geographically that I'm not gonna worry about splitting it down even further. NYC, being the largest city in the country, can certainly handle a few hundred extra square miles in any direction. Thanks anyway.
Expand ...

If NYC had the land area that Houston has, New Haven would be part of NYC.
 
Mr. Conehead said:
If NYC had the land area that Houston has, New Haven would be part of NYC.
Expand ...

Yep. A lot of southern and western cities are very expansive. My wife is originally from Jacksonville and when she brought me to visit where she grew up it took like an hour on the highway to drive from the southern Jacksonville border to the zoo (she wanted to go for some reason), which is on the northern end of the city.
 
First post to boneyard.

Being a hockey dad (my son plays for the devils youth program and starts at a prep school in NJ next fall) my experience is that ny/nj/ct has incredible talent. He started playing in Chicago 4 years ago and there is a lot of talent there also . UCONN has done a great job elevating their program with one of the top freshman in the country this past season. The challenge for recruiting in college hockey is the established junior hockey programs across US and Canada. Every year approximately 65% of NHL drafted kids come from these programs-they never play in college. But this is changing. There was a great article on this in the March issue of USA Hockey. The story is that the trend is moving, although slowly, towards college, and developing programs like UCONN and the push by B1G in hockey are helping this. Not to mention that hanging on a campus for a few years is more fun than living with a sponsor family in the middle of nowhere North Dakota.

UCONN hockey is becoming competitive and this is exciting.
 
Last edited:
.-.
jimva said:
First post to boneyard.

Being a hockey dad (my son plays for the devils youth program and starts at a prep school in NJ next fall) my experience is that ny/nj/ct has incredible talent. He started playing in Chicago 4 years ago and there is a lot of talent there also . UCONN has done a great job elevating their program with one of the top freshman in the country this past season. The challenge for recruiting in college hockey is the established junior hockey programs across US and Canada. Every year approximately 65% of NHL drafted kids come from these programs-they never play in college. But this is changing. There was a great article on this in the March issue of USA Hockey. The story is that the trend is moving, although slowly, towards college, and developing programs like UCONN and the push by B1G in hockey are helping this. Not to mention that hanging on a campus for a few years is more fun than living with a sponsor family in the middle of nowhere North Dakota.

UCONN hockey is becoming competitive and this is exciting.
Expand ...

I wonder why things started trending to the juniors in the 1990s because before that, college had a ton of talent.
 
upstater said:
I wonder why things started trending to the juniors in the 1990s because before that, college had a ton of talent.
Expand ...
College did have a ton of talent, but the majority of hockey players historically still came from Canada. A lot of the draw of the major junior leagues has to do with them being able to offer players signing bonuses, and other incentives. They're basically able to do whatever they want and the NCAA can't do crap about it. There's been a few musings I've read lately that some want the NCAA to consider allowing major junior players to come play college (currently, going major junior is basically automatically makes you ineligible) as a way to combat the junior leagues. These Canadian teams are like hounds, they constantly recruit players WHILE they're in college, toying with the media to make it seem like there's a chance they'll go. Eichel was "rumored" to be leaving BU to go to the QMJHL at least three times this season, and their GM publicly spoke to Boston and Canadian media outlets openly saying he was trying to get Jack to come play up there. It's unlike any other NCAA sport since no other one has a legitimately equal or better league that the NCAA has absolutely no control over.

But Jimva's post is spot on, UConn is building well, and is positioning itself to excel in the sport. Building new facilities must be next on the list to stay competitive.
 
USA Hockey (i think it was February issue) also had a great article on what college recruiters look for in hockey players. The article featured UCONN coach, Mike Cavanaugh
 
brasssbonanzaa said:
But Jimva's post is spot on, UConn is building well, and is positioning itself to excel in the sport. Building new facilities must be next on the list to stay competitive.
Expand ...

Speaking of which, any updates on the new arena to be built in Storrs (hopefully)?
 
Mr. Conehead said:
Speaking of which, any updates on the new arena to be built in Storrs (hopefully)?
Expand ...
I have no more information than what's posted here. I'm not connected into the UConn hockey program at all. I only know that an on-campus facility was a condition of admittance, and some HE teams weren't big fans of the oddball time slots UConn was forced to play at the XL this year.
 
.-.
Status
Not open for further replies.

Forum statistics

Threads
168,336
Messages
4,565,425
Members
10,467
Latest member
Eil Rule


Top Bottom