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More hockey realignment?

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Who Ha said:
This is a different time. If 12 schools from various P5 leagues were offered 100 mil per year to join up, GOR's and ancient history and respect would go out the door. What is going on in college sports is just survive, thrive and a bit of greed (much like outsourcing). Don't let any romantic notions like academics or competing with the best blind you.
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None of what you said has anything to do with the points I made. The way things work in college hockey is far different from football or basketball.
 
zls44 said:
They'll do what everyone else does and add women's rowing. They can even use one of the two nearby lakes to do it.
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Wouldn't even come close. Only real option would be to add women's hockey too. Entirely plausible, but I don't see the steam for it right now. New hockey programs generally have rumblings prior to anything happening, there's nothing right now for UNL. On the flipside, there's been rumblings for years about Illinois, Indiana, and Purdue. Those I could foresee happening at some point. UNL in the next few years, no.
 
I don't think anyone in the Big Ten is on the verge of upgrading - my guess would be Illinois will be the first, but that's speculation. Their ACHA club is extremely successful, they're in a good spot to recruit and their jump would be the least painful. Northwestern might be the second-most likely - I don't put any stock in IU or Purdue right now.

In any event, short of affiliate members or making the big call to the 860, they're gonna sit at six for a while.
 
Cleanface said:
Hey now...Really?? I like that!

How have I not heard these rumblings? Any quick links I can peruse??
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It's just rumblings around the internet. Nothing concrete, no articles on it, a couple of reporters musing about it here and there. The main thinking is these schools are in areas where hockey is relatively popular, they're large, their ACHA teams are very good, and draw decent crowds.
 
Fishy said:
I don't think anyone in the Big Ten is on the verge of upgrading - my guess would be Illinois will be the first, but that's speculation. Their ACHA club is extremely successful, they're in a good spot to recruit and their jump would be the least painful. Northwestern might be the second-most likely - I don't put any stock in IU or Purdue right now.

In any event, short of affiliate members or making the big call to the 860, they're gonna sit at six for a while.
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This.
 
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Fishy said:
I don't think anyone in the Big Ten is on the verge of upgrading - my guess would be Illinois will be the first, but that's speculation. Their ACHA club is extremely successful, they're in a good spot to recruit and their jump would be the least painful. Northwestern might be the second-most likely - I don't put any stock in IU or Purdue right now.

In any event, short of affiliate members or making the big call to the 860, they're gonna sit at six for a while.
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We've been talking about an Illinois D-1 hockey program since at least since I was a freshman there... which was 18 years ago. The club team has a great fan base (sells out an 1000-seat rink every game, which is amazing for a club and we're playing teams like Iowa State as opposed to Michigan and Wisconsin) and has long been competitive at a high level with a solid hockey recruiting territory between Chicago and St. Louis. Everything on paper points to Illinois having more than enough support for D-1 hockey. If I had $100 million to spare, I'd be getting the Frank the Tank Arena Ice Arena built promptly in Champaign.

The issue is that Big Ten-level hockey is insanely expensive even with Big Ten TV money coming in. Penn State was in exactly the same position that Illinois is in now - great club team in a recruiting area and with a fan base that could support D-1 hockey. They talked about adding D-1 hockey for about 20 years, too. However, it took the largest donation in the history of the school for ANYTHING to get D-1 hockey at Penn State. Let that sink in: it took a larger donation than what Penn State had received for football, academics and literally everything else in its history to finally get D-1 hockey off the ground. Those types of donations are few and far between for any school.

I really wish Illinois, Northwestern and other Big Ten schools could get hockey programs started up, but it's a massive capital investment even for the wealthiest schools. As a result, lacrosse is probably more likely as additional men's sports for Big Ten schools (to the extent that any other men's sports are added at all).
 
I really don't mind B1G hockey only having six teams. It helps to build a rivalry by playing each other more. Until last year, Ohio State had only played Wisconsin and Minnesota in hockey a handful of times throughout the previous decades. Now we get four games against each team, plus any additional games in the conference hockey tournament. If more teams are added, it is likely that OSU would play fewer games vs. Minnesota and Wisconsin, unless they took games away from the nonconference schedule and added additional games to the conference schedule to compensate. I would rather OSU play Wisconsin and Minnesota 8+ times per year than play fewer games with extra teams in the conference, especially if those extra teams were "affiliate members". Now if those teams were B1G teams adding the sport, then I would be ok with the expansion because its in-conference. However, as has already been pointed out, it is not likely to be added by anyone else anytime soon unless a big time donor steps up.

Since the B1G already receives an automatic bid to the tournament, the only reason to add more teams would be if the television money more than compensated for the additional team or teams.

What I would like to see would be for Michigan and Michigan State to add Women's Ice Hockey programs so that we have the minimum requirement of six teams to play women's ice hockey as a conference sport. Given that the infrastructure is already in place (same ice as the men skate on) and given that Title IX always leads to the need for women' s sports, it seems like it would be more likely for women's ice hockey to be added at Michigan and Michigan State than it would be for any other team in the conference to add men's ice hockey in the first place. With four members (Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin and Minnesota), women's ice hockey is now the sport with the most participants in the conference that is not currently a conference sport.
 
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Interested to see which conference they join (WCHA/NCHC). Either way, quite the hike from Tempe to Houghton, MI or Duluth, MN!
 
Afroabe224 said:
Interested to see which conference they join (WCHA/NCHC). Either way, quite the hike from Tempe to Houghton, MI or Duluth, MN!
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Michigan Tech: #1 ranked Hockey Team! Yooper power baby!
 
FfldCntyFan said:
I doubt that BU would give up HE membership (and the local rivalries) for what would at best be a lateral move in terms of quality of conference and a ton of additional travel costs. BU is like BC in that men's hockey success (and the Beanpot) is really all they have in terms of athletics to draw any sense of pride from.
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They do have men's soccer as well, and they get some fans, but that is all. They used to have good wrestling. A couple decades ago.
 
Cue broken record: if Buffalo ever starts a D1 hockey program, they become a perennial powerhouse on day 1. Unfortunately, the people in athletics are from down south and they don't get it. Hockey is king in Buffalo. Buffalo is right next door to Ontario. Buffalo's high school and prep hockey is at a very very high level, higher than Boston's.
 
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upstater said:
Cue broken record: if Buffalo ever starts a D1 hockey program, they become a perennial powerhouse on day 1. Unfortunately, the people in athletics are from down south and they don't get it. Hockey is king in Buffalo. Buffalo is right next door to Ontario. Buffalo's high school and prep hockey is at a very very high level, higher than Boston's.
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U Buffalo could be good in hockey; but, Buffalo as a recruiting area is far behind the top 2 - Minneapolis/St. Paul and Boston. Boson hockey is a lot like NJ football. The area is loaded with perennially strong teams whose play improves year after year de to the competition between each other. That challenge and their success allows them to cast (not recruit, wink, wink) a wider net every year to bring in even higher quality talent. That's why Don Bosco (NJ football) has players from upstate NY, PA, southern NJ, and even NYC on their roster while Catholic Memorial (Boston Hockey) has had kids from as far away as Quebec on their roster. The 'best' team in Buffalo may be able to run with the Central Catholic Conference in Boston, as much as hockey teams from Don Bosco and Delbarton from NJ could do so also; but, on a whole, the top 10 teams from Boston would beat the top 10 teams from Buffalo 9 of 10 times.
 
upstater said:
Cue broken record: if Buffalo ever starts a D1 hockey program, they become a perennial powerhouse on day 1. Unfortunately, the people in athletics are from down south and they don't get it. Hockey is king in Buffalo. Buffalo is right next door to Ontario. Buffalo's high school and prep hockey is at a very very high level, higher than Boston's.
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Upstater, listen..... I'm assuming you are 40+ish as am I. The game of hockey at the high school / prep level is NOWHERE NEAR what it was back in the day. If you are a college prospect, you don't go to the high school and Prep School level to play anymore, you go to elite Junior programs with the occasional powerhouse prep school, which is now the rare exception. All the high school talent is now skimmed off by these elite teams and high schools are not deep and do not produce the talent they once did because players want the exposure and tough schedules of these elite teams. That being said, Buffalo i'm sure has talent but to say they surpass Boston is a stretch to say the least. Boston has the rare talent pool that can feed both levels (elite/high school) and I would guess that most top prospects from Buffalo go the juniors as do the prospects in Michigan and Minnesota. Just to point out that as good as local high school and prep school teams are, is irrelevant because the teams that feed the college level rosters come from these elite junior teams that would run the best high school teams off the ice by HIGH double digit margins. Buffalo may get a prospect or two locally if they went big time but to suggest they would be good because of the local community and talent pool is a little off.
 
Doggie Style said:
Upstater, listen..... I'm assuming you are 40+ish as am I. The game of hockey at the high school / prep level is NOWHERE NEAR what it was back in the day. If you are a college prospect, you don't go to the high school and Prep School level to play anymore, you go to elite Junior programs with the occasional powerhouse prep school, which is now the rare exception. All the high school talent is now skimmed off by these elite teams and high schools are not deep and do not produce the talent they once did because players want the exposure and tough schedules of these elite teams. That being said, Buffalo i'm sure has talent but to say they surpass Boston is a stretch to say the least. Boston has the rare talent pool that can feed both levels (elite/high school) and I would guess that most top prospects from Buffalo go the juniors as do the prospects in Michigan and Minnesota. Just to point out that as good as local high school and prep school teams are, is irrelevant because the teams that feed the college level rosters come from these elite junior teams that would run the best high school teams off the ice by HIGH double digit margins. Buffalo may get a prospect or two locally if they went big time but to suggest they would be good because of the local community and talent pool is a little off.
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Trust me, I know the lower levels of hockey very well. I never played. But I was indoctrinated into it by virtue of my closest friends to this day who all played HS, prep and were drafted. I used to go comp to bruins games and sit with the brass who drafted my best friend, who was also at BU at the time. I have been watching for a very long time. The Prep kids here for instance play in the Ontario leagues and against Junior teams. It is an entirely different level. I went to NDWH HS and watched that team play Leetch at Cheshire and Janney at Avon. Then I got a good look at the Boston Preps (who are still feeding talent into D1 hockey and then the NHL). I know the level of play. When I'm talking Prep here in Buffalo, I am talking about clubs that compete against the best in Ontario, and most of these kids go to juniors in their latter High School years.

Just as an example: Patrick Kane played in school and also for the Buffalo Regals club (which is a mile from me) until he was 15-16. He spent a half year in Michigan playing for another club while living with family friend Pat Verbeek before he joined the US National team at age 16.
 
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Mr. Conehead said:
U Buffalo could be good in hockey; but, Buffalo as a recruiting area is far behind the top 2 - Minneapolis/St. Paul and Boston. Boson hockey is a lot like NJ football. The area is loaded with perennially strong teams whose play improves year after year de to the competition between each other. That challenge and their success allows them to cast (not recruit, wink, wink) a wider net every year to bring in even higher quality talent. That's why Don Bosco (NJ football) has players from upstate NY, PA, southern NJ, and even NYC on their roster while Catholic Memorial (Boston Hockey) has had kids from as far away as Quebec on their roster. The 'best' team in Buffalo may be able to run with the Central Catholic Conference in Boston, as much as hockey teams from Don Bosco and Delbarton from NJ could do so also; but, on a whole, the top 10 teams from Boston would beat the top 10 teams from Buffalo 9 of 10 times.
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Not by my eye. I have no stake in this, but having watched Boston schools and Buffalo schools play, the level is higher here. There are a lot more people living in Boston, so more to draw from, and more good players. But the top prep teams here easily compete with the top preps there. The top ones here compete in Ontario. Against colleges like Appleby. They travel across the country. They play those New England top Prep schools like Thayer. The hockey team the next block over from me plays Shattuck St. Mary's every year (a legendary school that fills D1 college rosters), and both schools are always in the top 10 of preps nationally.
 
brasssbonanzaa said:
Jack Eichel and the 11 other MA players on the BU roster would like a word with you.
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Maybe he could talk to Patrick Kane and Kaleta and Foligno and dozens of others?

Eichel by the way took the same route as Kane. Local high school until he was 16 then off to the US team in Ann Arbor.
 
upstater said:
Trust me, I know the lower levels of hockey very well. I never played. But I was indoctrinated into it by virtue of my closest friends to this day who all played HS, prep and were drafted. I used to go comp to bruins games and sit with the brass who drafted my best friend, who was also at BU at the time. I have been watching for a very long time. The Prep kids here for instance play in the Ontario leagues and against Junior teams. It is an entirely different level. I went to NDWH HS and watched that team play Leetch at Cheshire and Janney at Avon. Then I got a good look at the Boston Preps (who are still feeding talent into D1 hockey and then the NHL). I know the level of play. When I'm talking Prep here in Buffalo, I am talking about clubs that compete against the best in Ontario, and most of these kids go to juniors in their latter High School years.

Just as an example: Patrick Kane played in school and also for the Buffalo Regals club (which is a mile from me) until he was 15-16. He spent a half year in Michigan playing for another club while living with family friend Pat Verbeek before he joined the US National team at age 16.
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You made my point, West Haven,ND, Fairfield Prep are good high school programs but don't have the talent anymore and this is no different from any other State, those days are gone. I played high school (5 players to D1) and moved to Prep School (12 players to D1) then college. That progression is dead for the most part at this point, it is rare. Your point of seeing the Boston Preps talent pool is fine but I'm telling you that the prep route is not where the top talent goes anymore (for the most part), they go to elite junior teams. as an example, I have 16 kids on my team from CT and Mass who were just run off the ice by a Boston Junior team over the weekend and that same Boston team was 0-3 against other Boston teams days earlier in a tourney. We all know about the days of Leetch at Avon, but those days of Avon doing what they have always done are over as well. The team when Quick was there not long ago was pretty much it as far as stacked programs go. There will be exceptions of course but there is not enough talent to go around anymore. Players want to be the superstar of their team just to get a sniff from a scout so the parents move their kids accordingly so they can have big numbers and not share the spotlight with other solid players. I don't like the way things have progressed but thats how it is.
 
Doggie Style said:
You made my point, West Haven,ND, Fairfield Prep are good high school programs but don't have the talent anymore and this is no different from any other State, those days are gone. I played high school (5 players to D1) and moved to Prep School (12 players to D1) then college. That progression is dead for the most part at this point, it is rare. Your point of seeing the Boston Preps talent pool is fine but I'm telling you that the prep route is not where the top talent goes anymore (for the most part), they go to elite junior teams. as an example, I have 16 kids on my team from CT and Mass who were just run off the ice by a Boston Junior team over the weekend and that same Boston team was 0-3 against other Boston teams days earlier in a tourney. We all know about the days of Leetch at Avon, but those days of Avon doing what they have always done are over as well. The team when Quick was there not long ago was pretty much it as far as stacked programs go. There will be exceptions of course but there is not enough talent to go around anymore. Players want to be the superstar of their team just to get a sniff from a scout so the parents move their kids accordingly so they can have big numbers and not share the spotlight with other solid players. I don't like the way things have progressed but thats how it is.
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"I have 16 kids on my team from CT and Mass who were just run off the ice by a Boston Junior team."

Geez, thanks coach...
 
Doggie Style said:
You made my point, West Haven,ND, Fairfield Prep are good high school programs but don't have the talent anymore and this is no different from any other State, those days are gone. I played high school (5 players to D1) and moved to Prep School (12 players to D1) then college. That progression is dead for the most part at this point, it is rare. Your point of seeing the Boston Preps talent pool is fine but I'm telling you that the prep route is not where the top talent goes anymore (for the most part), they go to elite junior teams. as an example, I have 16 kids on my team from CT and Mass who were just run off the ice by a Boston Junior team over the weekend and that same Boston team was 0-3 against other Boston teams days earlier in a tourney. We all know about the days of Leetch at Avon, but those days of Avon doing what they have always done are over as well. The team when Quick was there not long ago was pretty much it as far as stacked programs go. There will be exceptions of course but there is not enough talent to go around anymore. Players want to be the superstar of their team just to get a sniff from a scout so the parents move their kids accordingly so they can have big numbers and not share the spotlight with other solid players. I don't like the way things have progressed but thats how it is.
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Well, I can really only talk about the preps and college hockey. With the juniors it's more difficult because I don't watch it. I also see a lot of top college kids who eventually go to the pros coming out of prep so I tend to conflate it all together.

The thing is though, I am comparing the current prep scene around here to how the Boston scene USED to be, so if the changes have made it worse in Boston, wouldn't my point still stand?

I think this is a special area because of its proximity to Ontario.
 
upstater said:
Well, I can really only talk about the preps and college hockey. With the juniors it's more difficult because I don't watch it. I also see a lot of top college kids who eventually go to the pros coming out of prep so I tend to conflate it all together.

The thing is though, I am comparing the current prep scene around here to how the Boston scene USED to be, so if the changes have made it worse in Boston, wouldn't my point still stand?

I think this is a special area because of its proximity to Ontario.
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Yeah no doubt, i get it! Anytime you can factor in the close proximity to the Canadian border that changes the dynamic of everything! I hear you regarding Boston but the dynamic up there is that they have a huge market for both the $$$ elites and the $$$ non-elites. What happens is the families with vast financial means tend to make their kids go to prep-schools to ensure the education is a priority and because they can afford it. Whats happening with these elite teams as I mentioned is that these programs are typically cherry picking from the local public HS programs. The dynamic in Boston is that the market can actually sustain that which in other hockey hot beds it cannot.
I'm just having conversation, not looking to question anything as I do not know the Buffalo market at all.

Lynwood Rowe said:
"I have 16 kids on my team from CT and Mass who were just run off the ice by a Boston Junior team."

Geez, thanks coach...
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LOL! yeah, we got smoked it sucked! I don't know who it is worse on, the team who gets creamed or the team who travels over 2 hours for no competition!
For the record, I am not the head coach
 
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