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Message: [QUOTE="kingdobbs, post: 3368123, member: 1655"] I think the people saying AHA will never be competitive were shut up years ago with RIT and Holy Cross. And those remaining can be safely ignored. Though as always when your league has a weak bottom end like AHA usually does, and the ECAC currently does (with only Cornell and Clarkson in current NCAA contention and like half the league in the bottom ten), their current “on the bubble” position is fragile if they don’t romper-stomp the AHA season. Theyve got two decent wins against us and against BU, but they also only have two more chances to pick up quality wins towards the end of the season with Army (who’s also surprisingly good this season), and one more mid tier win at the CT Ice event, whether it’s us or Qpac. Everyone else is in the bottom third of RPI. Not to diminish a good season, the Pioneers have one so far. But it’s gonna be have to be almost all wins down the stretch to make the tourney without winning their league. One or two bad losses and forget about it, especially if someone like Canisius makes a run at the league tourney in March. When it was started under the MAAC umbrella, cost-containment was the notion and an upper limit of 11 scholarships was in place. There was always tension between the teams who wanted to play full ride and those who were non-scholarship by choice like UConn (at the time), or non-scholarship because they were Army, or low scholarship. And then later on RIT, who is non-scholarship and NOT by choice (and has been appealing the NCAA to let it be like its fellow DIII play ups). It was somewhat inevitable that the league would allow the maximum scholarship limit in 2016, once the CHA collapsed in 2010 and then further once UConn went from no-scholarship to “oh yeah, we want to go to 18. Also we are gonna do it in Hockey East. Later.” Not that that mattered much to the decision but its pretty safe to say that Bentley building a new on campus arena, AIC and SHU signing on to play in AHL arenas rather than community rinks was a strong indicator that cost containment as a philosophy was dead. [/QUOTE]

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