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If UConn wants to be competing with UMass and UVM on the recruiting trail, you're right they can stay in XL and compete. If they want to recruit against the elite of the league, XL will not suffice. They will not be able to recruit against BC and BU in HE, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Denver, even into the next tier of QU, PC, Lowell, and other upstarts with great facilities on campus where you can practice, workout, and play in one place. I've said this a hundred times here and I'll keep saying it, hockey players want to play where they practice. Knowing the ins and outs of your home rink is an enormous advantage. There is a reason why virtually no hockey schools play in arenas significantly off campus.
I'm not sure what "real schedule" you're talking about. The list of HE teams coming into XL isn't changing save for ND. Better OOC games? Perhaps, but the high-end B1G and NCHC teams aren't showing up to Hartford anytime soon and the rest of the mid-level college hockey teams don't carry the name cache to attract casual sports fans to a UConn hockey game.
This is a ridiculous statement on so many levels. You're now forcing students interested in supporting their own school to carpool 30-45 minutes each way so that a few thousand Hartford residents, who own cars, don't have to drive to Storrs? Selflish, absurd, short-sighted, and arcane are words that come to mind here.
How do you know they don't care about the niche sport of hockey? Because they all didn't carpool to a game? The kids who have small bank accounts, limited access to cars, class, schoolwork, etc. don't support the niche sport because they didn't spend 60-90 minutes in total driving into Hartford, paying for parking, and paying for city-priced food? This is a great way to gauge support. However, we have seen the students willing to support "niche sports" on campus, as the soccer program and the Goal Patrol can attest.
There's a place in the program for playing at Hartford selectively. But if they want to compete at the highest level of the sport consistently, that will not happen at XL. Don't take my word for it, take Cav's.
"Now in his third season at UConn, Cavanaugh said he stresses to recruits that people, not buildings, are the foundation for a strong program.
"I do say that," Cavanaugh said. "If I get upset about the facility every day, it's like getting upset about a hooking call."
"I can only control what I can control and right now this is the environment and this is the facility I have to practice in," Cavanaugh said. "So I can choose to make this an excuse in the recruiting process or I can say we're doing the best with what we have. If you don't have the best, do the best with that you have, right? So that's what we're doing right now. Would I like a new practice facility here, or par with what our football and basketball programs have? Absolutely. Do I think that would help benefit our recruiting? Absolutely."
