WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

[bigmrg74]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

To make a mega tournament interesting they need three venues for the semi finals and a one day/one ticket "trip to the X" three games back to back finals. Then all 12 teams fans would have to decide if they want a "my team" only pass that gets them into the rink assigned or if they believe in their team enough to get a "super pass" which guarantees three finals in one day.

To be fair they need to alternate it every year with somewhere in Michigan to give both places the experience. That would grow the rebranded tournament. If I could see three championships in one day and hella good hockey the day before.... I would defiantly travel every other year to Michigan.

And I wouldn't want the Beavs to have joined the Nacho league. I like the new WCHA.

This could work.

The trick for Michigan would be finding the right location for a dual conference tournaments. The new Redwings arena would be a logical option for one of them, but where would you have another tournament at?? The Palace is another great venue, but its about 30 miles away. I just don't see crazy hockey fans going through all of the hassle of traveling to one of the venues and then tacking on another 30 miles to a whole other venue. Unless you have a lot of fans that are in the Royal Oak/Bloomfield Hills area, it really wouldn't work.

Its kind of a shame that Detroit doesn't still have the Cobo Arena. Something like that would work nicely for an event like this. The Joe with the new arena would work, but I believe the word is that the Joe is likely to be visited by the wrecking ball. Highly doubtful they would cut it down to being about a 10,000 seat arena that can still have ice in it.

[TheSiouxFan]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

( It's like the kid on the block who plays street hockey and when he feels like he is too awesome to be playing with the jvers... he grabs his stick and goal net, because he owns them, the other kids just leech, and goes to play street hockey with the better kids leaving behind the ones who suck).

Hope when tourney is discussed down the road, you are left out of discussion. Your league is too good for the others anyway.

Fixed your post. The NCHC won't be joining any combined tournaments. They already have it too good to share, outdrawing both the BIG and WCHA combined.

[Dirty Dream No. 2]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

How's it been the last 5 games?

Playing a bunch of nobodies.

[Dirty Dream No. 2]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

This isn't accurate. If you have BTN as part of your television provider, you have access to BTN2Go. What you have to pay extra for is BTN+, which streams untelevised games produced by the home school.

This isn't totally accurate, either. BTN "upcharged" a lot of games this year to BTN+, including the GLI final and a bunch of regular season games down the stretch.

[Dirty Dream No. 2]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Thanks for the clarification. I would really like to see BTN on Apple TV.

Not if it is as bad as the Roku app, which is a complete piece of crap. Extremely limited functionality beyond watching BTN studio stuff, whatever is being featured at the time (usually Olympic sports) and whatever live event is taking place. No archived games (except for random games from late September), despite having a full availability of archived games via the BTN2GO web interface.

[dxmnkd316]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

I would like to see a mega tournament. That would be fun. Give it a shot. It can't be worse than today.

[Jaws]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

My question about a mega tournament is: Who's going to get the tv rights? right now, three different networks are aligned with the HCHC,WCHA and Big 10. Will they play nice or brawl over who gets to cover what? It could get pretty crowded in the booth and camera positions.

I would like to see a mega tournament. That would be fun. Give it a shot. It can't be worse than today.

[fightingsiouxfan16]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Check out the article i posted about the big ten and attendance problems. They have content in there about teams that maybe leaving conferences and things of that nature

[Tipsy McStagger]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

One interesting thing would be if they did a mega tournament, would they all put up their spots and have 3 auto-bids on the line? So you would still have the first round series between each conference. You are left with 4 NCHC teams, 3 B1G, 5 WCHA teams. 12 team tournament with the league champions in each league getting a first round bye, seed the teams by RPI, give team with top RPI that isn't league champion the 4th first round bye. Two games Thursday and Friday at both Target Center and Xcel. Third place game and championship Saturday at the X. It would be kind of a gamble for each conference because you could hypothetically get 0 teams in the tournament, but you could also see one-bid conferences get 2 or 3 teams in.

[LordofBrewtown]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Fixed your post. The NCHC won't be joining any combined tournaments. They already have it too good to share, outdrawing both the BIG and WCHA combined.

And how will that attendance hold up when 3 of the 4 teams who make the tournament are Denver, CC, Western and Miami? Or if North Dakota misses out a couple years in a row? The NCHC's "good" thing is basically dependent on North Dakota, St Cloud and Duluth fan bases right now...Imagine a couple years without all 3 of those, or just one of St Cloud or Duluth...

Things/"power" schools change/go in cycles...even in hockey

[JohnsonsJerseys]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

I also am curious if Tech fans or anyone else currently in the WCHA would have wanted their team to reject an invite if they had gotten one.

Absolutely, and for one simple reason - The formation of the NCHC in no way strengthened or grew college hockey as a sport. The core group of NCHC teams scrambled to grab whatever they could for their own benefit and left everyone else twisting in the wind to try and put the remaining pieces back together. It was formed in the same shady back room manner as the current Bi6 age restriction proposal. Formulate the plan in private without any public discussion (even with other teams in your own conference) and then drop a bomb on the sport. And you wonder why the college hockey community won't show the NCHC any love? You didn't ask our opinion and then you question why we don't support you? It's really not that tough to figure out.

And as for railing on the NCHC - I'll be happy to change my tune once someone shows me how a 10 team WCHA (minus UW and Minn) and an 8 team CCHA (minus Mich, MSU, OSU) would not have been stable, successful conferences with room for future expansion (UAH practically begging for a conference, ASU, ???) or adding from other bloated conferences (AH teams who wanted 18 scholarships). Heck maybe within a few years a couple AH teams would have moved to the CCHA and leaving some room for Eastern expansion in AH? Three years later, I have yet to hear or see one. There were plenty of better options that could have been used if everyone would have sat down at the table and discussed it in an open forum. Heck, there are people on this forum with full time day jobs other than thinking about college hockey have come up with better plans that what we have now.

If you look back through the 95 years of Tech hockey history, you'll find a lot more examples of the Huskies doing things that were better for college hockey as a whole, not just serving their own self interest. One has to look no further than the NCHC's own UMD. When the Bulldogs were and up and coming program, Tech was a national powerhouse. There was nothing for Tech to gain by scheduling them time and time again, yet that is exactly what Macinnes did year after year because he knew it would help the new program establish itself.

By doing what is best for college hockey as a whole, you will also strengthen your own program as well by bringing stability to the sport. The teams had better be looking out for each other because if you think the NCAA gives two bits about hockey, you are sorely mistaken. They have their two cash cows, the NFL's minor league and bouncy ball. Beyond that everything else is a distant third. If college hockey wants to drive itself into the ground they could care less. The NCAA will just stand there and watch it happen.

Ryan

[billmich88888]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

This isn't totally accurate, either. BTN "upcharged" a lot of games this year to BTN+, including the GLI final and a bunch of regular season games down the stretch.

GLI final was still available on FSN Detroit and Fox College sports, not to mention it is "NOT" a Big Ten event

[SJHovey]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Absolutely, and for one simple reason - The formation of the NCHC in no way strengthened or grew college hockey as a sport.

Ryan

I'm not sure this is necessarily true. There were a number of people who correctly foresaw that the creation of the B1G and NCHC would open up the WCHA/CCHA's remaining teams to win conference championships, win conference tournaments and gain NCAA bids because someone is going to have to succeed in that conference. This has turned out to be true. We've seen Mankato make back to back tournament appearances, Tech and Mankato make the tournament in the same year (was that going to happen in the old WCHA?), along with mulitple appearances by Ferris State, a program that had only made two prior appearances in its entire history.

I don't think the B1G or NCHC were formed with the intention of opening up new opportunities for other programs, but I think everyone who set emotion aside was able to clearly see that would be the effect.

College hockey may have issues with respect to declining attendance, conference tournaments and general lack of television exposure, but none of those were caused by the formation of the NCHC.

[MGoBlueHockey]

Playing a bunch of nobodies.

Isn't that what they said about Yale and Union a couple years ago.

[Arafel]

Re: WCHA Pushing To Team With Big Ten, NCHC For Conference Tournaments

Absolutely, and for one simple reason - The formation of the NCHC in no way strengthened or grew college hockey as a sport. The core group of NCHC teams scrambled to grab whatever they could for their own benefit and left everyone else twisting in the wind to try and put the remaining pieces back together. It was formed in the same shady back room manner as the current Bi6 age restriction proposal. Formulate the plan in private without any public discussion (even with other teams in your own conference) and then drop a bomb on the sport. And you wonder why the college hockey community won't show the NCHC any love? You didn't ask our opinion and then you question why we don't support you? It's really not that tough to figure out.

And as for railing on the NCHC - I'll be happy to change my tune once someone shows me how a 10 team WCHA (minus UW and Minn) and an 8 team CCHA (minus Mich, MSU, OSU) would not have been stable, successful conferences with room for future expansion (UAH practically begging for a conference, ASU, ???) or adding from other bloated conferences (AH teams who wanted 18 scholarships). Heck maybe within a few years a couple AH teams would have moved to the CCHA and leaving some room for Eastern expansion in AH? Three years later, I have yet to hear or see one. There were plenty of better options that could have been used if everyone would have sat down at the table and discussed it in an open forum. Heck, there are people on this forum with full time day jobs other than thinking about college hockey have come up with better plans that what we have now.

Ryan

So you'd rather forgo teams like Tech and Minnesota State making the NCAA tournament than have a power conference? If North Dakota, Denver, St. Cloud, and Duluth were still in the WCHA, and Miami still in the CCHA, would Minnesota State or Michigan Tech have made the NCAA tournament last year? No, they wouldn't have.

Now those school have an additional recruiting tool: come play for us and have a chance to play in the NCAA tournament on the big stage.