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Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

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  • Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

    Six more months for that Future to start!!

  • #2
    Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

    For those eager for an early look at the Bears' 2011-12 ice hockey schedule, here's the ECAC slate for the upcoming season:

    2011–2012 ECAC Games – Brown Men’s Ice Hockey

    Friday, November 4 COLGATE
    Saturday, November 5 CORNELL
    Friday, November 11 at Union
    Saturday, November 12 at Rensselaer
    Friday, January 6 PRINCETON
    Saturday, January 7 QUINNIPIAC
    Friday, January 13 at St. Lawrence
    Saturday, January 14 at Clarkson
    Friday, January 20 RENSSELAER
    Saturday, January 21 UNION
    Friday, January 27 at Dartmouth
    Saturday, January 28 at Harvard
    Friday, February 3 CLARKSON
    Saturday, February 4 ST. LAWRENCE
    Friday, February 10 at Cornell
    Saturday, February 11 at Colgate
    Friday, February 17 HARVARD
    Saturday, February 18 DARTMOUTH
    Friday, February 24 at Quinnipiac
    Saturday February 25 at Princeton

    NOTE: Dates for the travel-partner games with Yale have not been finalized.

    The non-conference portion of the schedule is not yet available and will be posted as soon as it is released.
    LET'S GO BRUNO!

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

      Originally posted by bruno View Post
      NOTE: Dates for the travel-partner games with Yale have not been finalized.

      The non-conference portion of the schedule is not yet available and will be posted as soon as it is released.
      Yale has reported December 2nd and 3rd to be your home/home. I do not remember which site is first.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

        Originally posted by FlagDUDE08 View Post
        Yale has reported December 2nd and 3rd to be your home/home. I do not remember which site is first.
        Right you are, FlagDUDE08; courtesy of the New Haven Register, the Bears will host the Eli at Meehan Auditorium on Friday, December 2nd, and then travel to Ingalls Rink for a Saturday, December 3rd match with the Bulldogs. Here is Brown's updated ECAC slate:

        2011–2012 ECAC Games – Brown Men’s Ice Hockey

        Friday, November 4 COLGATE
        Saturday, November 5 CORNELL
        Friday, November 11 at Union
        Saturday, November 12 at Rensselaer
        Friday, December 2 YALE
        Saturday, December 3 at Yale
        Friday, January 6 PRINCETON
        Saturday, January 7 QUINNIPIAC
        Friday, January 13 at St. Lawrence
        Saturday, January 14 at Clarkson
        Friday, January 20 RENSSELAER
        Saturday, January 21 UNION
        Friday, January 27 at Dartmouth
        Saturday, January 28 at Harvard
        Friday, February 3 CLARKSON
        Saturday, February 4 ST. LAWRENCE
        Friday, February 10 at Cornell
        Saturday, February 11 at Colgate
        Friday, February 17 HARVARD
        Saturday, February 18 DARTMOUTH
        Friday, February 24 at Quinnipiac
        Saturday February 25 at Princeton

        The non-conference portion of the schedule is not yet available and will be posted as soon as it is released.
        LET'S GO BRUNO!

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

          Jack Maclellan '12 (Calgary, ALB) has been named Captain of the 2011-12 Brown men's hockey team. Bobby Farnham '12 (North Andover, MA) will serve as the Bears' Assistant Captain for the upcoming season.
          LET'S GO BRUNO!

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

            Originally posted by bruno View Post
            The non-conference portion of the schedule is not yet available and will be posted as soon as it is released.
            Are you participating in the Ivy Shootout? If so, that would give us the last weekend in October.

            Are there any opponent rumors regarding your OOC games? I may be able to at least put that stuff in the listing.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

              Originally posted by FlagDUDE08 View Post
              Are you participating in the Ivy Shootout? If so, that would give us the last weekend in October.
              I hope not. I know it's helpful for the team in terms of scouting, but I'd rather see us play a couple HE teams instead. Or maybe someone from out west.

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

                Originally posted by kdiff77 View Post
                I hope not. I know it's helpful for the team in terms of scouting, but I'd rather see us play a couple HE teams instead. Or maybe someone from out west.
                I never really understood it, either, given you have 7 NC games. Granted the ECAC non-ivies do it, but we have 12 NC games and may find difficulty in scheduling all 12, or find the match-up to be too worth not having another game (e.g. CCT/SLU).

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

                  Originally posted by FlagDUDE08 View Post
                  I never really understood it, either, given you have 7 NC games. Granted the ECAC non-ivies do it, but we have 12 NC games and may find difficulty in scheduling all 12, or find the match-up to be too worth not having another game (e.g. CCT/SLU).
                  I thought that the reason for the Ivy shootout was because of the late Ivy start this allowed the schools not to have to play teams that had already played several games.
                  sigpic

                  Let's Go 'Tute!

                  Maxed out at 2,147,483,647 at 10:00 AM EDT 9/17/07.

                  2012 Poser Of The Year

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

                    Originally posted by FlagDUDE08 View Post
                    Are you participating in the Ivy Shootout? If so, that would give us the last weekend in October.

                    Are there any opponent rumors regarding your OOC games? I may be able to at least put that stuff in the listing.
                    This was from the NH Register a few weeks ago:

                    http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2...6023353429.txt
                    The regular season starts with the annual Ivy Shootout at Dartmouth with Brown and Princeton.
                    You can probably add the Mayors Cup game with Providence as well.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

                      Hi Bruno friends,

                      Here is the column I wrote for the Union Hockey Blog on Nate Leaman's intro as the new coach at PC: http://unionhockeyblog.blogspot.com/...man-press.html

                      I am posting the link here because the subject matter at the end is relevant to hockey in the city of Providence in general. And it might spark some discussion for your new thread. Thanks for reading.

                      Best,
                      Jason

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

                        Originally posted by klumpmypants View Post
                        Hi Bruno friends,

                        Here is the column I wrote for the Union Hockey Blog on Nate Leaman's intro as the new coach at PC: http://unionhockeyblog.blogspot.com/...man-press.html

                        I am posting the link here because the subject matter at the end is relevant to hockey in the city of Providence in general. And it might spark some discussion for your new thread. Thanks for reading.

                        Best,
                        Jason
                        If you want to be the new college hockey beat writer in the Providence area, that'd be fine by me. Just promise you'll give Brown more coverage than the losers over on Smith Hill .

                        You seem to have a pretty good understanding of why neither team can draw crowds like they used to. Lack of success, living in the perpetual shadows of Big East basketball and Boston professional sports, lack of marketing and/or media coverage, lack of exposure to hockey fans/players in the area (resulting from the lack of marketing and media coverage), and subpar facilities/mundane atmospheres that do not exactly entice a casual attendee to come back.

                        Obviously, it'd be quite a task to overcome all those obstacles, but if just one happens, the rest will follow. It simply has to start with winning and putting out an attractive product. Brown plays attractive and entertaining hockey, but can't win. PC doesn't do either of those things. However, with Whittet and Leaman coaching in Providence, there is plenty of hope for success in the near future for both programs. I think if one of the teams makes the NCAA tournament any time soon, public interest will exponentially increase, as will media coverage. The current media coverage is nothing short of pathetic; if games are even covered, it's simply a paraphrased version of each team's web release. Sometimes the Providence Journal doesn't even list the scores. It is no coincidence that since they cut back on college hockey coverage about five years ago, both Brown's and PC's local support has diminished. The Mayor's Cup used to be a big deal; now, as you mentioned in your blog post, the game draws about 1,400 on a Tuesday night in late November or early December. I haven't even been in the past three years, because of the inconvenience of the weekday game and the complete irrelevance of the game itself, since neither fan base seems to care about bragging rights and there is no significant rivalry.

                        Of course, it doesn't help that the minds of each school's students are not focused on college hockey. As a neutral sports fan, would you rather watch PC hockey play U-Mass Lowell, Northeastern, and Merrimack or PC basketball play Notre Dame, Connecticut, and Syracuse? Would you rather watch college hockey (and likely see your school lose) in an outdated arena that is devoid of human life or watch the Bruins on TV, or P-Bruins in person? Many students at both school would rather just drink on weekends. Many students at both schools (Brown in particular) are too stressed out with school and would prefer to just stay in and relax on weekends.

                        I think this problem is perfectly exemplified, at least for Brown, by a Wednesday night in November two years ago. The hockey team was playing Harvard. It was the renewal of the oldest college hockey rivalry, and Harvard is Brown's biggest rival by far. It was also a league game. Next door, the basketball team was playing Hartford in a completely meaningless, non-conference exhibition. The band, and most students who were going to a sporting event that night, decided to go to the basketball game. Meehan Auditorium was dead, as most of the fans there were either Harvard alums from the area or the Brown faithful. However, consider this: that year, Brown hockey was coming of yet another season with less than 10 wins. Brown basketball, on the other hand, was coming off a CBI berth and one of the most successful seasons in the team's completely not storied history. Bottom line: the students will support a winner. Back in the Yann Danis era, Meehan would often be packed with students, vociferously eviscerating the opposing team and passionately cheering on the home team. Then, we stopped winning. The students stopped coming. The media coverage ceased to exist. Marketing followed suit. And here we are, 6 years later, where we have just one non-league home game per year, presumably because we can't afford to operate the arena for games against teams with no name appeal like Merrimack.

                        However, despite the Debbie Downer feel of this whole post, I do have plenty of hope for college hockey in Rhode Island. The coaches of both D-I programs are, as you say in your blog, young and inspired. They want college hockey to be at the pinnacle of RI sports, as it once was. Whittet, at least, is completely stubborn in his desire to bring Meehan Madness back. And that's what both of these schools needs. They need someone with passion and fire, someone who isn't afraid to tell the press he has no problem replacing his entire team after a 3-goal road loss to Yale in the first game of the season (I'd provide a link to the article where Whittet does this, but I can't seem to find it). And in Leaman and Whittet, that is exactly what both of these schools have. As I mentioned before, once consistent success comes, all the other factors that are detrimental to college hockey here will fade away. If one or both of these programs can capture the attention of local sports fans with their winning ways, then we'll be well on our way to the limelight. In the meantime, local college hockey fans will have to bide their time and continue to push for local exposure.
                        Last edited by kdiff77; 05-05-2011, 03:13 PM.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

                          I dont have a link to the article, but I did write it. USCHO may have removed it from the site when they decided we should part ways because I was showing up Brian Sullivan too much. USCHO has the same problem with its ECAC coverage that the ProJo has with its college hockey coverage: They just don't care. If you ever look at Sullivan's twitter feed, you can see his true interests are BU and the NHL. He tweets more in a single night about the NHL playoffs than he does all season about the ECAC. Anyway, enough ranting. Here is the quote:

                          "When I took over this program," Whittet commented, "what I said was 'I want a team that is so determined that when someone walks in the building, whether we're up by five or down by five, no one knows.' And we didn't play that way. We played the exact opposite. We played soft, we played like we were overly gifted, and we played spoiled. If I ever see it again, I'll go find a whole new hockey team."

                          You are right on the money for the most part, but I would take slight issue with a few things. First, I don't think it is accurate to say Brown can't win or isn't winning. They have improved each season under Whittet so far and should have had home ice last year if not been in the top half of the standings but for Maclellan's injury. Though the injury may be the reason he stayed this year, so an interesting trade-off. What they did in the non-con schedule last season was nothing short of remarkable.

                          Second, Harvard might still be Brown's biggest rival, but I think if you asked Whittet, he would say Yale. They are travel partners and Yale is the best team in the league while Harvard is spiraling down. That's who he wants to be compared with, not Harvard. But obviously HU-BU is a more natural rivalry.

                          Last, I think going to a college hockey game should be a compliment to drinking on the weekend, not a substitute. There is no secret that alcohol fuels the best student sections in NCAA athletics, including where I went at Wisconsin. Also, going to a hockey game should be just as if not more relaxing than staying in. It is for me at least. Though I am not the neutral sports fan you mention, so I won't answer the questions you pose to him.

                          Thanks for the support. And don't worry, my heart will always truly be with the ECAC.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

                            "When I took over this program," Whittet commented, "what I said was 'I want a team that is so determined that when someone walks in the building, whether we're up by five or down by five, no one knows.' And we didn't play that way. We played the exact opposite. We played soft, we played like we were overly gifted, and we played spoiled. If I ever see it again, I'll go find a whole new hockey team."

                            There we go! That's exactly what I was thinking of. I won't get into what you said about USCHO's shortcomings, because although I understand (and, to an extent, agree with) what you're saying, this is still the best college hockey site out there. By far.

                            First, I don't think it is accurate to say Brown can't win or isn't winning.

                            As much of a step forward as last season was, it was still terribly frustrating at times. We seemed to play up to our better opponents, but then play with much less desire against teams that were on our level (prime example: beating #1 Yale, crushing BU, and then wetting the bed at QU in the first round of the playoffs), which is the exact opposite of how a Brendan Whittet-coached hockey team is supposed to play. This inconsistency is, I think, why Brown didn't garner significant local attention. I am very optimistic looking forward, but I'm sure you can understand how last season was pretty frustrating at times.

                            Second, Harvard might still be Brown's biggest rival, but I think if you asked Whittet, he would say Yale. They are travel partners and Yale is the best team in the league while Harvard is spiraling down. That's who he wants to be compared with, not Harvard. But obviously HU-BU is a more natural rivalry.

                            Don't tell Onion Man that Whittet wants to be compared with *Ylae, he'll have a cow! I do agree that our series with Yale has been heating up of late, and would love to see a stronger rivalry develop there. I think, unfortunately, that most of Brown's "rivals" don't care about us much at all, to be honest.

                            However, I have personally LOVED seeing Harvard spiral downwards lately. Weren't they supposed to have the best incoming freshman class in the country two years ago? Yeah, right.

                            Last, I think going to a college hockey game should be a compliment to drinking on the weekend, not a substitute. There is no secret that alcohol fuels the best student sections in NCAA athletics, including where I went at Wisconsin. Also, going to a hockey game should be just as if not more relaxing than staying in. It is for me at least. Though I am not the neutral sports fan you mention, so I won't answer the questions you pose to him.

                            Amen! I agree with you entirely, but it doesn't seem as though most Brown students agree. You'd think that since most parties don't start until long after the games are over, kids wouldn't mind killing some time on Friday and Saturday night before they go out. That's what students at BU, BC, Cornell, NU, Maine, and every other school with a semblance of a student section do. And watching a hockey game in person while a few blocks away from your dorm is probably equally relaxing as staying in the dorm. Perhaps the problem is that there just aren't many sports, or hockey fans, at Brown (I won't say there aren't sports fans, because an estimated 4,700 out of about 5,800 students went to the Harvard football game last year, so there is obviously some interest).


                            Anyway, I'm glad you posted on this thread. You clearly have a dearth of knowledge on all things ECAC, which is always great to see.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Brown Hockey 2011-2012 - The Future Is Now

                              Also, I have to ask: if you went to Wisconsin, how did you end up doing a Union blog? Just curious.

                              Comment

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