Notre Dame to Hockey East

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

I'm not sure why people are so hot to trot with RPI in Hockey East. There's really no good reason for it. Its a mid level EZAC school with limited resources to compete with the likes of ND, BU, BC, and even UNH. Its going to be worse when they have to play a HE schedule. IMHO they're far better off playing in a conference with similar schools so I don't see the point of them changing conferences. Do we really want another Merrimac?

My preference is either a committed to hockey UConn team or an 11 team conference. Keep the top 8 making the tourament format. UConn has natural rivalries with existing conference schools and the resources to compete if they decide to. Unless Red Cloud has $100M lying around (and if he did I suspect he'd be a lot less grouchy) to donate to the program they're just going to be fodder for the better teams.

A team that is undefeated at Agganis (and is 3-2-1 since the 2004-05 season) can't compete with BU? And losing 1-0 in arguably RPI's worst season and winning 3-1 afterwards means they can't compete with UNH? Not to mention the fairly close games in recent memory with Notre Dame?

[johnk]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

I'm not sure why people are so hot to trot with RPI in Hockey East. There's really no good reason for it. Its a mid level EZAC school with limited resources to compete with the likes of ND, BU, BC, and even UNH. Its going to be worse when they have to play a HE schedule. IMHO they're far better off playing in a conference with similar schools so I don't see the point of them changing conferences. Do we really want another Merrimac?

My preference is either a committed to hockey UConn team or an 11 team conference. Keep the top 8 making the tourament format. UConn has natural rivalries with existing conference schools and the resources to compete if they decide to. Unless Red Cloud has $100M lying around (and if he did I suspect he'd be a lot less grouchy) to donate to the program they're just going to be fodder for the better teams.

Every league will have its have's and have not's no matter the sport. HE will be top heavy with other teams (Merrimack last year) making the occasional run. SEC Football is a great example. For every Alabama, Auburn, UF & LSU there is a Kentucky, Vandy, Mississippi, etc. Hockey East is no differerent. Money is not the issue for RPI, so I'm not sure what limited resources you are speaking of. They have a 5,000 seat arena with a rich tradition and if they & Hockey East decide that RPI is the right team to add, I'm sure you will see a commitment level appropriate with the league change.

[giwan]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

Every league will have its have's and have not's no matter the sport. HE will be top heavy with other teams (Merrimack last year) making the occasional run. SEC Football is a great example. For every Alabama, Auburn, UF & LSU there is a Kentucky, Vandy, Mississippi, etc. Hockey East is no differerent. Money is not the issue for RPI, so I'm not sure what limited resources you are speaking of. They have a 5,000 seat arena with a rich tradition and if they & Hockey East decide that RPI is the right team to add, I'm sure you will see a commitment level appropriate with the league change.

There is ALWAYS a bottom feeder. Question is whether it's a perennial bottom feeder or one that can come up for air on occasion.

[Craig P.]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

If you add a twelfth school, you get an unbalanced schedule as you would need to figure out a way to schedule an odd number of opponents (11).

Two games against each, home-and-home. Perfectly balanced. Done.

I think it's more likely to play out slightly differently than this, though. I'm going to section off ND, Maine, and Vermont as being "impractical" for a team to play one there and one at a nearest neighbor in a weekend, and then throw in the 12th team (call them RPI for the sake of argument) just for balance.

The eight teams not in that group play a double-round-robin amongst each other. Most likely, it would be all as single home-and-home series rather than an ECAC travel partner type system.

Now, pair ND/Maine and Vermont/RPI. Four of the eight teams play a two-game series at ND and home vs. Maine. The other four do the reverse. ND plays a one-off at Maine and a one-off at home against Maine. The same thing happens with the Vermont/RPI pair, although Vermont and RPI are probably close enough together that they could do a home-and-home series in a weekend. Across pairs, ND would play one series at home vs. UVM/RPI and away against the other, with Maine getting the reverse.

Flip the schedule the next year.

Optionally, flip the ND/Maine and Vermont/RPI pairs the following two years—this would make more sense if the 12th team were someone other than RPI where it would be impractical for that team to play a Friday/Saturday home-and-home with UVM.

These schedules are 11-home/11-away balanced and games-against-each-other-team balanced.

[Ralph Baer]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

Now, pair ND/Maine and Vermont/RPI. Four of the eight teams play a two-game series at ND and home vs. Maine. The other four do the reverse. ND plays a one-off at Maine and a one-off at home against Maine. The same thing happens with the Vermont/RPI pair, although Vermont and RPI are probably close enough together that they could do a home-and-home series in a weekend.

Part of the time that UVM was in the ECAC, they were RPI's travel partner, and teams played one night at one and one at the other. So that works. (It was changed when Union joined. Then UVM became Dartmouth's partner.)

[Craig P.]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

Balanced against that is with 12/22, someone is going to have to do a home and home with Notre Dame every year to keep it 11 home, 11 away for both schools.

As long as it's just one team, it's not a big deal. See my previous post. ND can even avoid an extra trip out east by combining the one-off with a weekend series, either play a midweek game or time it to spring break or the like so that staying the extra week doesn't cause school problems.

[johnk]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

Two games against each, home-and-home. Perfectly balanced. Done.

I think it's more likely to play out slightly differently than this, though. I'm going to section off ND, Maine, and Vermont as being "impractical" for a team to play one there and one at a nearest neighbor in a weekend, and then throw in the 12th team (call them RPI for the sake of argument) just for balance.

The eight teams not in that group play a double-round-robin amongst each other. Most likely, it would be all as single home-and-home series rather than an ECAC travel partner type system.

Now, pair ND/Maine and Vermont/RPI. Four of the eight teams play a two-game series at ND and home vs. Maine. The other four do the reverse. ND plays a one-off at Maine and a one-off at home against Maine. The same thing happens with the Vermont/RPI pair, although Vermont and RPI are probably close enough together that they could do a home-and-home series in a weekend.

Flip the schedule the next year.

Optionally, flip the ND/Maine and Vermont/RPI pairs the following two years.

These schedules are 11-home/11-away balanced and games-against-each-other-team balanced.

I think this is pretty close to what will happen. This would either mean 6 trips East for ND or a weekend with a thurs, sat, sun game once a year for ND.

[CHFAN222]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

Honestly keep HE simple at 12. Two games against each opponent. One home one away except for the long trips ie Maine, UVM, ND and I guess RPI if it is them.

[kingdobbs]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

I haven't seen any indication that the ACC is interested in UConn, but I suppose if they added ND, they wouldn't care one bit who #16 is.

There have been some indications that the ACC might have actually wanted UConn, or floated them as one of the first two, in the initial discussions that led to Syrapitt hitting the ol' dusty trail, but there was either a block thrown up immediately (probably from BC), or there was an argument over them, and Syrapitt both produced less of one. Some folks from Duke, UNC, and Maryland have come out publicly saying they like UConn in the league (and the reason for the interest is obvious).

Right now, I know there's three obvious "no" votes (BC and Miami for well-known reasons, and Florida State for the lack of football tradition/success), and unless things have changed, UConn would need to sweep the other 9 (and indications are that Clemson might also be thinking the same as Florida State).

[joecct]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

To minimize travel, would ND and HEA think of traveling to ND for a 2 game series in one year and then ND plays at that school for 2 the following year?? Then ND only has 6 (or 5) trips East each year.

[J.D.]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

The only problem with an 11 team conference, IMO, is the unbalanced schedule... unless we go to either a 20 game or 30 game (yikes) conference schedule.

They would never go to a 30 game conference schedule...

[Craig P.]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

To minimize travel, would ND and HEA think of traveling to ND for a 2 game series in one year and then ND plays at that school for 2 the following year?? Then ND only has 6 (or 5) trips East each year.

All they've said is that nothing's settled with regard to scheduling, though I have a hard time believing they don't have a pretty good idea of what they're going to do.

I agree with you about what makes sense; see below. Note that the number of trips doesn't say anything about whether ND is playing a two-games-home/two-games-away series or home-and-home, as the Irish could conceivably play single games against two different opponents on one trip out east (e.g. Friday vs. BC and Saturday vs. BU, or Friday vs. UVM and Sunday vs. Maine); I just think the scheduling for the return visits to ND would be too crazy to do it that way.

[mookie1995]

120/1 - the world ends before an announcement can be made.

2012!

(it's not just around the corner...)

[jcarter7669]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

Honestly keep HE simple at 12. Two games against each opponent. One home one away except for the long trips ie Maine, UVM, ND and I guess RPI if it is them.

How does UVM keep getting put into the "long" trip group. For Christ's sake, it's like 3 1/2 hours. Granted it's not BC - BU, but jeez.... You could drive back and forth twice and still spend less gas then the one way to ORono, especially after you try and get directions from some hillbilly, or so I've heard.

[jcarter7669]

Re: Notre Dame to Hockey East

All they've said is that nothing's settled with regard to scheduling, though I have a hard time believing they don't have a pretty good idea of what they're going to do.

Of course the know, Bertagna has to have at least three years to figure out how to schedule the league. Mainly because Parker is to busy cleaning out kids lockers to get back to him and tell him what it is...