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RPI 2025 Off-Season: HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today is 21 March 2025. There are 197 days until RPI's next game.


This is based upon 4 October 2025 for the start of next season.
 
Ralph Baer said:
Yes, but is it Day !? If so, today is Day 12, but I would have to write "It's been 11 days without a coach" to use Jericho's wording.
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We’re still waiting for you to change it to 3 points for starting a thread where RPI wins, so it doesn’t matter much anyway. And yes, I would consider the day of the press release Day 1.
 
Today is 21 March 2025. There are 197 days until RPI's next game. It has been 12 days since there has been a head coach



This is based upon 4 October 2025 for the start of next season, and 10 March was the day that coach Smith was relieved of duty.
 
jericho said:
We’re still waiting for you to change it to 3 points for starting a thread where RPI wins, so it doesn’t matter much anyway. And yes, I would consider the day of the press release Day 1.
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As I said, it would overvalue years of a win without OT relative to earlier years.
 
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Today is 22 March 2025. There are 196 days (28 weeks) until RPI's next game. It has been 13 days since there has been a head coach



This is based upon 4 October 2025 for the start of next season, and 10 March was the day that coach Smith was relieved of duty.
 
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Congratulations to Ben Barr and his black bears winning hockey East championship. I hope lee McElroy watches college hockey just to see what a idiotic decision he made. All time stupid move!
Any noise who’s interviewing for the head coach job? Hopefully we start to hear something soon
 
If we were to take the guy from AIC we might just clean out the transfer portal and restock a good portion of the team. Just sayin'......
 
jericho said:
Game Atmosphere is a very underrated part of the player experience too. It exacerbates the rink problems and obviously makes it harder to bring in fans and players. If the players are having fun, that leads to success and energetic play. If the atmosphere isn’t there, well, you’ve seen what happens. For the past 20 seasons, playing at RPI was quieter than opening a tin can, wirh the exceptions of the Freakout games, with the crowd failing to gain the needed momentum. Granted, the opposing team scoring a goal a minute after RPI has a lot to do with that, but sometimes the crowd failed to materialize. Putting Wi-Fi in the Field House when not in the press box had a lot to do with that. When I walk around, all I see is college aged kids with their heads down on their phones during play. One puck to the kisser will take care of that.
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Game atmosphere is overrated. I’ll cite Colgate’s success on the ice and their somnambulant game atmosphere as an example.
 
jericho said:
Game Atmosphere is a very underrated part of the player experience too. It exacerbates the rink problems and obviously makes it harder to bring in fans and players. If the players are having fun, that leads to success and energetic play. If the atmosphere isn’t there, well, you’ve seen what happens. For the past 20 seasons, playing at RPI was quieter than opening a tin can, wirh the exceptions of the Freakout games, with the crowd failing to gain the needed momentum. Granted, the opposing team scoring a goal a minute after RPI has a lot to do with that, but sometimes the crowd failed to materialize. Putting Wi-Fi in the Field House when not in the press box had a lot to do with that. When I walk around, all I see is college aged kids with their heads down on their phones during play. One puck to the kisser will take care of that.
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Game atmosphere is overrated. I’ll cite Colgate’s success on the ice and their
MikeMidd said:
It's interesting to look at the annual attendance figures on USCHO here: https://www.uscho.com/stats/attendance/division-i-men/2024-2025/

Even ahead of COVID, three successive 11th place seasons saw attendance go from around 3,100/game in 2015-2016 (which is roughly where it had been for many years) to 2,671 in 2019-2020. More than a 10% drop in just a few years. Obviously way worse now. RPI's challenge is now to get it back up to that 3,000+ level that makes the Field House start to have an atmosphere, even though circumstances have changed significantly - aging population of local hockey fans, new competition (online, other sports in the area, etc.), seemingly lower level of student interest, etc.

Winning clearly makes a difference. Gameday experience makes a difference. Community engagement makes a difference. Student engagement makes a difference. Media engagement - and particularly social media - makes a difference (just look at how some NCAA and ACHA hockey teams do really creative stuff on Instagram and TikTok to build their profile). All of that requires resources into the team, the Field House experience, community outreach, top-class sports media/sports information operations, and more. So if RPI is going to get to a higher level, they have to do it properly in lots of areas.

I think the right coach will embrace the challenge and see it as an opportunity to build something with lots of dimensions to it - if he is given proper backing. I would imagine there will be tough questions from candidates about that, or at least I hope so.

(All that said, if they do build a new arena, I'd have to imagine you're looking at a substantial capacity cut - for better or worse. Hard to envision something more than 3,000. Scarcity of tickets would be seen as a benefit.)
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Freakout is nearly sold out and there’s still no atmosphere. Fans just sit and watch until there’s a goal. Attempts to start coordinated cheers (Go Red, Go White; Let’s Go Red!) fail.

I like the idea of reducing capacity. I call it the Fenway Park effect. Lowering the ceiling and putting seating all the way around the ice are 2 good ideas.
 
Engineers said:
Congratulations to Ben Barr and his black bears winning hockey East championship. I hope lee McElroy watches college hockey just to see what a idiotic decision he made. All time stupid move!
Any noise who’s interviewing for the head coach job? Hopefully we start to hear something soon
Click to expand...
No comment
 
bgtrpi said:
Freakout is nearly sold out and there’s still no atmosphere. Fans just sit and watch until there’s a goal. Attempts to start coordinated cheers (Go Red, Go White; Let’s Go Red!) fail.
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You're joking, right? We were a bottom tier team the past two seasons, and both Freakouts were so loud you can barley hear the broadcast if you try to rewatch them on RPI TV's YouTube channel. You can barley hear the goal horn on the broadcast because the crowd is so loud. The only other game in the ECAC that comes anywhere close would be Cornell's Cornell vs Harvard game, and while I have not been to a Cornell vs Harvard game and have no interest in going to one, comparing our RPI TV's stream, to the video highlights of Harvard vs. Cornell at Cornell the past few seasons, RPI's Freakout looks much more wild. Granted, it's not the RPI of the 80s that caused the famed NCAA RPI noisemaker rule, but there is a reason that the ECAC promo videos show RPI's Freakout crowd with the rally towels, and I suspect if they need a crowd shot in next years, they will go to Freakout again.
It effects play on ice. 2023, RPI demolishes Yale in the Freakout. It was the only time we beat Yale that season. 2024, Colgate is preforming much better than RPI. RPI in the Freakout outplays Colgate everywhere except the shootout. If I had to guess, the reason why the Colgate player made the mistake to pass, leading to the Hotson 3rd period tying goal to send it to overtime was the environment. 2025, RPI plays their best hockey of the season to win the Freakout.
In general I would agree with you that most games, RPI's atmosphere is not what it should be, and the massive scale of The Field House doesn't necessarily help. That being said, Freakout is the one game that shows what The Field House can do. If the Freakout has no atmosphere, what exactly are you expecting for atmosphere?
 
RPI Hockey Guy said:
You're joking, right? We were a bottom tier team the past two seasons, and both Freakouts were so loud you can barley hear the broadcast if you try to rewatch them on RPI TV's YouTube channel. You can barley hear the goal horn on the broadcast because the crowd is so loud. The only other game in the ECAC that comes anywhere close would be Cornell's Cornell vs Harvard game, and while I have not been to a Cornell vs Harvard game and have no interest in going to one, comparing our RPI TV's stream, to the video highlights of Harvard vs. Cornell at Cornell the past few seasons, RPI's Freakout looks much more wild. Granted, it's not the RPI of the 80s that caused the famed NCAA RPI noisemaker rule, but there is a reason that the ECAC promo videos show RPI's Freakout crowd with the rally towels, and I suspect if they need a crowd shot in next years, they will go to Freakout again.
It effects play on ice. 2023, RPI demolishes Yale in the Freakout. It was the only time we beat Yale that season. 2024, Colgate is preforming much better than RPI. RPI in the Freakout outplays Colgate everywhere except the shootout. If I had to guess, the reason why the Colgate player made the mistake to pass, leading to the Hotson 3rd period tying goal to send it to overtime was the environment. 2025, RPI plays their best hockey of the season to win the Freakout.
In general I would agree with you that most games, RPI's atmosphere is not what it should be, and the massive scale of The Field House doesn't necessarily help. That being said, Freakout is the one game that shows what The Field House can do. If the Freakout has no atmosphere, what exactly are you expecting for atmosphere?
Click to expand...
Freakout is the only game where RPI actually resembles a hockey team.
 
Today is 23 March 2025. There are 195 days until RPI's next game. It has been 14 days (2 weeks) since there has been a head coach



This is based upon 4 October 2025 for the start of next season, and 10 March was the day that coach Smith was relieved of duty.
 
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