Re: Starting D1 Hockey Program
I know no more than the average idiot about such things.
If I make any assumptions, I’ll use the following rules:
- Does the existing conference have requirements that [potential new member] may or may not meet?
- Does [potential new member] have any relationship to schools in the existing conference?
St Thomas probably isn’t meeting anyone’s conference requirements overnight. They play in a high school rink.
That said, if they are successful in joining the Summit League, that gives them a relationship to Denver, NoDak and Omaha. That’s not an ironclad guarantee of anything (especially without the arena or proven fan base), just look at how the Northeast Conference, Northern Sun, MAC, Patriot League, etc schools are split up in the college hockey conferences.
But one must imagine that it’s at least a foot in the door, right? It’s not nothing… maybe a helpful way to get non-conference matchups in the worst case.
But, for as many reasons as I could theorize that they could end up in the NCHC or the CCHA, we could probably surmise an equal number of plausible reasons that neither could happen. Who knows?
I know no more than the average idiot about such things.
If I make any assumptions, I’ll use the following rules:
- Does the existing conference have requirements that [potential new member] may or may not meet?
- Does [potential new member] have any relationship to schools in the existing conference?
St Thomas probably isn’t meeting anyone’s conference requirements overnight. They play in a high school rink.
That said, if they are successful in joining the Summit League, that gives them a relationship to Denver, NoDak and Omaha. That’s not an ironclad guarantee of anything (especially without the arena or proven fan base), just look at how the Northeast Conference, Northern Sun, MAC, Patriot League, etc schools are split up in the college hockey conferences.
But one must imagine that it’s at least a foot in the door, right? It’s not nothing… maybe a helpful way to get non-conference matchups in the worst case.
But, for as many reasons as I could theorize that they could end up in the NCHC or the CCHA, we could probably surmise an equal number of plausible reasons that neither could happen. Who knows?
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