What's new
By:
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

gfmorris said:
Also, someone may have said this, but they are keeping 28 league games for this year but will probably drop to 26 or 24 in following seasons. You might see the championship move back to a two-game series after this if there can be a week off in the playoff run somewhere. It makes sense, because this is the last year of the four-year pod, and everyone has done the Alaska double (or will have by the end of the year). That feels right.

Also, this is only through 2018-19. The league may well yet change formats after that.

GFM
Click to expand...
Dropping to 24 would mean a lot more road non conference games and more of those wonderful 2 for 1 deals.

I also don't see the Championship being a best 2 of 3. That means if it's in Alaska, the visitors don't get home until Monday night and could be playing out east on Thursday.
 
Last edited:
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

BGDrew said:
- There's going to be some concerns for those programs that have shared facilities. Teams like UAA and UAH are not the primary tenant for their barns, so are the pro teams going to let them blackout those dates just in case?
Click to expand...

UAA has always had scheduling priority for the Sullivan Arena.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

davyd83 said:
Dropping to 24 would mean a lot more road non conference games and more of those wonderful 2 for 1 deals.

I also don't see the Championship being a best 2 of 3. That means if it's in Alaska, the visitors don't get home until Monday night and could be playing out east on Thursday.
Click to expand...

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to see WCHA teams play just 32 games. I would easily see a week off between the regular season and playoffs or an off week between the quarters and semis or semis and finals. I have to feel that the single-game championship is a temporary waypoint if this is about building the league's fan base. Give teams and fans a week off before deciding to go to the final weekend and we may see non-partisans travel. I'd strongly consider going to a championship weekend in BG or BR.

GFM
 
BGDrew said:
No long bus ride, hotel stays, and outside of Michigan Tech there isn't really a team that travels well anyways. The tickets will end up getting used by the hosting school in the end. You need to at least give it a shot at keeping it even, though, especially the Finals.
Click to expand...

No. You're wrong on so many levels. Allocate a certain number but if you want a bunch of fans watching and cheering your team on, win the MacNaughton Cup.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

MavHockey14 said:
Going to the Final Five required you to win your first round series this year. That series could go until Sunday and then you get until Friday to make your plans. At least now you're guaranteed two games if you'd want to make the trip to an on campus site, whereas wth the Final Five you're only guaranteed the one game. That may be a reason fans actually want to make the trip.
Click to expand...
When I was in school at North Dakota, this was the way the WCHA playoffs were decided, essentially. At that time they played a two game, total goal series rather than best out of three. The championship series was the same, not a single championship game.

I had no real objection to that format. I loved the Final Five when you could go and there would be huge crowds. It also encouraged fan attendance even when your team wasn't in it.

But there is no question that this format rewards regular season success. It was a big advantage to play at home, multiple games, if you were the better team.

The only negatives to the onsite playoffs that I recall were these. First, if your team was on the road it was pretty hard to score tickets. You could try to do it through your school, but the visiting team wasn't allotted many tickets (pretty much the same as during regular season games). Nowhere close to 50/50. It was a struggle. Usually had to try to scalp some.

Second, there were times when arena availability became an issue, especially for places like Duluth were the DECC was used for other events. I could see that happening in Mankato. Hard to tell the arena to keep a bunch of weekends open when your team may not even have a home playoff game. In about 1984 or 1985 this happened to Duluth. The DECC had been booked, and UMD was set to host UND for the championship round. Ended up playing at old Williams Arena in Minneapolis.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

MavHockey14 said:
No. You're wrong on so many levels. Allocate a certain number but if you want a bunch of fans watching and cheering your team on, win the MacNaughton Cup.
Click to expand...

Nope. The quarters, and maybe the semis can be heavily home-ice advantage, but for the final, both fans should have equal allotment. Its a championship game, theoretically between the 2 best teams. There should be no home-ice advantage.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

bigblue_dl said:
Nope. The quarters, and maybe the semis can be heavily home-ice advantage, but for the final, both fans should have equal allotment. Its a championship game, theoretically between the 2 best teams. There should be no home-ice advantage.
Click to expand...
Good luck with that.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

bigblue_dl said:
If the "visiting" team doesn't use their allotment, and it goes back to the "home" team, then so be it. They had their chance.
Click to expand...
I don't dispute there is a method by which you could give the visiting team's fans a shot at 50% of the tickets. I just don't think it will happen.
 
bigblue_dl said:
Nope. The quarters, and maybe the semis can be heavily home-ice advantage, but for the final, both fans should have equal allotment. Its a championship game, theoretically between the 2 best teams. There should be no home-ice advantage.
Click to expand...

Why should the highest remaining seed not have a home ice advantage for the championship game? That makes no sense. There needs to be some reward for being more successful in the regular season. Maybe it's time to play the game without keeping score and giving the boys a snack and juice box afterwards?
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

davyd83 said:
Dropping to 24 would mean a lot more road non conference games and more of those wonderful 2 for 1 deals.

I also don't see the Championship being a best 2 of 3. That means if it's in Alaska, the visitors don't get home until Monday night and could be playing out east on Thursday.
Click to expand...

NCAA Round of 16 games don't get played until Friday at the earliest. I'd also hope that the committee would use a little discretion and send that team to a Saturday-Sunday regional, but that's probably assuming too much common sense.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

I'm not sure which WCHA games some of you are going to, but I can't think of any times I've seen the traveling fan base number into the triple digits. Minnesota State isn't holding back 2640 tickets for visiting fans when half the league can't draw that for a home game.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

MaizeRage said:
I'm not sure which WCHA games some of you are going to, but I can't think of any times I've seen the traveling fan base number into the triple digits. Minnesota State isn't holding back 2640 tickets for visiting fans when half the league can't draw that for a home game.
Click to expand...
I'd like to see venues hold back maybe a max of 1000 for the championship, since it is only Saturday.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

Shirtless Guy said:
I'd like to see venues hold back maybe a max of 1000 for the championship, since it is only Saturday.
Click to expand...
I agree with Maize. There is no way 1000 Ferris fans travel to Mankato, even if it is a championship game.

Personally, it won't surprise me at all if the NCHC does the same thing as the end of its five year run at Target Center nears. It's unfortunate because those 10-12 years of the old WCHA Final Five at Xcel were a blast. But times change, and even if the NCHC draws 10,000 a session I still think they're going to figure out on campus series are going to be more profitable.

Going to make it hard to televise on any sort of national basis. The leagues are basically going to have to rely on streaming local broadcasts.
 
John J. MacInnes said:
I'd also hope that the committee would use a little discretion and send that team to a Saturday-Sunday regional, but that's probably assuming too much common sense.
Click to expand...


It could potentially be part of the criteria in adjusting bands of schools. But a Saturday/Sunday regional spot isn't going to be held for the WCHA winner.
 
SJHovey said:
Going to make it hard to televise on any sort of national basis. The leagues are basically going to have to rely on streaming local broadcasts.
Click to expand...

With the increasing costs of renting an HD uplink truck, I'm pretty sure the money saved by the WCHA there could be better used. Nothing says they still can't roll an uplink truck to that final site. Would be nice if Fox Sports North and/or Fox Sports Detroit could continue partnering with the WCHA.

I hope this means that this will mean continued upgrades to WCHA.tv and member schools broadcast abilities. American Sports Network was covering a few WCHA games last year, and I feel that would be a good partnership to continue also.

A slightly lower cost and more consistant branding across the WCHA broadcasts would help. The graphics packages vary across all the schools.
 
Re: 2016 WCHA Offseason; It's All Over, Save Ferris

pbr said:
Why should the highest remaining seed not have a home ice advantage for the championship game? That makes no sense. There needs to be some reward for being more successful in the regular season. Maybe it's time to play the game without keeping score and giving the boys a snack and juice box afterwards?
Click to expand...

You could always just say "forget it" to the playoffs and the regular season winner gets the auto-bid...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top