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AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

Almington said:
Many teams may not be losing money, but clearly have lower revenue AND higher expenses since the teams are more spread out.
Click to expand...

completely agree, just know that in one of the other articles they were talking about how bad the WCHA's losses were, compared to the NCHC, but that's not fair because the NCHC doesn't have a women's league and I'm sure the Women's league is mostly a blackhole for $$$
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

Ralph Baer said:
Has the WCHA considered playing a truly unbalanced schedule, playing fewer games against the Alaska schools with those two playing each other much more often? The NAHL does that with Fairbanks and Kenai River playing each other 16 times during the season. Each of the other 8 schools could play one of the Alaska schools in a 3-game series each year. That would mean they go to Alaska once every other year. Each Alaska school would only play four 3-game series in the lower 48 each year.

Edit: That should read "two 3-game series in the lower 48 each year".
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A situation like that wouldn't be logistically fair to the league when half of an Alaska school's points could come from beating the other. If both teams played 6 series, that's 12 of the total 28 game league schedule, that's 24 potential points with only playing one series (two games) against the rest of the league. And if the disparity between the teams is any sort of lopsided in either direction, you could have a situation where if either Alaska school goes 8-2-2 for example against the other, and an even .500 8-8-0, that's 16-10-2 in league play for a total of 34 points, which is top 4 in the league this year.

In the NAHL, it's a bit easier to justify when you have a 60 game league schedule.
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

dxmnkd316 said:
I think there's a lot of truth in that. Look at the images of a pre-realignment to post-realignment map.

Before:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/3/37/20130921164830!Hockey_d1.png

After:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/Hockey_d1.png

Terrible decisions made top to bottom.
Click to expand...
2012-13 Average Distances
<img src=http://www.nmubaseball.net/uscho/1213AvgDistance.jpg>

2013-14 Average Distances
<img src=http://www.nmubaseball.net/uscho/1314AvgDistance.jpg>
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to show. The maps I posted paint a fairly clear image as to why this was a terrible idea geographically.
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

dxmnkd316 said:
I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to show. The maps I posted paint a fairly clear image as to why this was a terrible idea geographically.
Click to expand...

It shows the geographic center and average distance of each conference...
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

dxmnkd316 said:
I'm not entirely sure what that's supposed to show. The maps I posted paint a fairly clear image as to why this was a terrible idea geographically.
Click to expand...

And the WCHA is massively biased by the two AK teams, which by many accounts, have survived some way, somehow.
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

I get that's what it shows. But I think it's misleading. Especially given that Minnesota's costs have gone up.
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

dxmnkd316 said:
I get that's what it shows. But I think it's misleading. Especially given that Minnesota's costs have gone up.
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it shows that the Minnesota's has gone up...they went from the geographic center to the outlier, even though the distances for the new conference are smaller...
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

purpleinnebraska said:
This might be the best take I've read on this in the 5 or so years of the "Big Mistake" debate. If you had told NoDak, Denver, and Notre Dame back in 2011 that in the spring of 2016, Wisconsin will be in its second straight year of being in the 40s in the Pairwise, the Gophers will need to win the Big tourney to make the NCAA field and will have lost 11 of their last 12 against other MN schools, and OSU and MSU will still be mediocre, I don't think there would have been any panic to bust up the WCHA and CCHA. There was a huge concern that we were headed down the road of college football, where most teams enter the year knowing they have zero chance of even getting to the playoffs, let alone winning anything. That hasn't happened, and doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon, but no one knew that at the time, so those schools made a move that they thought was necessary to keep them relevant.
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In 2011, Michigan was highest ranked B1G team in the PairWise (6th to be precise). Minnesota was the next highest at 19th. CCHA members Miami, Western Michigan and Notre Dame were all in the top 11. North Dakota, Denver and Minnesota-Duluth were in the top nine. When two leagues have more than a 25 percent share a piece in the playoff rankings and the other three leagues (and one future) combine for less than half, you have to doubt that the panic was exclusively about on-ice competition. It's obvious judging by that season's results, the CCHA and WCHA could have been more than competitive staying intact.
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

Good news! Once the B1G prevents 23 and 24 year olds from playing against their 17 and 18 year olds who are recruited to the hockey team to get their degree, all these travel issues go away.
Ryan J
 
Re: AP: New WCHA "bleeding money"

davyd83 said:
If it hasn't been bad for college hockey, why is attendance down at at least half the schools in the B10, NCHC and WCHA? Why is conference attendance dropped so much? Why do the so called "Big Time" programs refuse to visit the smaller schools without at least a 2 for 1 deal?
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I guess I wasn't clear enough in the point I tried to make when I posted "While I don't think the B1G hockey conference has necessarily been good for the 6 teams in it, I don't think it has been bad for college hockey." What has happened has not be good, but it wasn't the B1G that caused this suffering, it was the change in the WCHA and the folding of the CCHA that was brought about because of a few other schools reacting in such a knee-jerk way. Had everyone simply stayed put, many schools would be better off than they are today, and some greatly so. Many would be at the same level. Few would be in a worse position.
 
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