Re: Arizona State Moving To D1
Early on, you get who you can get.
GFM
I only peeked at this because of the pontificating, earlier in this thread, that postulated that ASU was all of a sudden going to instantaneously turn into some sort of hockey recruiting mecca, as was also alluded to by school officials at the press conference when the announcement was made that they were going to D-1. As I said, earlier in the thread, this was said without any sort of rationale for it possibly being so other than some citations of the climate there as well as the "babe quotient" at ASU by posters here. I doubted that these things would matter that much, particularly where a winter sport is concerned, and at a program that not only has no facilities to recruit to, it self-admittedly does not know where they are going to play, even, NEXT season!
As you said, early on, you get who you can get and it looks like no truer words could be spoken in ASU's case, so far, IMHO.
I am also not in favor of the whole "dipping your toe in the pool to see how hot the water is" approach to starting a D-1 program used by Penn State and is now, again, going to be used by ASU. Hybrid schedules featuring a lot of what
should be inferior opponents, whether you are a first year program or not (Penn State played 10 ACHA games it's first season in D-1), IMHO, is not a prescription for getting your program kick-started towards any level of consistency or excellence. It certainly does nothing to galvanize your fanbase, either, by playing opponents they have little interest in seeing and would not and should not ever see again. Frankly, the message it would send me is "We're scared" or "We don't want to be embarrassed". It's trite, but, if you don't want to play with the big dogs then don't get off the porch.
Take a look here on USCHO, in prior year's schedules, at UNO's pretty brutal inaugural schedule in it's first season--'97-'98, in which it went 12-18-3
with a team entirely comprised of newcomers that had never played together before, as opposed to both Penn State and ASU essentially moving their club teams, for the most part, up to D-1. A season by UNO that featured a road sweep, at Denver, and a win against #12 Maine, also on the road, the next night after being beaten by them 11-0.
End result of this approach? UNO ended up in the CCHA tourney final
in it's first season in the conference and in only the third year of the program's very existence. And, they got there by stomping # 5 Michigan (at one point this was a 6-2 game before ending up 7-4) at the Joe in front 20,000 of their own fans, too, while putting 2 players on the all tourney team.
You can't soar like an eagle when you are flying with a flock or turkeys.
It may work out for Penn State as they have had state of the art facilities to recruit to from day 1 that may tend to offset the problems bred by playing opponents you had no business playing, and the whole "that hurts you more than it helps you" thing. But, that clearly isn't going to be the case at ASU.
