Re: Bentley Falcons Official 2011-2012 Thread
I don't think Hockey East would want anything to do with Bentley if there's no downstream plan for them to have a new, more welcoming home arena. It doesn't even have to be anything more ambitious than what Merrimack has, but it properly would need to be in Waltham (at least) or the Lower Bentley Campus (at best).
I would like to go on record to thank schools like Michigan, Northeastern, Clarkson, RPI and Maine (and others I've missed) for being gracious enough to host Bentley. I realize that these schools see Bentley as an easy 'W,' but these road trips are the steppingstones that the University will look back on in years to come.
Ironically, I heard that Hockey East was exploring the possibility of adding both Bentley and Holy Cross because of the Massachusetts connections and recent successes (Bentley's 19-win season from a couple of years ago makes it eminently more attractive than AIC, and the hot rumor is that Bentley's early season showings with wins in the past few years over marquee opponents from HEA made the conference take notice).
BUT, there are a few major blocks which ultimately make Hockey East laugh at the prospect of Bentley coming to the arena.
1) Bentley will NOT build an on-campus arena. From what I understand, it actually had nothing to do with funding for the arena itself. The college was, a couple of years ago, willing to turn some of the swamp land into a small, 3,000 seat arena on campus for students to go to. However, the issue becomes upkeep and leasing it to local areas. Following the Robert Morris business model, Bentley would need to keep the rink going outside of the college hockey season and lease the rink to local area schools, showcases, leagues, and events. Otherwise, it becomes a massive drain on the campus to upkeep and run the rink from October to March/April without a stream of revenue (don't expect them to sell tickets to students.. that's just a wrong principle that the school will never undertake). You're now hoping you can entice Waltham High, Watertown High, Newton South (Watertown and NS both play at the JAR), along with a couple of other local area Catholic schools to schedule their home games at your new rink.
Additionally, you're banking on drawing either a junior hockey league or a youth league like the Valley League to your area, which is tough to do with several cheaper alternatives in the area. The issue wasn't funding to build it, it was the ability to upkeep it in the style of a modern rink, furnishing it with decent facilities, and, in essence, running the rink the way that rinks are supposed to be run through that time of year.
2) A move to HEA requires a team to offer the monetary equivalent of 18 full athletic scholarships. That's a major hurdle within AHA right now, whre the Western Teams, especially a school like Air Force, is willing to offer the max-18 covered by the bigger, more prolific leagues. The eastern schools, which already suffer funding issues, are not willing to offer the extra six. Estimating tuition at 50-55K a year, you now have to pony up an addition 300-330K per year in scholarship money. That's a lot of money to ask of the university in this economic climate.
3) Attendance. If the team was successful and drew well regardless, there wouldn't be a need to worry about the arena. At the heart of everything is that the team isn't good enough right now to draw well, regardless of every other factor. There's no guarantee moving on campus would fix attendance woes; Bentley drew one of the nation's worst home attendance numbers by averaging under 500 per game. And, honestly, that number's generous and can't be taken seriously if you were at the games (I remember a game where the broadcaster echoed through the JAR because there were literally 20 people there).
4) If you're Hockey East, I think you give serious credence to Holy Cross because of the Catholic school connections with BC and PC, especially the HC-BC rivalry, which is completely out of control in terms of intense hatred (every single HOly Cross person I've ever met has utterly hated Boston College with every fiber of their being, so much that it makes BU look like a puppy licking an Eagle Superfan's face). After that, there's so many other better options. And Hockey East already has two schools that are not D1 schools (Merrimack and UMass-Lowell) for every other sport. The cross-sport branding potential doesn't exist with Bentley, as it would with, say Quinnipiac, UConn, or even Canisius. In short, even if Boston College let Bentley share their rink because its only a couple of miles up the road from the JAR (really..it's like 7 minutes driving from the Bentley campus or so), it just doesn't make sense.
And besides, if you're Bentley, who was a 10th place team in AHA, why would you ever want to make a jump to a conference that already has 10 teams so much better than you overall?
As a last point, I feel like the arena argument at this point is beating a dead horse. Unless someone can pony up the money to let the school upkeep it, then essentially the situation is never going to change. That worries me, because if D1 hockey is going to expand as it is (Minnesota State-Moorhead is rumored to be trying to jump to D1), other schools are going to jump into the fray. It's only a matter of time before you see schools like a Syracuse (which has women's), or like an Indiana/Illinois come up with hockey. And when that happens, hockey is going to become much higher priced. And that worries me because if the asking price gets too high, Bentley is at risk of either becoming a school that a) will never compete or b) drops hockey altogether (see also: Fairfield, Wayne State) due to economic reasons.
That had the schedule as you see it.