If the NHL is taking them one or two years into their college tenure, they’re not taking them because of that great college hockey experience they’ve cultivated. They don’t care. And I don’t necessarily think the insufferable arrogance of the Big 10 and its fans - trying to turn college hockey into college football - is good for the sport, or what most of us (outside of 5 or so selfish schools) want to see for college hockey. But you go right ahead parroting all of the things SEC football fans have been saying to you all these years, and pretend that makes you better.
As a westerner, I also say keep funding those public schools the way you do, so all of your best and brightest (the 99% not in the NHL) can get out of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin - hellholes all - as quickly as possible, and take what we will all acknowledge is a good education to live out their lives in places that don’t suck after their 10 minutes in the spotlight.
Pretty sure the “But I don’t have to live in Alabama” has been the Big 10’s best defense to the vastly superior SEC for years… so I guess those of us in inferior hockey conferences can say that same about the god-awful rust belt states. We’d rather lose to you than be you.
(Except nobody has lost to you yet.)
I do feel bad for Minnesota, though. This is not a fate the Gophers probably would have chosen. Minnesota doesn’t really need the Gophers now, though, that the state has four other less-obnoxious colleges worth following, and the Wild for those folks whose egos need the stroking.
I really don’t understand Wisconsin though. Like, as a place. It’s a halfway house for people who can’t cut it in Chicago and are too redneck for Minnesota. I imagine if I was from there I’d suffer from the same complexes as people in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.
Yeah, no Big 10 envy here.