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Re: Brown Hockey 2013-2014 - Climbing to the Top of the ECAC Ladder
My second post to USCHO.com and my first spectatorship of Brown hockey in half a century, thanks to the Ivy League Digital Network (ILDN).
My first post asked how many regular contributors there were to this forum and the response was 12 to 20. An unscientific count gives 7, by a generous reading of "regular" contributors, 3 of whom predominate, Euler, Hutter, and kdiff77.
I watched Harvard just now, a first view of the Meehan interior since the 1960s. Last week I watched Brown-Cornell at Lynah.
Immediate impressions: a mostly empty Meehan. One has heard the reports, of course, that nobody goes to sports at Brown (apart from varsity members), and now one has seen the proof on-screen. The ILDN commentators, in the space of 10 seconds, described both a "good" crowd and a "half empty" Meehan. This viewer saw a nine-tenths empty north-side, which 50 years ago was packed with season ticket holders.
Last week at Lynah, the Cornell announcers spent several minutes discussing the core issue Brown's recruiting problem. "When we bring our recruits to Lynah they see a packed house. Then they go down to Providence and sit in an empty house. Our coaches tell them, you can play hockey in front of nobody for four years at Brown or you can come to Cornell."
So that's one problem. Campus culture. A student body that doesn't go to sports. And that's largely down to the very distinctive "self-selecting" applicant pool Brown gets.
I used to interview them. Over 60 percent were female in my region, but that's not intrinsically a problem. (What IS a problem is the treatment Ray Kelly got.) We now have a stated admissions policy of going for under-represented constituencies. Admirable. But they mainly don't play ice hockey and they don't spectate it.
Other ILDN impressions. Announcer Mike Rubin is sharp, his color commentator less sharp (variations on "We need to win the face-off" delivered in that, um, regional accent, an accent I'd just about expunged from my memory). Also, it would be good if they fixed the screen graphic to work like it does for Brown basketball, with game clock and penalty-kill clock onscreen.
I've also looked at the USCHO.com archive of Brown history and learned that in the Fullerton heyday (1961-70), when we had Gaudreau and the Macks-Small-Devaney line, we only had a winning percentage of 57, a surprise to my (aging defective) memory.
So it may be that the way to watch Brown hockey from thousands of miles away on the internet is to take a zen attitude. It's the beautiful game whether or not we ever go to the post-season.
Thank-you for your patience.
My second post to USCHO.com and my first spectatorship of Brown hockey in half a century, thanks to the Ivy League Digital Network (ILDN).
My first post asked how many regular contributors there were to this forum and the response was 12 to 20. An unscientific count gives 7, by a generous reading of "regular" contributors, 3 of whom predominate, Euler, Hutter, and kdiff77.
I watched Harvard just now, a first view of the Meehan interior since the 1960s. Last week I watched Brown-Cornell at Lynah.
Immediate impressions: a mostly empty Meehan. One has heard the reports, of course, that nobody goes to sports at Brown (apart from varsity members), and now one has seen the proof on-screen. The ILDN commentators, in the space of 10 seconds, described both a "good" crowd and a "half empty" Meehan. This viewer saw a nine-tenths empty north-side, which 50 years ago was packed with season ticket holders.
Last week at Lynah, the Cornell announcers spent several minutes discussing the core issue Brown's recruiting problem. "When we bring our recruits to Lynah they see a packed house. Then they go down to Providence and sit in an empty house. Our coaches tell them, you can play hockey in front of nobody for four years at Brown or you can come to Cornell."
So that's one problem. Campus culture. A student body that doesn't go to sports. And that's largely down to the very distinctive "self-selecting" applicant pool Brown gets.
I used to interview them. Over 60 percent were female in my region, but that's not intrinsically a problem. (What IS a problem is the treatment Ray Kelly got.) We now have a stated admissions policy of going for under-represented constituencies. Admirable. But they mainly don't play ice hockey and they don't spectate it.
Other ILDN impressions. Announcer Mike Rubin is sharp, his color commentator less sharp (variations on "We need to win the face-off" delivered in that, um, regional accent, an accent I'd just about expunged from my memory). Also, it would be good if they fixed the screen graphic to work like it does for Brown basketball, with game clock and penalty-kill clock onscreen.
I've also looked at the USCHO.com archive of Brown history and learned that in the Fullerton heyday (1961-70), when we had Gaudreau and the Macks-Small-Devaney line, we only had a winning percentage of 57, a surprise to my (aging defective) memory.
So it may be that the way to watch Brown hockey from thousands of miles away on the internet is to take a zen attitude. It's the beautiful game whether or not we ever go to the post-season.
Thank-you for your patience.
