From what I've read, the Spink twins, Tyson and Tylor, aren't headed to Colgate until 2012 as part of the class that will replace the current juniors. They still have one more year left in junior hockey with Cornwall of the CJHL. In a few articles, the brothers mentioned that they got a lot of advice and guidance from current Ottawa Senator Jesse Winchester. Jesse played in the CJHL and grew up in northeastern Ontario much like the Spink twins.
In my personal opinion, a new rink isn't going to happen anytime soon. I think it was certainly in the works before the economy tanked and there were drawing plans for it but it's hard to justify it now with the economy the way it is. Basically, one would need a private donor or multiple donors to step up and foot what would be a massive bill - see Penn State's Pegula Ice Arena. If anything is built, it would more than likely be a set-up like Reid currently is with both a new ice hockey rink and a gymnasium for the basketball team.
In regards to the comparision with Union, you have to look at a couple different reasons why things are different. One, Union is in a decent sized metropolitan area in Schenectady and isn't very far at all from Albany. There are things to do, malls/shops/fancy restaurants nearby that the kids like and it's much different location-wise than Hamilton. There is also respectable media coverage of the hockey program from Ken Schott at the Daily Gazette - there's no local daily fish wrap in Hamilton. Two, the ice hockey program at Union is the big ticket sport. The rest of the athletics program at Union, aside from women's hockey, is Division III. While Union did have a beautiful new Athletic Center built a few years ago, I would gather that the administration has put a lot of monetary support behind Nate and the hockey program. I'm sure the same goes at Clarkson, SLU and RPI as well as at CC out in the WCHA just because hockey is the only D-I sport at the schools. At Colgate, every sport is Division I and while the hockey program is taken care of, each sport is fighting for every dollar it can get.
Hockey is a game constantly of cycles, both on and off the ice. Programs go through good times and they go through bad times. The better programs are the ones that can keep the bad times away the longest but no program is perfect and everyone goes through a down cycle. Currently, some of the teams on top of college hockey now are ones that have traditionally been not very good. At some point in the future, they may return to where they were or their stretch will continue to hold out. Who knows in 10 years how Yale or Princeton or even Union will be? Things change, players graduate and other trends and teams emerge.
But yea, 7.1% overall (7.6% conf) in 07-08.