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College Hockey NIT Tournament?

Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

Sean Pickett said:
The first mention I found of it in TIHN (The Intercollegiate Ice Hockey Newsletter) was the 26 February 1974 issue:

N.I.H.T to Feature Top Teams in Post-Season Championship Competition
The first annual NIHT will be held March 14, 15, and 16 at the Duluth (Minn) Arena-Auditorium coincident with the NCAA Hockey Championship dates at Boston Garden.
A four-member selection committee, consisting of an eastern coach, a western coach and two members of the NIHT Board of Directors, will select two eastern teams and two western teams to participate in the tournament. A field of four outstanding teams, exclusive of those competing in the NCAA event, is expected.
The NIHT, which will be co-sponsored by the city of Duluth and the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, has received responses from 45 colleges indicating an interest in participation if invited. Schools that have expressed an interest include all of the WCHA teams except Michigan State and most of the eastern schools except for Ivy League members, where an apparent conflict in obtaing University approval prior to the scheduled dates may preclude their possible participation.

In the final issue (dated April 1974) of TIHN for the season associate editor Arthur Kaminsky mentioned the NIHT in his column Open Net:

About the NIHT - what a terrible execution of a good idea. The organizers displayed absolutely no promotional talent at all. Not a word about the tournament emanated from Duluth all season, players of many teams knew nothing of its existence, and most college hockey people just forgot about it. So it was no surprise when early March came around and no one wanted to trek to Duluth. No financial inducements were given and since the coaches of the top clubs that were possible invitees (UNH, RPI, Wisconsin) hadn't been sounded out in advance, a last minute bid logically fell on deaf ears. It was embarrassing that only one eastern club even wanted to go. Hopefully, next year, the event will be well publicized, possible entrants more effectively sounded out in advance and maybe it can be turned into the first class event which all college hockey people would welcome.

I'm having issue with ProQuest, so I'm currently not able to check The Boston Globe for further articles.

Sean
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Hmmm, interesting. There seemed to be some legitimate support for it, what with 45 schools expressing an interest and someone saying "it was a terrible execution of a good idea."
 
Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

UVM Cat in Texas said:
Maybe this has been proposed before, but what would y'all think about a post-season tourney for those who don't make it into the NCAA Tourney -- something like hockey's version of the NIT? Make it the top 8 teams who are left out of the big show, and to increase interest and attendance, you could play all the games, including the semis and final, on campus sites. Good/bad idea? Feasible?
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UVM texas cat are you looking to try and get Sneddon another extension because you know a hockey NIT would lead to it and UVM that stupid to call it a honor and success! don't do it for this reason alone no no no times infinity and beyonf!!!!
 
Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

Someone made a mock bracket on the subreddit a while back...this year they would've had:

(1) Minnesota vs (8) Mercyhurst (AHA regular season champ)
(4) Bowling Green vs (5) Omaha

(2) North Dakota vs (7) Union
(3) BC (HE regular season champ) vs (6) Northern Michigan

I mean, I'm not a fan of the consolation tournament idea (the NIT has historical reason to exist), but the potential of Minnesota-North Dakota for a consolation trophy would be pretty freaking hilarious
 
Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

pokecheckguy2 said:
UVM texas cat are you looking to try and get Sneddon another extension because you know a hockey NIT would lead to it and UVM that stupid to call it a honor and success! don't do it for this reason alone no no no times infinity and beyonf!!!!
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Haha, leave it to you to come up with that as a reason to nix it! ;) But you're right -- (a) god forbid it should lead to a Sneddon extension; and (b) if we won, UVM probably would look at it as an achievement. Maybe there'd even be a banner! :D
 
Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

TovarishchLisa said:
Someone made a mock bracket on the subreddit a while back...this year they would've had:

(1) Minnesota vs (8) Mercyhurst (AHA regular season champ)
(4) Bowling Green vs (5) Omaha

(2) North Dakota vs (7) Union
(3) BC (HE regular season champ) vs (6) Northern Michigan

I mean, I'm not a fan of the consolation tournament idea (the NIT has historical reason to exist), but the potential of Minnesota-North Dakota for a consolation trophy would be pretty freaking hilarious
Click to expand...
Yeah, North Dakota-BC in the semis would also be interesting.
 
Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

This is posted under "Memorable Bulldog Moments" on the UMD hockey website:

March 16, 1974. The host Bulldogs upend the University of Vermont 7-4 to capture the short-lived (it lasted just one year) National Invitational Hockey Tournament, a four-team event patterned after college basketball’s NIT, for clubs which didn’t qualify for NCAA post-season play.
 
Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

Ralph Baer said:
Sean has used the same source which I have. Nothing is mentioned about attendance.
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I fixed my issue with using ProQuest to access The Boston Globe. A one sentence article on the championship game gave the attendance as 2,700. For comparison, the NCAA Final had a reported attendance of 7,132 at Boston Garden the same night.

Sean
 
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Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

UVM Cat in Texas said:
This is posted under "Memorable Bulldog Moments" on the UMD hockey website:

March 16, 1974. The host Bulldogs upend the University of Vermont 7-4 to capture the short-lived (it lasted just one year) National Invitational Hockey Tournament, a four-team event patterned after college basketball’s NIT, for clubs which didn’t qualify for NCAA post-season play.
Click to expand...

The other two teams, according to UVM's history PDF and the UMD media guide, were Lake Superior State (lost 3-2 to UVM) and Saint Louis (lost 6-3 to UMD)
 
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Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

TovarishchLisa said:
The other two teams, according to UVM's history PDF and the UMD media guide, were Lake Superior State (lost 3-2 to UVM) and Saint Louis (lost 6-3 to UMD)
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And then 22 years later we beat Lake State again 2-1 to advance to the Frozen Four. That was our best team ever and could have been national champs had we not been rooked in the semis.
 
Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

TovarishchLisa said:
Some newspaper clippings on this (thanks to Redditor /u/hockeyepidemiologist!!):

https://imgur.com/a/LApdW

Lake State was a last-second add; Wisconsin was supposed to participate - Bob Johnson guaranteed it - but he'd never run it past the AD, who shot it down.
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I especially liked seeing the quotes from first year Lake State coach "Rich Conley".

Also interesting to note that LSSC (they didn't become a university until 1987) was still a member of the NAIA for this tournament. The Lakers beat Bemidji 4-1 to claim the school's 2nd NAIA national championship, then played in the CCHA tournament, and finally this event.
 
Re: College Hockey NIT Tournament?

UMICH said:
I wouldn't be so sure, and anyway would you really want to win the title of 17th best college hockey team?
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As it is with the bb NIT, the winner of that tournament is considered by most to be far better than the 69th best team. Few will admit to as much.

Looking at this year alone, Minnesota basically TIED UMD in the standings but they could only take one 12th place team and UMD had a .001 advantage in the PWR? But look where UMD is now, still playing for the Title and going up against 3 B1G teams, so its quite possible that conf was a tad bit underrated.

I'm not advocating for a hockey NIT like post season tourney, but my reasons for not wanting something like are just different. A team like UND or Minnesota this year? There would always be a good chance one of our best players wouldn't even stick around to play in the tourney, this year I doubt Casey M would stick around for it, although I'm not sure if Buffalo has a chance to make the playoffs or not, but even if they aren't, maybe their semi-pro team is and I'm sure CM would like to get to playing at the next level as soon as possible. And it's more of a rarity, but this year it would have delayed the coaching change. So it wouldn't even be like the big names that might make the tourney like UMn, BC and UND would even be the same teams that played during the season, so...
 
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