Re: Hockey East Tourney on the Move
1. Home Ice
All 3 Boston schools get to play the 2 games at the Beanpot during the second half of the season which no one can say is not an advantage. Most of the upperclassmen on those teams probably already played there 2 to 4 times a year while other teams coming in might have most or all of their roster not having never played there.
First, this advantage is minimal for a hockey player and I think you're glorifying this for your argument.
Second, this is diminished even further when you consider the fact that this is really only an issue for freshmen at a school like BC (where they play in Piszpots, HE tourneys, and Frozen Fours almost annually, and even get in the rare trip to Fenway Park) and BU (Frozen Four rarely, but HE semis and Piszpots annually). At other schools, this is only an issue for freshmen and any other player in the program that has never played in a HE semi before. Given that Maine, UNH, UVM get to the Garden fairly regularly... there's not a ton of hockey players this would apply to. And again, it's a minimal advantage if any.
2.Home Fans
While saying BC and BU make up a ton of the crowd when all they have to do is hop on a train for 15 minutes is true but really if UNH, Maine or Vermont were that close to the rink you would sell out much more often.
If you had the same distance to every school to the game site you would see a much different make up in the stands. Vermont and Maine would have had the most last year, heck Maine was very represented last year and Vermont
had a good showing despite having both BBall teams playing the NCAA's the same weekend. If you could move Vermont to Orono and build a rink you
would not even need 2 other teams to sell it out.
Think of this BU holds 6150 and BC 7884 when they sellout which they do, but the total attendance to the semis last year was 12544. And thats with
the Maine and Vermont fans included.
Fan support is another terribly overrated "advantage" but that's just my opinion. Other people think it wins games. Regardless, you need to consider that even with fewer fans than say BC, if you're playing them, you're going to have all the limp-wristed facepainters from BU screaming for UVM at the top of their lungs (and probably both fanbases of hillbillies from the north as well). If you're playing BU, you'll get some of the BC fans rooting for you along with everyone that dislikes the Taliban, Iraq, and every other evil entity in the world. And so on and so forth. Probably not much of an advantage as neutral observers will cling to an underdog to offset the larger numbers of the larger, favored programs plus the multiple fan bases that would root against those larger, favored program.
3. Home
Anyone who has ever traveled for sports knows one of the biggest advantages a team gets at home is sleeping in there own bed and being able to stick to the usual routine. Anyone who ever had a bad night sleep at a hotel knows this, and add the pressure of a big game to that.
Many NFL coaches get their team in hotels the night before home games to allow them to focus and avoid distractions (and put a curfew in place) that they would have at home. And there's a reason for this. Even college coaches do this. I guess they don't know what they're doing...
I think at best, there is no advantage to staying at home as the risks/disadvantages offset any advantage. It might come into play if a team were not staying in Boston Thursday night but I assume they would travel on Thursday at the latest so that would not be an issue.
