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Ice Breaker Tournament

S

still an empty net

Member
Can somebody please tell me why this tournament is in Kansas City, MO? There are about 300-500 fans at what should be a good season opener with some quality teams. If it's based on a neutral location why not St. Louis at least which has an NHL team and hockey fan base?
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

still an empty net said:
Can somebody please tell me why this tournament is in Kansas City, MO? There are about 300-500 fans at what should be a good season opener with some quality teams. If it's based on a neutral location why not St. Louis at least which has an NHL team and hockey fan base?
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St. Louis? Are you kidding? The attendance at the 2011 West Regional final (a game that mattered a little bit more) was so abysmal the official crowd number was never announced. The fact is these college games at neutral sites rarely come close to filling the stands.
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

NotreDameFan27 said:
Notre Dame vs. Nebraska (Omaha) in the finals. Who you got?
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If Notre Dame plays to the extent of their talent, the Irish should win. If they don't quickly learn how to finish repeated good long forechecks with goals a little more often, UNO will win.
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

IrishHockeyFan said:
St. Louis? Are you kidding? The attendance at the 2011 West Regional final (a game that mattered a little bit more) was so abysmal the official crowd number was never announced. The fact is these college games at neutral sites rarely come close to filling the stands.
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There has to be a better job of growing college hockey as a sport. Right now it's so regional because all these teams have are their local fans. There is no national fanbase for college hockey. That can change, but work needs to be done. Maybe with NBC involved now that will change.
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

IrishHockeyFan said:
If Notre Dame plays to the extent of their talent, the Irish should win. If they don't quickly learn how to finish repeated good long forechecks with goals a little more often, UNO will win.
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BTW, in case you were wondering, I got the Irish. Today will be a good day to be Irish, IMO. But you're right, they have to find a way to score. This really goes back to last season. I don't know if I support Lee moving to center, yet. He seems to play better when matched with Tynan. But the Tynan-Rust-DiPauli line looked pretty good last night, so maybe these guys just need time to gel.
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

Driftryder said:
I watched the UNO Army game last night and the crowd was non-existent, ouch.
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Yeah, I noticed that. Didn't realize it wasn't a home game for either team, though (had it on mute, due to MN game and then baseball).
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

Whoah. Did I see the WCHA "A Team" officiating the first game? Hunt/Shep?? The almighties??? I take it UNO is the host school then? I was wondering why the heck they'd bring in the goldenchild Shep for this tourny....... :rolleyes:
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

32 Degrees! said:
Whoah. Did I see the WCHA "A Team" officiating the first game? Hunt/Shep?? The almighties??? I take it UNO is the host school then? I was wondering why the heck they'd bring in the goldenchild Shep for this tourny....... :rolleyes:
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UNO is the host school. They used WCHA officials for both games.

The announced crowd yesterday was 2200 of which at least 3/4 were UNO fans. There was a smattering of Maine jerseys in evidence, a fair number of Notre Dame jerseys, and there was a surprising number of Army fans at the game. Oddly, there was a very noticeable amount of Fighting Sioux fans, too. I even saw some Wisconsin gear. I'd expect the championship game to be "better" attended.

The City of Kansas City and the local sponsors of the event should be ashamed of themselves. I am staying at the Holiday Inn Aladdin 4 blocks form the arena and I haven't talked to a single local that even knows the tournament is going on. There was a huge pep rally in the Power & Light District (right across the street from the arena) last night for the MU/Alabama game today and I bet there were more people there than at the tournament. There was no talk about it at all on local sports talk radio driving down here yesterday and the Kansas City Star only has a synopsis of the 1st game online, even, nothing about the 2nd game at all.

The Sprint Center doesn't have very good hockey sight lines, IMHO. The upper level looks steeper, even, that the Clink in Omaha, too.

Army looked totally over-matched against UNO. There was never any sense at all that Army was ever a part of the game. I told my wife halfway through the first period that it looked like Army would be lucky to score, and, they were, they got a somewhat fluky goal and didn't get shut out. UNO looked like they kind of lost interest once they got to 4 goals in the 2nd period and the rest of the game sorta got mailed in.

If there is a bigger defense corp in college hockey than UNO's, I'd sure like to know whose it is. Six defensemen 6' 2" or bigger including guys that are 6' 7" and 6' 8"?

Ought to be a good one with the Domers. Off to the arena.
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

IrishHockeyFan said:
St. Louis? Are you kidding? The attendance at the 2011 West Regional final (a game that mattered a little bit more) was so abysmal the official crowd number was never announced. The fact is these college games at neutral sites rarely come close to filling the stands.
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Well I stand corrected. I guess we can both agree then that having these tournaments at neutral sites in which teams really are not close (besides UNO) to the venue is not a good idea. These tournaments like to obviously have teams from different conferences in them but when that happens travel becomes further and further and attendance drops drastically. The lack of fans at that tournament is not going to appeal to a non college hockey fan. In my opinion it is crucial to have tournaments in which the attendance is at least respectable even if it means having two teams from the same conference play in the tournament. They could arrange it so they don't play the first game. It is all about location here. You have to make sure at least two of the teams which normally have a decent fan base at home games are within three (maybe 4) hours of the venue otherwise you will get a complete lack of attendance and lack of interest in the sport.

I live in Syracuse, NY so if I was having a tournament here I would do my best as an organizer to pull Cornell ( 1hr 15 minutes), RIT ( 1 hr 15 minutes), Clarkson or St. Lawrence (2 hrs 15 minutes), and then try to get a Vermont (4 hours), UNH, or a Mass. school (BC, BU, Northeastern, Lowell,) 5 hours. Although I have two schools from the ECAC, I believe I would still get a respectable crowd because of the easy travel.

That being said I understand a lot of cities do not have that many teams within that distance of a venue but tournaments should try to pull two teams that are relatively close and have good fan bases as a starting point.
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

still an empty net said:
Well I stand corrected. I guess we can both agree then that having these tournaments at neutral sites in which teams really are not close (besides UNO) to the venue is not a good idea. These tournaments like to obviously have teams from different conferences in them but when that happens travel becomes further and further and attendance drops drastically. The lack of fans at that tournament is not going to appeal to a non college hockey fan. In my opinion it is crucial to have tournaments in which the attendance is at least respectable even if it means having two teams from the same conference play in the tournament. They could arrange it so they don't play the first game. It is all about location here. You have to make sure at least two of the teams which normally have a decent fan base at home games are within three (maybe 4) hours of the venue otherwise you will get a complete lack of attendance and lack of interest in the sport.

I live in Syracuse, NY so if I was having a tournament here I would do my best as an organizer to pull Cornell ( 1hr 15 minutes), RIT ( 1 hr 15 minutes), Clarkson or St. Lawrence (2 hrs 15 minutes), and then try to get a Vermont (4 hours), UNH, or a Mass. school (BC, BU, Northeastern, Lowell,) 5 hours. Although I have two schools from the ECAC, I believe I would still get a respectable crowd because of the easy travel.

That being said I understand a lot of cities do not have that many teams within that distance of a venue but tournaments should try to pull two teams that are relatively close and have good fan bases as a starting point.
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They have to do a better job at promoting it as well though. I doubt many people even knew about it. I thought since they had been planning to host three exhibition in Kansas City and this would help. Perhaps the cancelling of the entire exhibition season in the NHL actually hurt. I don't know. There should be more coordination between college hockey and the NHL, but so far even that has been limited.

I think the problem, though, is more a function of how "provincial" college hockey is. The teams that do better in attendance and/or exposure are teams with strong local fanbases (Minnesota, Boston College, Michigan, etc.) that they can draw from and are willing to travel with the team. Teams with smaller pools of local fans obviously fare worse. Thus, there really isn't a national following for the sport itself. This could change with an improved focus, and maybe the new national TV contracts will help in this way, but so far success in this area has been limited.

It's too bad because college hockey is actually very entertaining.
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

NotreDameFan27 said:
They have to do a better job at promoting it as well though. I doubt many people even knew about it. I thought since they had been planning to host three exhibition in Kansas City and this would help. Perhaps the cancelling of the entire exhibition season in the NHL actually hurt. I don't know. There should be more coordination between college hockey and the NHL, but so far even that has been limited.
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All the KC people we talked with, including those who are season ticket holders of the Missouri Mavericks and who attended KC Scouts games back in the day say this was NOT promoted at all. Many people in the area surrounding the Sprint Center didn't even know about it. This was (IIRC) only the 4th IB Tourney not on a college campus, or even in a college hockey town. There were not even game programs available...IN THE RINK. I would have gladly spent some cash on that.

However, given that my team won, I'm not going to complain anymore!
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

NotreDameFan27 said:
Irish win the IceBreaker with a 3-2 win against a VERY GOOD Nebraska-Omaha team.
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I'll just say that I saw nothing that made me think that Notre Dame is an appreciably better team than UNO. Could have gone either way. There were stretches where both teams really turned up the heat on the other. I thought Stolarz was a little shaky in goal, but, it was also his first collegiate game as a true freshmen ( I don't like tall goalies by the way, Stolarz is 6'7") and I sort of expected that. I thought, by and large, that UNO had the overall better scoring chances (slightly) than Notre Dame and just had one of those nights where they couldn't get the puck in the net. It was a pretty good game all the way around and UNO players were happy with their performance in the paper here, even in the losing cause.

So, to put it another way, either Notre Dame isn't a top ten team, or, UNO looks under ranked to me. Like a lot of things, perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. We'll see. Time will tell.

My suspicion is that it is more the latter than the former.
 
Re: Ice Breaker Tournament

Red Cows said:
I'll just say that I saw nothing that made me think that Notre Dame is an appreciably better team than UNO. Could have gone either way. There were stretches where both teams really turned up the heat on the other. I thought Stolarz was a little shaky in goal, but, it was also his first collegiate game as a true freshmen ( I don't like tall goalies by the way, Stolarz is 6'7") and I sort of expected that. I thought, by and large, that UNO had the overall better scoring chances (slightly) than Notre Dame and just had one of those nights where they couldn't get the puck in the net. It was a pretty good game all the way around and UNO players were happy with their performance in the paper here, even in the losing cause.

So, to put it another way, either Notre Dame isn't a top ten team, or, UNO looks under ranked to me. Like a lot of things, perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. We'll see. Time will tell.

My suspicion is that it is more the latter than the former.
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Ya, UNO looked real good. They deserve to be ranked in the top twenty I think. As for the game, it was a pretty even match. The bounces, fortunately, went our way this time, but the UNO team didn't embarrass themselves at all. A great showing for both teams. Obviously the best two at the tournament.
 
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