Re: Irish Hockey: Straight Inta Compton
Notre Dame was picked first by 52 of the coaches and media members who voted in the CCHA pre-season polls. Only 31 people voted for another school as the top team, and all the other votes for Notre Dame were for second or third place.
The question that begs asking is did all of those people assume something about this team that isn't as a matter of fact realistic? Is this a program that actually deserves this kind of expectation, or have many of us falsely convinced ourselves that it has come as far as we thought? By comparison, MSU and Ferris were slated 8th and 9th in the coaches vote and 6th and 7th in the media poll and are in the NCAAs while Notre Dame is golfing, or studying, or recovering from St Paddy's Day festivities.
With UNH out of the tourney for the first time in a decade, Miami's continued success now makes them the holder of the 3rd longest streak of NCAA appearances. We should be right behind them working on our 6th, but we are a long way off. Western Michigan is enjoying their first ever back-to-back NCAA invites. It was 3 long years ago we were enjoying this weekend for consecutive seasons.
My guess is that the Notre Dame athletic department surveyed the landscape and assumed many of the same things we all did. There is no valid explanation for this program enjoying the success it did from 2006-2009 at the Joyce Center, but once we began recruiting based on the Compton and actually utilizing the benefits the facilities have to offer that we are sitting home as the NCAAs roll around.
Other than Michigan, all the elite programs miss the NCAA tournament on occasion. Some more often than their fans think is reasonable. One look at the Minnesota or Boston University threads over the last few years will tell you that. But these schools can more easily absorb the down years because they have built up a cache of success that bears out the argument that everything goes in cycles. They have the championship banners to prove that one year out of the tournament is an anomaly. We're not anywhere near that yet. Seasons like this and two years ago do more damage to our development than 2009 ever will to Boston College. They followed up their first absence from the NCAA tournament in 6 seasons with 3 straight HE playoff titles, three more NCAA berths, and yet another NCAA title. Once again this season they're the overall number one team and a fair bet to win it all in Tampa.
Notre Dame hockey is not anywhere near the elite level. It will actually get harder in the upcoming seasons for the program to continue to grow and move towards the level I earlier thought we were on the cusp of. We are trading 3 rivals in MSU, UM and OSU that were vital to the vast legions of Notre Dame fans who first identify with football as the face of Notre Dame athletics for one in BC. We may have to reorganize our recruiting priorities, and while I have no doubt it is completely possible to recruit any area we need to, it will take time to implement a different strategy. We are going into a conference where three other teams are perennial NCAA contenders instead of the two we faced in the CCHA. We will be facing a whole new set of teams who feel like beating a Notre Dame hockey team carries the same meaning as beating a Lou Holtz coached Notre Dame football team. The travel becomes a bigger issue. Yes flights to Boston are quicker than buses to Marquette, but it is a physiological reality that flying is more fatiguing than spending time at or near sea level. All of our conference road games will involve flights while our foes will each face this once a season.
We have some built in advantages, not the least of which will be a better reach on TV than any college hockey team has yet enjoyed. Our sport also faces little of the recruiting disadvantages that the football or basketball teams are forced to deal with. But the presence of a Hall of Fame caliber coach, more raw talent than almost every team that finished in front of us 2 of the last 3 seasons, and now the best building in the CCHA, have all done little for the bottom line recently.
The summer will be a time for this team, from the incoming freshmen all the way up to Tom Nevala and Jack Swarbrick, to identify what will be necessary to truly make Notre Dame one of the NCAAs elite hockey programs. Our fans -- both locals and students alike -- need to get better. Our players need to get better. Our coaches need to get better.
I'd like to go into Hockey East on a high note. I want to leave the CCHA with the final two banners in tow. Whether or not expectations like these can be realized, I at least want them to be reasonable.
