Yeah, or maybe even "We've carried ALL of them this far but no further." It sucks, but the burden of dealing with the most resource and time intensive conference members fell on the western schools least well equipped to manage it. It probably could have been more elegantly handled, but if the goal was to shine a light on the inequities in college hockey in the west, well, the light is shone.
And, as a fan of an eastern team, this should be on the plates of the ECAC and Hockey East, too. We're blessed to have bus leagues. Putting a rotating burden on those memberships to have to travel to Alabama and Alaska every couple of years wouldn't be overly onerous. Not as a formal conference membership, but Hockey East could (for example) designate who was going to Anchorage, Fairbanks or Huntsville during the (otherwise) heart of the conference schedule and help them out with some friendly scheduling on the next weekend (be it a bye, a one game weekend, or even a home series).
If someone forced EVERYONE to work together, this doesn't have to be a death knell. Arizona State showed last year that with a decent schedule it is still possible to make the NCAAs from outside the conference structure. Home and homes among the four independents gets each team 12 games (6 H/ 6 A). That would leave UAH, UAA, UAF to schedule another 20 or so each. That's 10 2 game series times three schools, for 30 series. Divide that by the six conferences (AHA, HEA, ECAC, WCHA, NCHC, Big 10), and each conference would need to get its membership to play 5 two game sets, TOTAL, each year. And they can be evenly split, home and road. If you are a ten team conference, School A might have to host UAH in year one and go to Fairbanks in year four. And that's it. That's the commitment. That's not a huge ask.
