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RPI 2023-24: In Our 200th Year, We're Getting It Right

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Been a season ticket holder for about 35 years. I do not expect miracles. What I expect is good, competitive hockey. When Covid hit, I subscribed to ESPN+ and still do and watch away games as well. I thought this weekend they showed improvement. More consistent play and willingness to go to the dirty areas.

I think there are a lot of factors in the poor attendance: we do not live in a hockey hotbed like Boston or Minnesota. The River Rats/Devils could not make a go of it here. And there are more things to do here versus where Clarkson, SLU, North Dakota, etc.. And it’s time to move on from Covid and Shirley. The days when I would watch the news and see the students camping out in line in front of the fieldhouse to get tickets are long gone.

What will bring more people to games is a team that is competitive with the rest of college hockey. Hopefully the improvement I saw this weekend will translate to more wins and no blowouts when they lose. I think thinking the
 
Hey Ralph I have a suggestion for the next thread "RPI The Excuse of the Week Club"...A Compilation of what We can't do and who's fault it is. I'll do the first post We can't recruit great players because our locker room isn't a nice as Quinnipiacs and its Bob Ducattes fault and of course COVID !
 
troyboy said:
Hey Ralph I have a suggestion for the next thread "RPI The Excuse of the Week Club"...A Compilation of what We can't do and who's fault it is. I'll do the first post We can't recruit great players because our locker room isn't a nice as Quinnipiacs and its Bob Ducattes fault and of course COVID !
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My suggestion bro for a new thread title:
RPI Hockey 2023 -24: Beam Us Up Captain Kirk (McDonald)
 
troyboy said:
Hey Ralph I have a suggestion for the next thread "RPI The Excuse of the Week Club"...A Compilation of what We can't do and whose fault it is. I'll do the first post We can't recruit great players because our locker room isn't a nice as Quinnipiacs and its Bob Ducattes fault and of course COVID !
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I’ll do the second post we can’t beat ranked teams cause our concession stand is outdated and we had covid 3.5 years ago and it’s Shirley’s fault.
 
Engineers said:
Please beam us up to Captain Kirk McDonald the sooner the better.
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I would love to see an alum behind the bench. It would be great for the team and for recruiting to see that kind of loyalty to the program.
My first choice would be Oates. (what is he doing now?).
But Smith will be here for the rest of the year, so lets see where we go from here. We all want the same thing. A competitive team that wins enough to get to Lake Placid and to the big dance.
It has been way to long.
 
engineerhockeyfan said:
I would love to see an alum behind the bench. It would be great for the team and for recruiting to see that kind of loyalty to the program.
My first choice would be Oates. (what is he doing now?).
But Smith will be here for the rest of the year, so lets see where we go from here. We all want the same thing. A competitive team that wins enough to get to Lake Placid and to the big dance.
It has been way to long.
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Oates consults and works with NHL / pro players on faceoffs, situational play etc... (he was pictured this summer after a session with Crosby). I doubt he'd be interested in late night bus trips or driving through snowstorms on recruiting trips.

Smitty is under contract through '26-'27 season. Do we think RPI would be willing to eat the balance of the contract ? ( I honestly have no idea if they would or not...)
 
Wicked Slappaahs said:
Oates consults and works with NHL / pro players on faceoffs, situational play etc... (he was pictured this summer after a session with Crosby). I doubt he'd be interested in late night bus trips or driving through snowstorms on recruiting trips.

Smitty is under contract through '26-'27 season. Do we think RPI would be willing to eat the balance of the contract ? ( I honestly have no idea if they would or not...)
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In my opinion, Smith's fate will be decided by how the team does the rest of the season. If they continue improving as they have done the last two weeks he will stay. I don't think we had much of a chance of winning any of the other games besides for Union in Troy, SLU, and Princeton. (And a split in the North Country is better than many very good RPI teams have done.)

I agree that Oates is unlikely to be interested in becoming RPI's coach.
 
Ralph Baer said:
In my opinion, Smith's fate will be decided by how the team does the rest of the season. If they continue improving as they have done the last two weeks he will stay. I don't think we had much of a chance of winning any of the other games besides for Union in Troy, SLU, and Princeton. (And a split in the North Country is better than many very good RPI teams have done.)

I agree that Oates is unlikely to be interested in becoming RPI's coach.
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Uh Oh !!!! I think Ralph has been day drinking. Not having "much of a chance of winning any of the other games" is the whole point !
 
Ralph Baer said:
IMO, winning will get us better players.
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Obviously! But I wonder if winning will make much of an impact upon increasing attendance at the games. Perhaps we could try buy one and get one free for tickets, or but tickets to 2 games and get a third free? There are a lot of reasons for the precipitous drop in attendance which we all have alluded to here in the past but the number of fans in the stands for the men's games is fast approaching the number for the women's games.
 
DrDemento said:
Obviously! But I wonder if winning will make much of an impact upon increasing attendance at the games. Perhaps we could try buy one and get one free for tickets, or but tickets to 2 games and get a third free? There are a lot of reasons for the precipitous drop in attendance which we all have alluded to here in the past but the number of fans in the stands for the men's games is fast approaching the number for the women's games.
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I think attendance has been going down since the Fridgen era and has been due to many factors -- winning certainly a major one. The changing demography of the student body is another.
 
Attendance for college sports in general has been declining for quite a while. College football has seen a steady year over year drop for the last decade. It has fallen to levels not seen since I was in school. Between the availability of television, the time and cost of attendance and changing interest patterns (how many students would rather play or watch eSports?) even large programs have seen the pattern. Winning, however, definitely helps to mitigate some of the impact and we certainly could use some of that.

As for booing the coach, I don't see the point. He's not going anywhere during the season. Personally, I think he took a gamble this year that didn't pay off and he may pay for it in the spring, but until then I would hope we'd support the program. We talk about the difficulty of Seth's schedules, but I don't think even he took on a schedule that started with a month of road games, almost all against ranked competition or very difficult (e.g. the North Country) trips. Ten of the first semester games have been against teams in the top 25 of the pairwise and we are 1-8-1 during those games. We only have 3 games (2xCornell and Q) remaining at that level. Let's see what happens. With one notable exception we've seen improved play over the last 3 weekends. Let's see if we can be competitive in our league over the second half and then our new Institute and AD leaders can decide, undoubtedly with lobbying from alums and fans, what changes (staff, facilities and other program support) are required.
 
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engineerhockeyfan said:
I would love to see an alum behind the bench. It would be great for the team and for recruiting to see that kind of loyalty to the program.
My first choice would be Oates. (what is he doing now?).
But Smith will be here for the rest of the year, so lets see where we go from here. We all want the same thing. A competitive team that wins enough to get to Lake Placid and to the big dance.
It has been way too long.
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It definitely has been a long time. Oates would be amazing but that’s never going to happen. I think it’s a no brainer with mcdonald. We still have to suffer through another 20+ loss season this year but who knows maybe the stars will align and we start winning which is what we all want. I would love nothing more than a competitive team that gets to lake placid fairly often.
 
Ralph Baer said:
IMO, winning will get us better players.
Click to expand...

College sports recruiting landscape has been changed by the NIL situation and new transfer rules. There may be opportunity if schools can figure out how it can work with hockey--since it is a niche sport, it is not going to generate the money seen by football and basketball players. Even the big hockey programs haven't seemed to unlock significant $ yet, but it is going to be a factor going forward as schools look to create recruiting advantage. RPI is going to need to grapple with NIL going forward--and that can be awkward institutionally.
 
DrDemento said:
Obviously! But I wonder if winning will make much of an impact upon increasing attendance at the games. Perhaps we could try buy one and get one free for tickets, or but tickets to 2 games and get a third free? There are a lot of reasons for the precipitous drop in attendance which we all have alluded to here in the past but the number of fans in the stands for the men's games is fast approaching the number for the women's games.
Click to expand...

Visiting some other rinks gives a sense of how far behind HFH is, especially with things like concessions, restrooms, promotions, and the overall "fan experience." The ticket package ideas are a start. At this stage I can't help but think that the condition of HFH itself has an adverse impact on attendance. But there is a committee looking at that. I'd encourage the administration to consider selling beer at the games. Plenty of other rinks now do, and I think they would do a brisk business at the Field House, especially if they partnered with Brown's, Fort Orange, Nine Pin, or other local operations. In terms of students, I'm not sure what happened to the Red Army but I think reviving that would be in order. It wasn't that long ago that a lot more students were interested in hockey. On the other hand, a look at our team history shows just two winning seasons in the last decade, and a grand total of six winning seasons since 2003-04, when many of today's students were born. This has been a long, rough road for us diehards.

The marketing and media coverage of the program have really dropped off in recent years. There used to be radio ads for upcoming games/tickets but I haven't heard those in years. TV news coverage is spotty at best. Sometimes games get highlights on TV or at least the scores are reported, but often there's no mention at all (for either of the market's two D-1 hockey teams). The TU has greatly cut back their coverage in recent years as well. Meanwhile there is truckloads of coverage for anything football, basketball, or lacrosse-related on their side of the river. Tough to grow the fan base with the performance of the last two decades, pandemic, facility, and lack of advertising/media coverage.
 
vicious said:
Visiting some other rinks gives a sense of how far behind HFH is, especially with things like concessions, restrooms, promotions, and the overall "fan experience." The ticket package ideas are a start. At this stage I can't help but think that the condition of HFH itself has an adverse impact on attendance. But there is a committee looking at that. I'd encourage the administration to consider selling beer at the games. Plenty of other rinks now do, and I think they would do a brisk business at the Field House, especially if they partnered with Brown's, Fort Orange, Nine Pin, or other local operations. In terms of students, I'm not sure what happened to the Red Army but I think reviving that would be in order. It wasn't that long ago that a lot more students were interested in hockey. On the other hand, a look at our team history shows just two winning seasons in the last decade, and a grand total of six winning seasons since 2003-04, when many of today's students were born. This has been a long, rough road for us diehards.

The marketing and media coverage of the program have really dropped off in recent years. There used to be radio ads for upcoming games/tickets but I haven't heard those in years. TV news coverage is spotty at best. Sometimes games get highlights on TV or at least the scores are reported, but often there's no mention at all (for either of the market's two D-1 hockey teams). The TU has greatly cut back their coverage in recent years as well. Meanwhile there is truckloads of coverage for anything football, basketball, or lacrosse-related on their side of the river. Tough to grow the fan base with the performance of the last two decades, pandemic, facility, and lack of advertising/media coverage.
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I agree with much of this. I've gone back and forth on this over the years, but if RPI is intent on restoring the hockey programs to competitive prominence, then I think a new building is needed. If we are talking about the future i.e. the next 10, 20, 30 years then putting more lipstick on HFH is not going to work, IMO. I sure as heck love the old barn, but she's showing her age... I suppose a creative reimagining is a possibility, but you are still talking about a full interior gut -- ice sheet, boards/glass, seating, new concessions, restrooms, etc. etc.

As much as I gripe about Rodger Wyland, CH. 13 does always do weekend preview pieces with Smith and covers the home games with footage, etc. The T/U is a shell of its former self...The Gazette is a far better paper on all fronts, but sadly Ken Schott can't be in two places at the same time....
 
Wicked Slappaahs said:
I agree with much of this. I've gone back and forth on this over the years, but if RPI is intent on restoring the hockey programs to competitive prominence, then I think a new building is needed. If we are talking about the future i.e. the next 10, 20, 30 years then putting more lipstick on HFH is not going to work, IMO. I sure as heck love the old barn, but she's showing her age... I suppose a creative reimagining is a possibility, but you are still talking about a full interior gut -- ice sheet, boards/glass, seating, new concessions, restrooms, etc. etc.
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I would like to see HFH survive and be refurbished, but I agree that it would require a complete gut renovation in order to be done right, which might mean a new building is the better option from a cost and logistics perspective.
 
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