What changes would you make to college hockey to improve the product?
Here are 10 ideas that I would implement if I had the power:
1. Make major junior players who have played less than 20 MJ games eligible for college hockey. 95% percent of MJ players play for stipends far below the value of the financial aid college players get. Opening up the game would give more players and coaches more player development options, and I think it would improve access to talent.
Great idea, but I have trouble believing that the non-hockey NCAA establishment would go for it.
2. Move the start of the college season back to Nov. 1. The season is too long right now. Get rid of the bye weeks and keep the same number of games.
I am neutral about this. The season is too long as far as the time from first to last game, but I don't believe that the number of games should be fewer. The number of games is already used as a selling point by the Canadian major junior leagues.
3. Allow players to choose visors instead of full face masks. This would reduce stickwork and “cage courage” and allow a greater emphasis on skills.
Makes sense.
4. Reduce the number of conference games by four, thus opening up more inter-league play, which will help create less insualr schedules and a more representative NCAA tourney selection.
Not for the ECAC which is already at 22. I think that the league schedule for other leagues should be reduced.
5. While we’re on the subject of the NCAA tourney, I’d get rid of PWR and adopt KRACH as the team selection numerical reference. It’s just a better mousetrap.
I am for PWR using KRACH for the RPI component. The other factors in PWR make some sense to me, although there should not be an cliffs. If the number of conference games are reduced, the difference between the methods would be less anyway.
6. I would like to see one of the national college hockey web sites become an aggregator of internet video feeds of games around the country into a single “dashboard” – allowing fans to pay a season, monthly or daily fee to watch many college games in one place. The schools would get a cut of the money for providing the feed, and the national site could keep the rest of the money to support their operations.
Why not.
7. Cooperative scheduling would be cool to support those programs that have a hard time getting home non-league dates. In this scenario, ‘well off’ schools would offer one non-league road series to the co-op every few years to be played at schools that struggle to get home dates. The details of this would need to be worked out, but this would be a nice way helping those programs that can’t get visiting teams to travel to play them.
I don't really understand this. It would be nice if teams would be required to play some percentage of its non-league games on the road. (On the road does not include neutral-site games.)
8. Harmonize instant replay and clock standards (e.g. displaying tenths of seconds) at all D-I schools. This might be a little expensive, but it’s not good to have differing standards.
I agree both that different standards is a problem and that it might be cost-prohibitive in these times.
9. Speaking of harmonizing, I would push for a deal where the NHL would contribute up-and-coming young officials to college hockey as part of their officiating development programs, as I believe they already do with Major Junior Hockey.
A great idea. Anything to improve officiating. Of course there is the difference in rules, but a good official should be able to understand things that are different. 
10. Increase roster size to 30 players, and push the NCAA to get back to 20 scholarships per team as it was prior to the cut to 18. Teams need more depth due to the nature of the game and the length of the season.
I too would like to see the number of scholarships increased, but this may not be the time to do it. There is no reason that a team can't have a 30-man roster currently. RPI had 29 last year.
What changes would you like to see? (serious ideas preferred...)
