UNH- How Far West Do We Go?

[bakchk20]

Not sure but think Littleton's Rich Gale played for them? Pitcher who I think had a stint with the KC Royals...and the Red Sox as a pitcher and 1 year pitching coach. Fun fact..his wife who was a standout field hockey player at UNH coached me at (and always!!!) PSC ...and his dad Dr. Gale was a regular at my dad's golf course in Bethlehem..

Well, since we're doing Gale trivia, I worked for Sno.engineering in LIttleton. We purchased the Gale home & office building behind the library from Doc Gale. My office was in Rich Gale's former bedroom on the second floor, cowboy wall paper and all...

 

[HockeyRef]

Well, since we're doing Gale trivia, I worked for Sno.engineering in LIttleton. We purchased the Gale home & office building behind the library from Doc Gale. My office was in Rich Gale's former bedroom on the second floor, cowboy wall paper and all...

Wow! Talk about 6degrees of separation! Love it. Cowboy wall paper so sweet!

 

[Snively65]

Hey Snively.UNH disbanded Baseball after the 1997 season due to financial reasons. MY Dad[God rest his soul] who ran Huddelston Hall for 22 years use to go watch them quite a bit and was very pissed off when it happened.

Thanks. Time sure flies. Maybe baseball also was dropped as part of Title 9 balancing?

 

[Snively65]

Well, since we're doing Gale trivia, I worked for Sno.engineering in LIttleton. We purchased the Gale home & office building behind the library from Doc Gale. My office was in Rich Gale's former bedroom on the second floor, cowboy wall paper and all...

We probably already have covered Sno-engineering on a previous thread, but my favorite ski area always has been Cannon Mountain, which has Sel Hannah’s imprint all over the place, including the Front Five slopes that he designed in the late 1950s, with his spouse’s name on the most challenging run, Paulie’s Folly.

 

[TheGrouchyCat]

Thanks. Time sure flies. Maybe baseball also was dropped as part of Title 9 balancing?

Publicly, it was stated it was budget. The reality was it was Title IX pressure and baseball was the only men's team that could be to make parity numbers work without eliminating football or hockey.

 

[Felger]

Andy Brickley also played baseball at UNH

 

[HockeyRef]

We probably already have covered Sno-engineering on a previous thread, but my favorite ski area always has been Cannon Mountain, which has Sel Hannah’s imprint all over the place, including the Front Five slopes that he designed in the late 1950s, with his spouse’s name on the most challenging run, Paulie’s Folly.

Cool story about the Franconia connection also the Peabody family. Cannon mtn was our hill as I skied for Littleton. .now a former student is running the place. Ps..never was a fan of those slopes to the left of the Zoomer chair lol

 

[Snively65]

Cool story about the Franconia connection also the Peabody family. Cannon mtn was our hill as I skied for Littleton. .now a former student is running the place. Ps..never was a fan of those slopes to the left of the Zoomer chair lol

Those slopes are steep, which is why I like them.

 

[RENCEB]

Andy Brickley also played baseball at UNH

My late father coached Andy in Little League many years ago. Andy was a terrific all around athlete with a beautiful left handed swing.

 

[FlagUp17]

I know the conversation has been going on for a bit of time, but I heard more grumblings on how the NCAA may look to expand the hockey tournament to include more teams (maybe 24 or 32). I can’t remember how long hockey has kept it at 16 but it’s been quite a while I feel.

I understand there’s more $$$ with more teams in the show, but I really hope they keep it to 16. The more teams that get in I feel it dilutes the quality of play, and takes away from success in the RS.

At the same time maybe with an expanded playoffs UNH will have a better shot to get back to the show - it’s been nearly 13 years since our last invite to the dance (2013).

It’s probably just a matter of time though… all leagues (both professional and college) are moving in this direction. I wonder when it will actually be implemented, and what form it takes. Maybe in the next 3-5 years?

 

[Chuck Murray]

Thanks. Time sure flies. Maybe baseball also was dropped as part of Title 9 balancing?

That's how I remember it.

 

[Chuck Murray]

I know the conversation has been going on for a bit of time, but I heard more grumblings on how the NCAA may look to expand the hockey tournament to include more teams (maybe 24 or 32). I can’t remember how long hockey has kept it at 16 but it’s been quite a while I feel.

I understand there’s more $$$ with more teams in the show, but I really hope they keep it to 16. The more teams that get in I feel it dilutes the quality of play, and takes away from success in the RS.

At the same time maybe with an expanded playoffs UNH will have a better shot to get back to the show - it’s been nearly 13 years since our last invite to the dance (2013).

It’s probably just a matter of time though… all leagues (both professional and college) are moving in this direction. I wonder when it will actually be implemented, and what form it takes. Maybe in the next 3-5 years?

I'm totally in favor of leaving it alone. The conferences have been their worst enemies with their all-inclusive conference tourneys devaluing the regular season schedule enough already. UNH made it to the FF under Umile 3 out of 4 times from a 12 team field, and only in 2003 in the inaugural season of 16 teams.

Back in the College Hockey Dark Ages (CHDA), roughly coinciding with the birth of Hockey East in the mid-'80's, Coach Holt's UNH teams in the then-much-larger ECAC were making it with less than ten (10) teams in the national tourney field, sometimes with as low as 4 participants. You really had to earn it.

When you say "all leagues - pro and college - are moving in this direction" that's only partially true. On the college front, it's really only been Football that's been regularly expanding, but that has more to do with the gradual transition of the long-standing Bowl system to an actual playoffs format, so I think there have been winners and losers in that process. But having something in place to allow a National Title to be won on the field, and not as a result of some polls (which sometimes would determine multiple "winners" for the same season) is a very good thing for fans of the competitive process.

In the North American professional leagues, the NHL was the first to ever pit teams that did not win their divisional title to participate in the postseason. Of course, when there was a single "division" league throughout the Original Six era, coming up with a postseason format that didn't just pit the two top teams was probably a financial necessity. It was eventually taken to an absurd level in the '70's when they first came up with the current 16 team playoffs format, albeit when there were only 21 teams in the entire league. That's a 75%+ qualification rate, which was crazy. To their credit, it's been almost 50 years now where the NHL has kept its postseason at 16 teams, now with a total of 32 teams (50%). I give them a ton of credit for their restraint.

The NBA started post WW2 and for their first 20 years, with many teams in mid-size Rust Belt cities like Syracuse, Rochester (NY), Fort Wayne and others, plus St. Louis and Baltimore, they also went in the NHL's direction with non-divisional winners qualifying, and they too gradually got to the magic 16 teams after the ABA merger. That had been pretty steady for almost 40 years, until the pandemic drove them to the silliness of the "play in games" format they use now. But before that, they had been just over 50% qualifying (16 teams out of 30), so this 50% target figure seemed to gradually emerge at the pro level this century.

Baseball's World Series was the North American originator of postseason team sports, pitting the NL and the upstart AL (1900) champions against each other starting in 1903, and every year since except 1904 and 1994 (insert obligatory Montreal Expos whine here). That turned out to be 2 out of 16 teams for over a half century, and it wasn't until MLB expansion landed at 24 teams, including four 6 team divisions in 1969 (insert arrival of Les Expos du Montreal here), that postseason playoffs not involving a tie for the league pennant first emerged, with 4 teams out of 24 qualifying (17%). But all of the qualifiers won a division, so the phenomenon of "wild card" postseason involvement did not darken baseball's postseason format until 1995 (the year after the strike/another Expos whine) when both leagues went to 3 divisions, with the divisional winners plus the single WC qualifying (8 teams). In the 21st century, without Montreal to kick around anymore, half of the now 12 post-season berths are now via WC. I don't follow MLB anymore. I'll let you folks speculate as to why not lol.

Finally, come on down NFL. They used to have the absolute best system in pro sports, period end of sentence. Initially, in the NFL it was like MLB, you win your division, you go directly to the NFL Championship game (1933-1965). Then came the AFL merger, first put into place with the NFL adding 10 AFL teams in 1970 to create six divisions, three per league. Enter the "wild card", which was so poorly defined initially that they didn't come up with tiebreakers until after a near catastrophe was avoided in December 1970 when the Giants got trounced by the mutinous LA Rams 31-3 on Week 14 to allow Dallas (who would have lost the division on tiebreakers to NYG) to slide into first, and face the wild card Lions, who fittingly lost a 5-0 (!) barnburner to "Next Year's Champions", who of course would win the NFC but then lose to the Baltimore Colts in SB5. At least this time around, Dallas did prove to be "Next Year's Champions" at last when they trounced upstart Miami in SB6 at the end of the 1971 season. A single wild card was sufficient for a long long time ... but the NFL, whose greed knows no bounds, now has six wild cards and eight division winners, making it 14 teams in the postseason out of 32 overall teams (44%). Bleccccch ...

TRIVIA QUESTION: In the 25 year "Original Six" era NHL playoffs, the #1 RS finisher would face the #3 RS finisher, and the #2 RS finisher would face the #4 RS finisher to determine who advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals. Did the #4 seed ever win the Cup in that era? How many times did the #3 seed win the Cup?

 

[Robert Balin]

I'm totally in favor of leaving it alone. The conferences have been their worst enemies with their all-inclusive conference tourneys devaluing the regular season schedule enough already. UNH made it to the FF under Umile 3 out of 4 times from a 12 team field, and only in 2003 in the inaugural season of 16 teams.

Back in the College Hockey Dark Ages (CHDA), roughly coinciding with the birth of Hockey East in the mid-'80's, Coach Holt's UNH teams in the then-much-larger ECAC were making it with less than ten (10) teams in the national tourney field, sometimes with as low as 4 participants. You really had to earn it.

When you say "all leagues - pro and college - are moving in this direction" that's only partially true. On the college front, it's really only been Football that's been regularly expanding, but that has more to do with the gradual transition of the long-standing Bowl system to an actual playoffs format, so I think there have been winners and losers in that process. But having something in place to allow a National Title to be won on the field, and not as a result of some polls (which sometimes would determine multiple "winners" for the same season) is a very good thing for fans of the competitive process.

In the North American professional leagues, the NHL was the first to ever pit teams that did not win their divisional title to participate in the postseason. Of course, when there was a single "division" league throughout the Original Six era, coming up with a postseason format that didn't just pit the two top teams was probably a financial necessity. It was eventually taken to an absurd level in the '70's when they first came up with the current 16 team playoffs format, albeit when there were only 21 teams in the entire league. That's a 75%+ qualification rate, which was crazy. To their credit, it's been almost 50 years now where the NHL has kept its postseason at 16 teams, now with a total of 32 teams (50%). I give them a ton of credit for their restraint.

The NBA started post WW2 and for their first 20 years, with many teams in mid-size Rust Belt cities like Syracuse, Rochester (NY), Fort Wayne and others, plus St. Louis and Baltimore, they also went in the NHL's direction with non-divisional winners qualifying, and they too gradually got to the magic 16 teams after the ABA merger. That had been pretty steady for almost 40 years, until the pandemic drove them to the silliness of the "play in games" format they use now. But before that, they had been just over 50% qualifying (16 teams out of 30), so this 50% target figure seemed to gradually emerge at the pro level this century.

Baseball's World Series was the North American originator of postseason team sports, pitting the NL and the upstart AL (1900) champions against each other starting in 1903, and every year since except 1904 and 1994 (insert obligatory Montreal Expos whine here). That turned out to be 2 out of 16 teams for over a half century, and it wasn't until MLB expansion landed at 24 teams, including four 6 team divisions in 1969 (insert arrival of Les Expos du Montreal here), that postseason playoffs not involving a tie for the league pennant first emerged, with 4 teams out of 24 qualifying (17%). But all of the qualifiers won a division, so the phenomenon of "wild card" postseason involvement did not darken baseball's postseason format until 1995 (the year after the strike/another Expos whine) when both leagues went to 3 divisions, with the divisional winners plus the single WC qualifying (8 teams). In the 21st century, without Montreal to kick around anymore, half of the now 12 post-season berths are now via WC. I don't follow MLB anymore. I'll let you folks speculate as to why not lol.

Finally, come on down NFL. They used to have the absolute best system in pro sports, period end of sentence. Initially, in the NFL it was like MLB, you win your division, you go directly to the NFL Championship game (1933-1965). Then came the AFL merger, first put into place with the NFL adding 10 AFL teams in 1970 to create six divisions, three per league. Enter the "wild card", which was so poorly defined initially that they didn't come up with tiebreakers until after a near catastrophe was avoided in December 1970 when the Giants got trounced by the mutinous LA Rams 31-3 on Week 14 to allow Dallas (who would have lost the division on tiebreakers to NYG) to slide into first, and face the wild card Lions, who fittingly lost a 5-0 (!) barnburner to "Next Year's Champions", who of course would win the NFC but then lose to the Baltimore Colts in SB5. At least this time around, Dallas did prove to be "Next Year's Champions" at last when they trounced upstart Miami in SB6 at the end of the 1971 season. A single wild card was sufficient for a long long time ... but the NFL, whose greed knows no bounds, now has six wild cards and eight division winners, making it 14 teams in the postseason out of 32 overall teams (44%). Bleccccch ...

TRIVIA QUESTION: In the 25 year "Original Six" era NHL playoffs, the #1 RS finisher would face the #3 RS finisher, and the #2 RS finisher would face the #4 RS finisher to determine who advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals. Did the #4 seed ever win the Cup in that era? How many times did the #3 seed win the Cup?

The number 4 seed never won. The 3 seed won 3 times. Toronto in 1949 and 1967 and Chicago in 1961.

 

[FlagUp17]

I'm totally in favor of leaving it alone. The conferences have been their worst enemies with their all-inclusive conference tourneys devaluing the regular season schedule enough already. UNH made it to the FF under Umile 3 out of 4 times from a 12 team field, and only in 2003 in the inaugural season of 16 teams.

Back in the College Hockey Dark Ages (CHDA), roughly coinciding with the birth of Hockey East in the mid-'80's, Coach Holt's UNH teams in the then-much-larger ECAC were making it with less than ten (10) teams in the national tourney field, sometimes with as low as 4 participants. You really had to earn it.

When you say "all leagues - pro and college - are moving in this direction" that's only partially true. On the college front, it's really only been Football that's been regularly expanding, but that has more to do with the gradual transition of the long-standing Bowl system to an actual playoffs format, so I think there have been winners and losers in that process. But having something in place to allow a National Title to be won on the field, and not as a result of some polls (which sometimes would determine multiple "winners" for the same season) is a very good thing for fans of the competitive process.

In the North American professional leagues, the NHL was the first to ever pit teams that did not win their divisional title to participate in the postseason. Of course, when there was a single "division" league throughout the Original Six era, coming up with a postseason format that didn't just pit the two top teams was probably a financial necessity. It was eventually taken to an absurd level in the '70's when they first came up with the current 16 team playoffs format, albeit when there were only 21 teams in the entire league. That's a 75%+ qualification rate, which was crazy. To their credit, it's been almost 50 years now where the NHL has kept its postseason at 16 teams, now with a total of 32 teams (50%). I give them a ton of credit for their restraint.

The NBA started post WW2 and for their first 20 years, with many teams in mid-size Rust Belt cities like Syracuse, Rochester (NY), Fort Wayne and others, plus St. Louis and Baltimore, they also went in the NHL's direction with non-divisional winners qualifying, and they too gradually got to the magic 16 teams after the ABA merger. That had been pretty steady for almost 40 years, until the pandemic drove them to the silliness of the "play in games" format they use now. But before that, they had been just over 50% qualifying (16 teams out of 30), so this 50% target figure seemed to gradually emerge at the pro level this century.

Baseball's World Series was the North American originator of postseason team sports, pitting the NL and the upstart AL (1900) champions against each other starting in 1903, and every year since except 1904 and 1994 (insert obligatory Montreal Expos whine here). That turned out to be 2 out of 16 teams for over a half century, and it wasn't until MLB expansion landed at 24 teams, including four 6 team divisions in 1969 (insert arrival of Les Expos du Montreal here), that postseason playoffs not involving a tie for the league pennant first emerged, with 4 teams out of 24 qualifying (17%). But all of the qualifiers won a division, so the phenomenon of "wild card" postseason involvement did not darken baseball's postseason format until 1995 (the year after the strike/another Expos whine) when both leagues went to 3 divisions, with the divisional winners plus the single WC qualifying (8 teams). In the 21st century, without Montreal to kick around anymore, half of the now 12 post-season berths are now via WC. I don't follow MLB anymore. I'll let you folks speculate as to why not lol.

Finally, come on down NFL. They used to have the absolute best system in pro sports, period end of sentence. Initially, in the NFL it was like MLB, you win your division, you go directly to the NFL Championship game (1933-1965). Then came the AFL merger, first put into place with the NFL adding 10 AFL teams in 1970 to create six divisions, three per league. Enter the "wild card", which was so poorly defined initially that they didn't come up with tiebreakers until after a near catastrophe was avoided in December 1970 when the Giants got trounced by the mutinous LA Rams 31-3 on Week 14 to allow Dallas (who would have lost the division on tiebreakers to NYG) to slide into first, and face the wild card Lions, who fittingly lost a 5-0 (!) barnburner to "Next Year's Champions", who of course would win the NFC but then lose to the Baltimore Colts in SB5. At least this time around, Dallas did prove to be "Next Year's Champions" at last when they trounced upstart Miami in SB6 at the end of the 1971 season. A single wild card was sufficient for a long long time ... but the NFL, whose greed knows no bounds, now has six wild cards and eight division winners, making it 14 teams in the postseason out of 32 overall teams (44%). Bleccccch ...

TRIVIA QUESTION: In the 25 year "Original Six" era NHL playoffs, the #1 RS finisher would face the #3 RS finisher, and the #2 RS finisher would face the #4 RS finisher to determine who advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals. Did the #4 seed ever win the Cup in that era? How many times did the #3 seed win the Cup?

Thanks for all this great info! I agree with your sentiment on the professional leagues, albeit I would not be surprised if the NHL does look to expand their playoffs soon with the continued expansion of additional teams in recent years (LV, Seattle, likely more to come soon, etc).

College basketball also expanded to 68 teams in 2011 with The play in games. I think there has been interest in expanding that as well. A 68 team tourney is HUGE but there are also a ton more college basketball programs vs hockey. Maybe one day UNH will finally get over the hump and make it to that dance with their basketball program, albeit in the fairly weak AE they will likely need to go the route of the auto bid conference championship.

College hockey I feel is pretty good with 16, as usually only one or two from the top 16 ranked don’t make the playoffs due to the auto bid for Atlantic Hockey. It gets a lot more difficult on selection day for college football and basketball… and usually lots of wails from the independent teams who don’t have a conference championship/auto-bid they can flaunt to get in.

 

[Jacob0804]

A former coworker played baseball at UNH. LHP out of Penacook I believe it was, Jon Gilbert. I think he graduated in '86.

 

[Chuck Murray]

Thanks for all this great info! I agree with your sentiment on the professional leagues, albeit I would not be surprised if the NHL does look to expand their playoffs soon with the continued expansion of additional teams in recent years (LV, Seattle, likely more to come soon, etc).

College basketball also expanded to 68 teams in 2011 with The play in games. I think there has been interest in expanding that as well. A 68 team tourney is HUGE but there are also a ton more college basketball programs vs hockey. Maybe one day UNH will finally get over the hump and make it to that dance with their basketball program, albeit in the fairly weak AE they will likely need to go the route of the auto bid conference championship.

College hockey I feel is pretty good with 16, as usually only one or two from the top 16 ranked don’t make the playoffs due to the auto bid for Atlantic Hockey. It gets a lot more difficult on selection day for college football and basketball… and usually lots of wails from the independent teams who don’t have a conference championship/auto-bid they can flaunt to get in.

I'm actually hoping the pro leagues are stuck close to where they are for a long time. I don't think it's a coincidence that all four league currently stand at between 30-32 teams apiece. The NBA and NHL would struggle with further expansion to walk the fine balance between getting every team into every arena at least once per season, and having enough divisional/conference games to feed rivalries, and make the regular season at least feel relevant.

The NFL and MLB are already butting up against those issues - the NFL due to its short 17 (!) game schedule, and MLB due to its long-standing, game every day, and 3 game RS series model. They've given up the idea of getting to an NBA/NFL RS model, but at some point there may need to be a second tier in some of these leagues IF they push expansion too far. See England, and 92 league clubs spread across 4 tiers, with promotion and relegation in full force. Try telling a new franchise owner who's sinking billions into his franchise that if his team stinks badly enough, you are out of the running for the Super Bowl as you battle the perennial smaller market also-rans for promotion ... it gets very complicated. I'm glad I probably won't live long enough to see that train wreck!