Re: Year One of the Nacho--Likes & Dislikes?
You must not be able to count.
NCHC got 3 in, WCHA 2.
Butthurt because the WCHA landed just as many teams in the Tourney as the NCHC? Nah... ****ty nonconference w/l will do that to you...
And, wow, had UAA taken Ferris down, and gotten MSU on a 'bad' night(not likely), the WCHA has 3 teams going and ND might not have made it at all...
Yeah, if you really want to go down the "woulda coulda shoulda" road, here we go. Had the WCHA not suffered the realignment that just went down, Minnesota, Wisconsin, St.Cloud, North Dakota and Mankato would have fought it out for the championship. UNO and UMD fighting somewhere in the middle of that. So all of the great nWCHA teams outside of Mankato would have been on the road in the first round and likely lost.
Put the NCHC and nWCHA together and you would have had SCSU, North Dakota, Ferris and Mankato battling for the top spot. And again, UNO and UMD close behind. And in a normal year, Miami is up there right on top as well. Once again leaving the rest of the nWCHA on the road in the first round of the conference playoffs and irrelevant as usual.
And yes, I know SCSU wasn't on the original invite list for the NCHC. That's fine, drop us into the nWCHA and they are in a three way fight with Ferris and Mankato. I would have liked their odds in that. What would have held them back would be long-term recruiting in the smaller league vs. what they can bring in being associated with the NCHC schools.
FWIW, I've been watching all three leagues that have come out of the realignment, particularly the NCHC and nWCHA as the two team B1G is of the least interest. NCHC was tight from top to bottom as expected. And it was really fun watching the nWCHA as the parity in that league brought excitement to a bunch of schools that hadn't seen much success recently. Really don't see Mankato fans complaining about realignment, just the rest of the perennial cellar dwellers of the oWCHA. Want to talk ****ty non-conference W/L? How does nWCHA's 4-14-6 against the NCHC grab you?
I'd say schedule a tournament between the NCHC and the nWCHA but that wouldn't do anything for NCHC schools PWR outside of the ones who would get to play Ferris and Mankato.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming in the real world.