WCHA, Big Ten and NCHC Conference Tournaments in the same city?
I know a lot of us on the board have noticed, and lamented, this years attendance at the B1G Hockey Championship Finals. Well there is an interesting idea being floated out there to get the old gang back together again.... at least for the Championship Weekend. I think it's a fantastic idea!
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/03/20/wcha-pushing-to-team-with-big…
For those needing a friendly reminder of what teams ended up in what conference:
http://www.uscho.com/standings/division-i-men/2015-2016/
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Was covered on the front page in the hockey post
Just logged on and didn't get a chance to read the front page. Sorry guys, feel like an ass. Will show myself out.
Just read it.... And agree with assessment. The higher seed should have home ice advantage.... and that would go a long way towards taking care of attendance issues. I reserve the right to change my opinion.
While I like the idea a lot, you have to take into considertion the source. Of Course it could not be in the Twin Cities every year... a rotation would seem logical. Okay, now I'll leave.
So instead of having a date with one ugly girl with bad breath, you get dates with three ugly girls with bad breath. Progress!
Detroit is building a new arena and Olympia has already stated they want to host the B1G tourney on a regular basis. We have two teams right next to Detroit and OSU and PSU are also closer. That's 4-2 in our favor and I hope the ADs are not stupid enough to allow Minnesota to steal this tourney.
BTW, the arena is going up fast. They already started working on the roofing structure.
The leadership of the Big Ten is DEFINITELY stupid enough to sell our souls to Minnesota. College Hockey has a raging boner for MSP probably because it's the only neutral site that even remotely sells.
So instead of looking at campus sites with 90+ percent capacity every night, we cling desperately to the only neutral site that sells tickets because we have a huge hard-on for neutral sites
That's why the CCHA tourney was the best of both worlds. First round and quarterfinals were a best of three on campus sites with the semifinals and championship game at the Joe. I just don't understand why we needed to create a Big Ten hockey conference. Penn State could have joined the CCHA or Hockey East. There was no need to destroy tradition to create something to benefit a new team. It would have made sense if there was 3 or 4 more B1G teams coming on board, but I just don't see that happening any time soon.
Just watched the WCHA final in Grand Rapids over the weekend. I think the B1G could sell out Van Andel, where the Grand Rapids Griffins play.
Ferris State played in their conference championship game in Grand Rapids Saturday night. How many locals with no ties to Ferris State ventured to the game? Doubt you see many people going to other conference games either. Heck how many people with tickets to both semi final games showed up for the first game when the winner played possibly their team in finals?
I've been to a number of NCAA events in basketball, hockey, and baseball, and nobody (myself excluded) goes to the other games. It seems insane to me that people pass up sitting around watching sporting events they've already paid for, but it definitely turns out I'm the crazy one because nobody does it.
The same has held true even for non-tournament events that are allowed to sell booze. SC/UCLA play baseball at Dodger Stadium every year while also hosting two out of town teams for kind of a round-robin weekend (the other two teams play at SC/UCLA Friday and Saturday, then play each other at Dodger Stadium before the SC/UCLA game). Last year TCU and Vanderbilt both had a decent turnout for their final game and virtually all of them were gone by the time SC and UCLA started.
"Ruined" hockey. Mankato still draws 4000 fans regularly, even against teams like Bowling Green. Do you live in the state? I live in Duluth, and they are doing fine.
Now, it is unquestionably a hit to teams like Mankato and Northern and Ferris that their top draws annually (Minnesota, or Michigan/MSU) aren't on the schedule anymore. But while those games provided a higher floor for the attention a season got, they also provided a firm ceiling. Mankato had its best season ever after Minnesota left, and teams like Tech and Bowling Green have shown renewed life in the new environment.
The conference tournaments are a big loss; they aren't coming back to what they were. But that is only one element of what makes up the sport, not the whole thing.
Disagree. It isn't ruined; the postseason has always been a cluster. It just happened that there was a Minnesota conference (WCHA) and a Michigan conference (CCHA) where most everyone could make it to the tournament in less than 5-6 hours.
MSU and Wisconsin are "ruining" Big Ten hockey by not attempting to field competitive programs. Anastos is terrible and Mike Eaves has been as bad or worse for as long as Anastos and finally got fired this weekend; he only lasted because he had previous success there before things fell off the cliff.
I enjoy playing the Big Ten hockey schools. I enjoy watching them on BTN while living in Washington DC instead of having to stream FSD. It's not the Big Ten's fault that Wisconsin and MSU are as terrible as they've ever been. This should be a 3-5 bid league every year. Should...
As for consideration of the old WCHA and CCHA schools...tough shit, and that's coming from someone who used to work at the CCHA. I love playing Ferris and Lake State and Northern and ND but change happens. Those smaller programs leftover didn't die off and nobody was starting up new D1 hockey programs before the reorganization. Now we have some serious activity there on multiple fronts.
While I agree the attendance at the conference tournaments needs to be fixed, it wasn't Big Ten that ruined them. It's just dumb to have a neutral site tournament with this large of a geographic spread for college hockey.
Even if MSU and Wisconsin get good again, we still play the same schools over and over again. We need more big ten programs if we're going to do this.
Duluth made it as an at-large at 18-15-5 and Miami was within sniffing distance at 15-18-3. The ratings recognize good leagues. If MSU and Wisconsin started trying again, the Big Ten could be a 3-4 bid league. Five is a big stretch unless the whole league just wipes people out in the non-con
but the WCHA dismantled the WCHA. No one forced them to disband. The WCHA likes to talk out of both sides of their mouth on this one.
- Wisconsin and Minnesota are worthless, crappy teams who we will not miss and belong in the crappy Big Ten
- Wisconsin and Minnesota leaving destroyed our league because we couldn't survive without them
The WCHA could've kept the gang and added two teams (like Miami, Western, etc) and they would've still been the most powerful conference in the west and the CCHA could've been a mid-major league. The NCHC blew everything to hell by pirating the best halves of the CCHA and WCHA and leaving the remainder to live in a shell of the former-WCHA
should we give Minnesota home Ice every year.?....NO NO NO...Big Ten needs to move it to campus arenas with the top seed hosting....DUH
Not a fan. Why overthink it? Play it at the higher seed's rink.
Play on home ice. Fans are already there! It awards the higher seeded team in a sport filled with randomness everywhere!
One top of that, for an away game I'd rather travel to one of the great Big Ten campus towns than Minneapolis EVERY year. I'll never travel to MSP for a Big Ten hockey championship. I would travel to Ann Arbor for a first round or another school for the championship series.
Home ice!
Home ice!
Home ice!
So simple. Exclamation point.
I assume they have to pay the venue that's hosting it and there should be some additional costs as well. This feels more tone-deaf than the CFP continuing to schedule the semi-finals on New Years Eve.
A hockey championship should be played in the center of the big ten footprint in Detroit if not at campus sites. Minneapolis is like 600 miles from 4 of the 6 teams in the conference.
Indy has no ice hockey programs remotely close. Detroit is within a 3 hour drive of half of the conference.
Illinois doesn't have a team so Chicago makes zero sense. We saw how much they cared about college hockey when we played those outdoor games at Soldier Field.
If the cIty/venue is paying huge dollars to the conference AND you are a conference official who gets a portion of those dollars. See also, Rutgers,
Jim Delaney has a hard on for huge arenas/stadiums. The baseball thing is in Nebraska and Minnesota in huge stadiums where 3/4th the conference can't get there without hopping onto to a plane. Put these things in Grand Rapids/Toledo or on campus.
First time post, lifelong hockey fan. Love this Blog.
I live in Minnesota have no ties to any teams and choose to go to the NCHC tournament instead of the B10 tournament becuase there were better teams. That's it, the NCHC tournament was a better brand of hockey.
In the forceeable future I don't see the B10 hockey conference tournament generating a large turnout no matter the venue or site. Wherever you host the tournament Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin it doesn't matter because the bottom line is the B10 is a poor hockey conference and other than the host site fans very few others will travel to watch watered down hockey. Hockey already has a small following, college hockey even smaller and the performance from B10 conference from top to bottom this year was pathetic.
The B10 might be the 4th best conference (Out of 6), maaaybe 4th. Breaking up the WCHA & CCHA was a terrible idea and has hurt the teams leaving their conferences. Wisconsin fires coach, Minnesota can't recruit to the level they once could and Lucia is on his way out the door. Terrible for the players, fans and everyone that actually cares about the college game.
League champion was .500 and only one at-large. The only league worse is obviously Atlantic Hockey which couldn't even get a team with a shiny record like Robert Morris into the tournament as an at-large
You are forgetting the WCHA. According to Massey's rating system (a pretty good one, but use your own if you don't agree), the WCHA had 4 teams actually worse than a terrible Wisconsin team, and the top 4 Big Ten teams came in ahead of everybody except Michigan Tech:
8-Michigan
15-Minnesota
16-Michigan Tech
21-Penn State
22-Ohio State
23-Minnesota-Mankato
27-Ferris State
28-Bowling Green
30-Bemidji State
34-Michigan State
36-Northern Michigan
37-Wisconsin
44-Lake Superior
50-Alaska
53-Alabama-Huntsville
54-Alaska-Anchorage
If you were just comparing the top 6 of the WCHA to the Big Ten, you might be able to convince a few people that the WCHA is better. But tack on the bottom 4 of the WCHA, and it's no contest. That league has some awful, awful teams.
I was just thinking of the top where MSU-M, Tech, Bowling Green and Ferris were all mildly good. Forgot about the deadweight at the bottom in fact I totally forgot Huntsville was in that league - glad they're still afloat
Which reminds me, one program which can thank the Big Ten in a big way is Huntsville. The shuffling allowed them to find a conference home. They were not going to last much longer as an independent
I think they need to try something as attendance at the B1G tourney finals was terrible. Kind of embarrassing to see so many empty seats at those games. I could see this being a big draw for college hockey fans. Keep a super ticket reasonable and people might bounce around and see a lot of games and help fill the arenas.