Tougher By The Dozen

Non-conference ECAC vs. ECAC games solve more problems than they cause

May 17, 2007

By Elliot Olshansky

CSTV.com


	ELLIOT OLSHANSKY Elliot is CSTV.com's hockey editor and runs his Rink Rat hockey blog on CSTV.com. E-mail here!

Less than six weeks have passed since Michigan State defeated Boston College to win the NCAA championship, but naturally, college hockey fans' eyes are firmly focused on the season ahead. Which players will still be at which schools, and which will go on to the pros? Perhaps more importantly, which of those players and schools will take the ice against one another?

As teams around the country slowly begin to release their 2007-08 schedules, the most interesting part is the non-conference portion of the slate. With the exception of CCHA scheduling clusters, most league slates aren't much of a mystery. The greater question is what new and exciting matchups will fans get to see, and while rumors leak out here and there about various arrangements that have been made, many fans are left waiting for the official word.

In ECAC Hockey, though, those words involve a surprising number of intra-conference matchups in non-conference play. A total of eight teams - two-thirds of the league membership - will play one another in non-conference action this season.

While that may seem to spoil the fun of non-conference play, the truth is that many of those games come by necessity. With half of the ECAC Hockey membership comprised of Ivy League schools - and unable to start play until the last weekend in October - the league plays a 22-game conference schedule, and schools like St. Lawrence, Colgate and Quinnipiac regularly have 12 open dates to fill. That's twice as many as is normal for teams in the CCHA, WCHA and Atlantic Hockey, and 50 percent more than those CCHA and WCHA teams who play NCAA-exempt games at Alaska and Alaska-Anchorage.

With that kind of numbers crunch it's not hard to see why an extra game or two against a conference rival pops up on the schedule.

"The way the landscape is in college hockey today," ECAC Hockey commissioner Steve Hagwell said, we have six teams that have to schedule 12 out-of-conference games. We only play 22 league games. The WCHA, CCHA and Atlantic play 28 league games, which leaves only six for non-conference. Twelve is a struggle. You have to fill your schedule, and if that means you play each other once or twice more, I don't see that as a concern."

Rather, the league has managed to turn a negative into a positive. Last season, ECAC Hockey started an annual Governor's Cup tournament at the Times-Union Center (formerly Pepsi Arena) in Albany, with Colgate and Capital District mainstays Rensselaer and Union as regular participants. With the league holding its championship there since 2003, it's hard to argue against holding an event there earlier in the year.

"I think they're doing the right thing having that Governor's Cup," said Atlantic Hockey commissioner Robert DeGregorio, "which they're playing at the Times-Union Center in an attempt to bring in more college hockey to the area, to create a greater awareness of the ECAC, and hopefully put some fannies in the seats for later on the year when they have their championship."

St. Lawrence is scheduled to be the fourth team in this year's Governor's Cup, and will play the most non-conference games against conference opponents of any ECAC Hockey team. In addition to its league contests against travel partner Clarkson on October 20 at Cheel Arena in Potsdam and December 1 at Appleton Arena in Canton, the Saints will host the Golden Knights in a non-conference game on Wednesday, October 17. Given the longstanding rivalry between the two North Country schools, an extra game between the two seems like a natural.

"Obviously, you take into consideration traditional rivalries that may exist," SLU head coach Joe Marsh said, "where you can almost guarantee a really big gate. You take Clarkson-St. Lawrence, we could play that game at 1:00 in the afternoon or 3:00 in the morning, and it'll be packed. It's a great opponent; strength of schedule is going to be benefited. The league benefits as a whole."

Of course, the Saints and Golden Knights have played extra games against one another in the past - most recently in 2005-06 in Ottawa, at what was then the Corel Centre, and this is the second year of the Governor's Cup tournament in Albany. The new wrinkle in 2007-08 is a tournament to be held at Yale on the last weekend of October, which will also feature Princeton and Brown. An as-yet unannounced Canadian school will round out the field, and the Bears and Tigers will alternate between playing the Bulldogs and the Canadian opponent. The tournament will be played at Brown in 2008 and at Princeton in 2009.

With the Ivy League teams having the same limited non-conference schedule as teams in other conferences, the decision to further limit competition may seem an odd choice, but the teams have their reasons.

"There are more variables here," Hagwell said. "The schools who are members of our league and also members of the Ivy League have a later start date than all of the other teams in the country, so they traditionally opened with teams that already have a handful of games under their belt when they play their first game. Brown, Princeton and Yale playing each other in games where they're all on equal footing certainly is a benefit for them, and a factor. Whether more teams follow that, it's really hard for me to say."

Dartmouth head coach Bob Gaudet has yet to schedule a non-conference game against a conference opponent, but hasn't ruled it out, and certainly sees the benefits.

"I think it's a great thing they're doing," Gaudet said of the Princeton-Brown-Yale . "We'd be interested in doing that, but it'd be tough for us to plan ahead for that with the number of games and the open blocks in our schedule. I think it's a good idea, because we're going to end up playing in the next couple of years, a lot of teams early, that have played a lot of hockey before they play us, and I'd like to have a little more even playing field, that's for sure, but it doesn't seem to work out that way. It's something that we live with, and I try to get our guys to understand that and gear their preseason preparations accordingly, but it's not a perfect world, that's for sure."

One thing is for sure, though: none of this has been done to avoid playing teams from smaller conferences that wouldn't impact a team's RPI.

"We're scheduling down in 2009-10." Hagwell said. "We have teams building schedules for that already. So, to project out, you can't do it. You can utilize the RPI and what knowledge can be gleaned from it - strength of schedule and so on - and project out, but there have been times when teams that are probably down in won-loss record, turn out, based on the RPI formula, to be some of your strongest opponents. To sit here and project - `If we play more non-league games against league opponents, does that help us or hurt us?' - there are just too many variables in place."

"People talk about it and consider it," Marsh said of building a team's NCAA tournament résumé, "but I've never been one to overanalyze it. I think you get your head to start spinning. There's so many other factors. You've really got to get into some real minutiae there when you are considering it, and the biggest factor of all is the unpredictability of it. It becomes mind-boggling. My feeling is we just want to play hockey, and play in some buildings that we haven't played before."

From all accounts, that appears to be the prevalent attitude - a CCHA or WCHA team would need an exempt tournament and a trip to Alaska to play as many games against non-conference foes St. Lawrence will in 2007-08 - and the matter of ECAC Hockey teams scheduling one another in non-conference games appears more a quirk than a serious problem.

"I haven't had any of the coaches in my league call me and tell me they're having trouble finding games," DeGregorio said.

And if there were trouble, the commissioners would be quick to solve it.

"We're pretty much in tune to things that are going out there, with the rest of the leagues," DeGregorio said. "Hopefully, before anything ever gets past that would hurt another league, people would bring it to the table to discuss it."