bale31

Seriously? You're comparing Arizona State to minot, Simon fraser, and bhsu? You can't be serious that you don't see the difference. There are wcha schools that I believe have serious financial concerns, not all, but some. Adding ASU would bring some ae recognition and that makes the extra cost worthwhile. Adding random schools that no one ouside of the dakotas or anyone that has nsic connections has heard of for the sake of adding more teams does not. I can't stress enough what the college realignment did to a lot of the wcha schools. The schools in the west that had the least revenue/endowments got put into a league that necessarily has the largest expenses and largest geographic region which makes it harder for fans to get invested and spend more money. It's not whining, it's just fact. Adding schools that, realistically, add nothing but another date on the calendar is foolish especially when it adds even more large expenses. The logic that the small budget schools are just going to take one for the team for "the goof of college hockey" doesn't make sense. They aren't going to do something that puts them financially at risk.

That makes zero sense for the WCHA. Adding another team to make 11 in the conference and another team that causes ridiculously long road trips for schools whose budgets are already stretched extremely thin. The WCHA shouldn't be looked at as a dumping ground for the rest of college hockey.

Agreed...theymade msu look like a horrible offensive team. That wasn't the msu team I've watched all year long.

For msu, I don't think nerves played into it. It was strange as they got a roughing penalty in the first minute. Then an rit player went high and launched into an msu player and no penalty. Not saying either one was necessarily wrong, just that it set the tone. Msu out skates or were at least even with every tram they played this year including mn,umd,uno, and mtu. Rit did a great job of clogging the ice up and not letting msu skate quick and fast. They dictated the transition game. Msu just sucked on their shots. I'd be interested to see what the shot attempts were for msu cause they missed the net a ton. the worst part about it for msu is that it reinforced the uneducated opinions of msu and mtu's quality. They are so much better than they played today. Unfortunately, most people haven't gotten to see it this year. The call sucked and IMO was ridiculous to overturn. If they called it the other way, I wouldn't have argued, just.don't think it was reverisble based upon the replay. Ncaa's explanation of the call makes it even more confusing. Regardless, I'm proud of Our boys, I just har to see how it ended for this phenomenal senior class

Of course....that's wrong. Msu has 79, mn and QU have 77, und has 74

Fair enough, but you're muddying the waters. This isn't professional versus college were talking about. If I'm a venue and I can choose the big ten at y amount or anyone else at y x 1.1, I'm taking the big ten every single time in the Twin Cities market.

Because you're looking at the tournament in a vacuum. The big ten OWNS the Twin Cities. If the x is going to turn down the big ten, they damn well better make sure it's a financial no brainer. the x is not going to take a pr hit for the sake of the nchc or wcha.

Not if they can make money. You have to understand that, while competitively, the wcha must take the best deal to offset costs across the entire season. Revenues for wcha schools are approximately staying even. Where they are getting killed is in expenses. Use msu for example, we have 1 trip in conference per year that is less than a 10 hour bus ride. Those extra nights in hotels and extra miles are killers financially. one of the reasons that so many wcha fans were so upset over realignment is because the schools that had the smallest budgets were going to have the highest expenses and it was/is concerning because you have to wonder about the long-term financial viability of running a program under those circumstances. Long story, short, those schools may not have an option to do it in Michigan if this is financially beneficial. Sometimes you have to plug your nose and take your medicine if it's going to help your over all health in the long-run.

what you said....and 6500 tix (the approx difference between wcha and nchc) for the weekend likely isn't enough for the arena to blink and potentially pissed off the big 10. In the grand hockey tournament plus other events scheme of things, they are the behemoth, like it or not.

there are some creative ways you could do it. You could do wcha games in the afternoon and nchc games in the evening on friday and then do 2 championship games on saturday. in something like that, each year you would trade off who is the early and who is the late on each day. in that scenario you could either sell session tickets or you could sell day long tickets on friday. You could do a format that's like the state hockey tourney where it is 3 days long and each conference has their day for semis and the final is on saturday. Logistically, I think the first scenario would be ideal in that you want to sell out the building and that makes more sense. If you go off this year's attendance, it just about adds up to a full building and you don't add all the costs associated with adoing a second building. You create the atmosphere we're all looking for and make it financially appealing to the schools. As for splitting the revs, of course, that would need to be negotiated. It would probably need to be something like a 60-40 or 65-35 split, but if you get that far that's probably the easy part. The biggest thing in my mind is the atmosphere. They need to keep people coming back and without an event with atmosphere and done professionally everyone is going to fail. These are just a couple options off the top of my head. I have dealt with these types of things a bit, but someone more experienced like bill robertson of the wcha would have 50x more ideas to make something like that work.

I think you're overestimating the earning potential of conference tournaments in this scenario. I don't think you can assume that having a building approximately 60%-65% full is going to be conducive to getting into a bidding war. Yes, the nchc would be better off in the x, but for them to do that they would haveto outbid the big 10 and the wcha. There is zero chance that the big 10 allows that to happen without the X making the choice to go with abother group. The far more realistic option is to have a couple of leagues pair up and create an event again. Filling the building to near 100% is the best option. Work the.logistics around that, but this idea that fighting amongst the leagues makes sense is irrational and unproductive. For all the talk about doing what's good for the game, everyone seems to proud to do something that makes sense.

Fyi...here's that story. http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/03/23/can-attendance-issues-at-college-hockey-tournaments-be-fixed/

I don't know what exactly, but from what I understand is that it would be a nchc/wchange "exrtavaganza". My guess is that the big 10 would be out. Nchc and wcha combined is a bigger draw than big 10. Nchc had, did I hear right, in the range of 11k per day and wcha had 6700 and 8200. That's better than what big 10 does/will do. Besides, there are rumors that big 10 may want to do a centrally located tourney in somewhere like chicago. All of that is conjecture, but that seems like the most likely scenario as the X doesn't have loyalty to any conference. They just care about who sells the most tickets.

Umm...there was a news story on wcco channel 4 last night in which they had this confirmed by both the wcha and nchc officials. Yes contracts are still running, but you can't wait until the contract is up to start negotiating.

Haha...my fat fingers suck at typing on the cell phone. Thank goodness I'm not a teenager.

Haha.....touche.

Which also uses sos, so my point remains....the ooc sos inflates things. I don't think there's a better way, just that the nchc may (I stres, MAY) be a bit of an aeration this year. oh yeah, msu and Tech are also 2 and 3 in that one as well, so I think the resounding answer is, yes, they would be on the same level in the nchc. That's basing it on any objective measure without long standing biases.

You guys have to get over the perceptions that you have. Msu has the #12 sos, und has the #8. Is that really that big of a difference that you can really say that they would fall down? It's an argument based upon history and not upon anything in today's reality. There is argument to be made that the nchc isn't as good as the numbers make it look like. That's not to say it isn't the strongest league in the country. It is. But the pwr, krach and rpi all weight the out of conference results extremely heavy, arguably too heavy. The nchc did amazing in the ooc this year,but teams like uno did great and they likely aren't that good of a team when looking at their whole body of work. And for those that will inevitably say I hate the nchc, I also don't think that the league was as bad as last year when they needed Miami to come out of nowhere last year to win the tourney to make the ncaa's. I just think that the formulas that are used are flawed to inflate the nchc this year and downgraded it last year.

The question is whether they can score more than a goal against an other goalie in the tourney. Cj motte is probably the third best goalie I the tourney (maybe 4th).

Wander the skyway. Caribou has saturated the skyway like crazy. You can barely go 2 blocks without accidentally running into one.

There is no alaska rule. It was discussed at one point but never actually a legitimate option. Top 8 play, bottom 2 are out. Alaska is suspended from postseason play and UAA finished 10th. So, no alaska travel this year.

Get with the conversation!! Alaska is disqualified from conference tourney due to academic violations.

#9 misses the playoffs. Top 8 play.

msu was down 2 with 4 minutes left. Nothing to lose At that point.

msu played like garbage and didn't look like they wanted to be there. Bsu on the other hand, skated hard and took advantage of every opportunity. Williams was pulled in the 1st. MSU gave up at least 5 odd man rushes. Just a bad all around efforT. I think und pretty much locked up the #1 overall seed tonight.