I am proud to say I cover hockey. However, I am a fan of the sport first.

I’ve been a UMD season-ticket holder since 2003. I remember sitting in front of the television and yelling to the point of nearly losing my voice as the Bulldogs skated to the 2004 Frozen Four, and then took a two-goal lead in the national semifinal against Denver.

As you are probably aware, not much has gone right for UMD since. They were on their way to a win over St. Cloud State in the first round of the 2007 playoffs, but then Bobby Goepfert stood on his head for four overtimes over two nights. His team was pretty thoroughly outplayed, but part of playing the game is scoring goals, and UMD just couldn’t on those nights. St. Cloud won the series, and UMD was sent to the golf course prematurely, only to find when they got there that the two best players on that 2006-2007 team (Matt Niskanen and Mason Raymond) had signed pro contracts.

Last year’s team was strong defensively, but couldn’t score goals. MacGregor Sharp led the team with 17 points. Andrew Carroll led in goals with eight. It doomed them to an eighth-place finish and a two-game playoff loss to Denver.

With how the regular-season ended, no one saw this coming. The Bulldogs went 0-3-2 down the stretch, with two straight losses to Alaska-Anchorage providing a painful farewell for seven UMD seniors. In retrospect, one of the worst home weekends in a long time may have been a blessing in disguise. UMD deserved to lose those games, and they knew it. Instead of moping or resigning themselves to a one-and-done playoff fate, this Bulldog team used the adversity as a coming-together point.

Since they didn’t know they had to fly to Colorado Springs until the close of play Saturday, they had to set up a rather arduous travel schedule. Fly to Minneapolis and then Denver Wednesday evening, and bus from Denver to Colorado Springs. It was early Thursday morning before they arrived. Instead of being tired after such a difficult late-season trip, UMD looked fresh and prepared Friday. A 4-1 win Friday was followed by a 3-1 triumph Saturday.

By now, you know full well what happened over the weekend in St. Paul. It was the kind of history that you don’t get to see every year, and it was a performance for the ages. In a way, it was fitting, because this team made a commitment to themselves after that Anchorage series, and they’ve played near-perfect hockey since.

The most amazing statistic is that they have yet to trail in the playoffs. In fact, the only time any UMD playoff game this year has been tied has been 0-0. Once UMD has taken the lead, they’ve held it. You can credit Alex Stalock all you want, but the 18 guys in front of him deserve their props, too.

One of my worries about UMD going to Colorado College is that they struggled (3-5-3) on the big sheet during the regular season. They allowed too many goals in most of those games, including four in one at Anchorage, six at St. Cloud State, and five at Minnesota. The defense took a few hits in those games, but they have protected Stalock wondrously in the first five playoff games.

Princeton brings speed, skill, and goaltending to the table Friday night. UMD can’t be looking forward to a potential rematch Saturday with Denver (neither can Denver, for that matter, or it could be Miami vs Princeton in front of 550 friends and family at Mariucci). But they haven’t looked forward to anything yet. They’ve focused on the task at hand, even on Saturday night in the WCHA Final Five championship, when they led 3-0, fans were ready to party, and it would have been easy to lapse. Instead of giving up a lame goal late in the game, UMD only let Denver attempt six shots the whole period (five were blocked).

No matter what, the thousands of Minnesotans who will show up at Mariucci Arena Friday night need to appreciate what this UMD team has done. They not only made history, but they’ve shown that from adversity can come special achievements.

That this group of kids banded together and stormed into the NCAA Tournament is the stuff of stories 20 years from now. Expectations are growing in Duluth, but let’s hope the fans also bring a sense of perspective to the rink Friday. The ride this team has taken us on the last two weeks is one that won’t be forgotten anytime soon, and we thank you for it.

It’s been a season where there have been a lot of very good players, and no definitive obvious Hobey picks. It’s going to be interesting to see who wins that award, and we still have our own Player of the Year pick coming up.

Our 2008-09 All-CHN Teams reflect the difficulty in coming up with a decisive group. Our staff placed their votes, and we came up with a consensus. Here are my personal thoughts — feel free to chime in, argue away, and call me a dope. Y’all have never actually needed that invitation to do so in the past, however.

Ryan Stoa — He was not named a Hobey finalist, but should’ve been. I felt he was the forward who most impacted the game every time he was out there. Minnesota had its problems this year, but no moreso than Wisconsin, and Jamie McBain was a Hobey finalist despite having one of the worst plus-minus ratings on the team, minus-8.

Ian Cole was the other non-Hobey finalist to make our First Team. You almost have to pick a Notre Dame player somewhere. Goalie Jordan Pearce has great numbers, but isn’t necessarily spectacular. This is not a knock on him — he doesn’t need to be. The forwards are all-around solid everywhere, but they spread it around. Teammate, Nathan Lawson, was named CCHA Defensive Defenseman of the Year. But Cole seems to be the most complete package of any defenseman I’ve seen.

David McIntyre stood out to me because he was one of the nation’s leaders in plus-minus despite playing on a sub-.500 team. That’s hard to do. Matt Gilroy is, of course, a Hobey finalist, and needs no defense — but his numbers aren’t great. I think his play goes beyond the numbers. He’s had the numbers in the past. He came to BU as a walk-on forward and took years to learn the defensive side. BU has plenty of scorers, but they are now also one of the best defensive teams in the country. That’s why the Terriers are scary.

Our staff ultimately put BU’s Colin Wilson on the Second Team. I must say, I struggled whether to include him. He led BU in scoring, but on the strength of 35 assists. I tend to value goals much more than points. He’s nowhere near the goal-scoring leaders. Tough to leave a Hobey winner entirely off the list, but as dominant goal scorers, BC’s Brock Bradford, Michigan’s Louie Caporusso, and Minnesota-Duluth’s MacGregor Sharp are tough to top. Of course, Wilson doesn’t have to carry the load, so that hurts him in a sense, with BU’s scoring so spread out. So it’s no knock on him, really. But these are individual awards.

Absent from the list, Hobey finalist Jacques Lamoureux of Air Force, the nation’s leading goal scorer with 32. Tough one, but this the age old debate on what it means to score that many goals in a lower-level league.

Forwards that were hard to pass up included: Corey Elkins (Ohio State) , Jason Lawrence (BU) and Brock McBride (St. Lawrence).

Defensively, it was hard to pass up Michigan’s Chad Langlais and his plus-27.

The goaltending spot was really tough. We mentioned Pearce. Hobey finalist Zane Kalemba of Princeton also was not on the list. But the toughest was what to do with Alex Stalock. Like Stoa, he may be the most physically talented of any goaltender in the country, and I realize his numbers are hurt by playing in a more open system and with a defense that isn’t as strong. And, obviously, his last five games have been ridiculously good, and it led UMD to a historical Final Five win. But Chad Johnson was CCHA Player of the Year, and led the nation in save percentage. That’s very impressive in its own right. Stalock may yet deserve it, with a few more wins here this season. But it has to be picked on a whole season.

Well, this was our projected bracket and discussion of the possibilities, as of last night: http://www.collegehockeynews.com/news/2009/03/21_ncaatournament.php

As you can see, we weren’t far off. We only got tripped up on the switch of Northeastern and Minnesota-Duluth. We can only speculate that this was for attendance purposes, since it deviates from setting up a “true” 2 vs. 7 matchup in the Midwest (Notre Dame-UMD) and 3-6 in the West (Denver-Northeastern).

Of course, the teams were tied in the Pairwise, basically, so it doesn’t matter too much.

Everything else went according to expectation. And you can read about all the rationale, as we laid out, in the article mentioned above.

Further explanation and analysis, and conversation with the committee, is forthcoming.

As for the brackets themselves, here are some thoughts:

Northeast – Manchester

Boston University is the top overall seed, but because of the seeding processes — as we discussed last night — the Terriers have to play Ohio State in the first round. BU should be able to take care of that young team, but OSU has beaten good teams over the course of the year.

So New Hampshire and North Dakota square off in the other matchup. You have to think the Sioux will be rarin’ to go after losing twice at the Final  Five. Then again, UNH has been off a week, and is probably annoyed too.

Midwest – Grand Rapids

Because of the BU issue mentioned earlier, Notre Dame is the beneficiary of facing the lowest overall seed, Bemidji State. Meanwhile, Cornell is banged up, but the program has a strong history of winning first-round games, while Northeastern hasn’t even made the tournament since 1994. Cornell has won at least a game here the last five trips to the NCAAs, but only the seniors on this team have had a trip. That was the year Cornell lost to Wisconsin in triple OT.

West – Minneapolis

Denver faces Miami again, with the matchup of George Gwozdecky and Enrico Blasi. Blasi played for Gwozdecky at Miami. This matchup has happened before in the NCAAs, with Denver winning. So it’s not new, but still interesting.

Princeton, meanwhile, gets the chore of facing red-hot Minnesota-Duluth, and its goaltending star Alex Stalock. Princeton has a Hobey finalist in net in Zane Kalemba. Princeton will play hard and tough, and is better prepared than in  last year’s appearance, but we’ll see how they match up on the big ice against Duluth. Princeton has not played on that surface much, if at all, while Duluth has plenty of experience with it.

East – Bridgeport

This should be a very well-attended bracket. Yale is local, and will draw. Vermont travels very well, and will get people down from nearby Burlington. Michigan, the top seed, of course travels well and has plenty of alums. That leaves poor old Air Force, which will play tough, for sure, and give Michigan a run.

Yale-Vermont is an intriguing matchup. We’ll see how the best the ECAC has to offer all year, stacks up against a fourth-place Hockey East team.

The “Pairwise” is the familiar moniker given to the NCAA’s process of picking and seeding teams for the NCAA tournament. Each year, we break it down six ways to Sunday. On the CHN main site right now, you can see the current Pairwise … read about how it works, and what it all means with the CHN Primer … and even plug in your own results from this weekend’s games and figure out what the final Pairwise would look like, with “You Are the Committee“.

So, here we are, with the running commentary of how the results effect team’s NCAA hopes, ongoing, throughout the weekend.

Saturday … 11:02 p.m. — OK, the games are done. Go to the main site for our final Bracket Analysis — and remember, the Selection Show is Sunday 11:30 a.m. ET on ESPN2 — where you can see how we did.

Saturday … 9:31 p.m. — We (MikeM and I) can’t see how BU would go anywhere but Manchester at this point. All signs point that way. No. 2 overall seed is Notre Dame, no matter what, so we figure they go to Grand Rapids. The No. 4 overall will be paired with No. 5 overall Yale, in Bridgeport. No. 4 will be Michigan or Denver. That leaves Minneapolis for the other one. If Northeastern is No. 6 overall, that means it will be in Minneapolis. That leaves No. 8 North Dakota in Manchester, and No. 7 Minn.-Duluth in Grand Rapids.

Saturday … 8:51 p.m. — Still awaiting some finals. Believe it or not, there’s still too many combos, at least when it comes to seeds. The teams are pretty much all set. Ohio State will be in unless Lowell wins HEA. Miami is No. 13 probably. That means that neither CCHA team can play Notre Dame at No. 2 or Michigan at 3 or 4. So this means BU will be stuck with one of them, as opposed to a “lesser” team in Air Force or Bemidji State. This happened to Cornell in 2003, when it had to play Mankato, and won 5-2.

Saturday … 8:10 p.m. — So the top two seeds overall, either way, are BU and Notre Dame. That means they should be in Manchester and Grand Rapids, respectively. Even though UNH is at No. 9 and could be a second-round matchup in Manchester, the committee hasn’t really cared about that in recent years. If Michigan wins the CCHA, it could get to No. 3, but that’s about it.

Saturday … 6:24 p.m. — The stunned media corps found out minutes later that there was a shootout taking place on the ice for the EAC consolation game. It was completely irrelevant — though I’m not sure any St. Lawrence fans knew this. SLU won it – yawn. Question: Should Guy Gadowski have pulled Kalemba in the shootout to make sure he didn’t get hurt?

Saturday … 6:16 p.m. — Indeed Marsh pulled the goalie. What a little mini-drama that was. Princeton had the puck in the St. Lawrence zone most of the last two minutes, so it wasn’t until late that Marsh finally pulled Petizian. It was the right move. It ends in a tie, and St. Lawrence is done. Princeton moves on. First Princeton tie in 2 1/2 years. Oh, the irony.

Saturday … 6:05 p.m. — OT in Albany. Does SLU coach Joe Marsh know to pull his goalie in OT? Does Princeton coach Guy Gadowsky know not to? We’ll find out which coaches know about the Pairwise and which don’t.

Saturday … 5:39 — Found a scenario where Wisconsin loses out to Ohio State by .0002 RPI. It happens if Yale, Notre Dame and Minnesota-Duluth all win later.

Saturday … 5:37 — If Yale and Notre Dame win, Ohio State hangs onto the comparison with Air Force by a miniscule amount — less than .0001 — and Wisconsin finishes just .0003 behind in RPI.

Saturday … 5:34 p.m. — Wisconsin and Northern Michigan have won consolation games. This helps Ohio State. It looks like the Buckeyes will make it over Minnesota, unless Lowell wins, in which case, OSU is also out. A Cornell win helps even more, but it looks safe even if Yale wins.

Saturday … 3:54 p.m. — Whoops. As Mike Machnik pointed out, that below scenario does NOT keep St. Lawrence out. The tie that would be created at No. 13 between Minnesota and SLU (plug those results into You Are the Committee and see for yourself) would actually go to St. Lawrence. That’s because the committee has been breaking ties in recent years via RPI. So thanks to the person who pointed out that below scenario, but that doesn’t do it. So I go back to what I originally said — that I cannot find a scenario where St. Lawrence wins the consolation and doesn’t make it.

Saturday .. 3:04 p.m. — OK, here’s the results that leave St. Lawrence out even with a win. It does require Lowell winning, and taking the 14th spot away. I thought SLU would be safe at No. 13 regardless, but apparently can slip to No. 14 in this scenario.

• Hockey East Championship game: Mass.-Lowell defeats Boston University.
• ECAC Championship game: Yale defeats Cornell.
• ECAC Consolation game: St. Lawrence defeats Princeton.
• Atlantic Hockey Championship game: Mercyhurst defeats Air Force.
• CCHA Championship game: Notre Dame defeats Michigan.
• CCHA Consolation game: Northern Michigan defeats Alaska.
• WCHA Championship game: Denver defeats Minnesota-Duluth.
• WCHA Consolation game: North Dakota defeats Wisconsin.

Saturday … 1:49 p.m. — So, we’re back in the Albany press room, and let’s follow up with the last post from last night. Playing around more with the wacky Ohio State-Minnesota situation, it appears that things come down — in most cases — to whether Ohio State can flip the comparison with Air Force. Doing so, requires staying ahead of Air Force in the RPI. If Air Force wins Atlantic Hockey, that will require help elsewhere, but the “help elsewhere” has basically no bearing on Ohio State directly, it’s just the way the wacky RPI works, with the strengths of opponents and opponents’ opponents, etc… For example, if Cornell defeats Yale today, it provides a nice RPI boost to Ohio State. Alaska winning the CCHA consolation also provides some RPI “points,” as does a Michigan win over Notre Dame.

We’re talking about splitting minute hairs here. Ohio State, in some cases, beats out Air Force by .0001 in the RPI. These shifts are within a range of .0018 or so. It’s crazy. And it has nothing to do with anything Ohio State or Minnesota is doing directly.

A St. Lawrence win, meanwhile, helps Minnesota, because in most cases, it flips the Minnesota-Princeton comparison in the Gophers’ favor, sometimes by as little as .0001 in RPI.

There is also a crazy scenario where Wisconsin wins the consolation and Mercyhurst wins Atlantic, and somehow that gets the Badgers within .0003 RPI of Ohio State. So that close to getting in the NCAAs. I can’t find any way to actually get Wisconsin in, however.

Someone on the Cornell message board said there was a scenario where St. Lawrence wins the ECAC consolation, Mercyhurst wins Atlantic, and so SLU still doesn’t make the NCAAs. But I have not been able to replicate that.

Saturday … 1:24 a.m. — Just wrapping up things in Albany for the evening. The weirdest thing about this year’s Pairwise, is that Minnesota and Ohio State, two teams that were knocked out by Thursday, are wavering back and forth for the last spot, all dependent on results elsewhere. Their respective RPIs teeter around a few percentage points here and there depending on other results all over the country. Depending on various combos, one or the other makes it. Meanwhile, the only other spot up for grabs is the winner of the Princeton-SLU ECAC consolation. Also, of course, if Lowell wins Hockey East, it knocks out Minnesota and Ohio State. Miami looks safe. We’ll go more into the seedings during Saturday afternoon.

Friday … 11:05 p.m. — Cornell wins in 2nd OT. Princeton and St. Lawrence to play for an NCAA bid Saturday. Princeton gets in with a tie, SLU doesn’t.

Friday … 10:49 p.m. — Minnesota-Duluth stuns North Dakota with shutout win. Bulldogs are IN. Book it. North Dakota, 2 seed at best.

Friday … 10:05 p.m. — Another stunner out East, with Cornell scoring two late goals to force OT with Princeton. The winner gets a bid. Loser has to win tomorrow in the consolation. Meanwhile, BU and BC are 0-0, and teams like Ohio State are sweating that one out. If BC wins, it means Hockey East will get another bid.

Friday … 8:09 p.m. — Lowell stuns Northeastern with a late goal, then a win in OT. This means Northeastern will be a respectable No. 2 seed. A Lowell win upsets the apple cart for the likes of Ohio State. Still looking for a way for the ECAC to get four teams in. It doesn’t look like a tie helps St. Lawrence enough, however.

Friday … 7:20 p.m. — Notre Dame also gets a stunner. It keeps everything lined up with the higher seeds so far. This helps teams like Ohio State, in particular.

Friday … 6:36 p.m. — I’m trying to get St. Lawrence and the 2nd game ECACs loser in the NCAAs – a tie doesn’t seem to help SLU enough. Trying to see if SLU wins the consolation, if there’s any way for Princeton/Cornell to get in … Princeton, in one scenario, misses out by .0006 RPI

Friday … 6:28 p.m. — A stunning ECAC finish. St. Lawrence, poised to win, keep things in line for a possible 4 ECAC bids … and all of a sudden, Yale scores twice in about 20 seconds, both with under two minutes left, to steal the game. This means, the loser of Saturday’s ECAC consolation game, most likely will not get in. As we said earlier in the week — they should agree to tie.

Friday … 5:40 p.m. — I punched in North Dakota winning the WCHA, Northeastern winning HEA, and Yale in ECAC, and none of them were able to pass Denver. Pioneers will be a No. 1 seed for sure.

Friday … 5:33 p.m. — Denver has defeated Wisconsin, eliminating the Badgers once and for all. Denver may have locked up a No. 1 seed. Going to crunch some numbers.

Friday … 3:52 p.m. — Games are about to begin in Albany. The ECAC could get 4 teams in the NCAAs for the first time, but the best chance for that is St. Lawrence beating Yale in this game.

ST. PAUL – There are only four teams left at the 2009 WCHA Final Five. Of them, one of them (Wisconsin) knows they have to win the tournament and “steal” the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Two (North Dakota and Denver) could fall flat on their faces in St. Paul, and still make the field safely. Such is life when you’ve finished first and second, respectively, in the regular-season standings of one of the toughest conferences in the country.

The other (Minnesota-Duluth) can make the NCAAs without winning another game, but only if nothing else goofy happens when the puck is dropped on other conference tournaments later Friday. Their safest path to the icy version of the Big Dance is to win one more game, whether it be Friday in the semifinals or Saturday in the finals (remember, the WCHA does play a third-place game).

To make things more interesting, the team eliminated Thursday night (Minnesota) can still make the NCAAs, but they must sit at home and watch the events of the weekend unfold first. If they can hold on to 14th position in the Pairwise, and no upsets occur in any league tournaments, the Gophers can still make the field. It’s going to be about 34 more hours, however, before they know which “sticks” they’ll be getting out next: hockey, or golf.

A depleted Denver team battles Wisconsin in the semifinals, while UMD takes on red-hot top-seed North Dakota.

Tonight, the Hobey Baker Award committee will announce the 10 finalists for this year’s award. Here’s my ballot, not necessarily in order.

Matt Gilroy, Boston University, senior, defenseman — The last defenseman to win was Matt Carle in 2006, then Jordan Leopold, when Minnesota won the national title in 2002. Gilroy’s leadership and higher commitment to defense this year, made BU a juggernaut on offense and defense — and by staying another season, he has only raised his stock higher with the pro scouts.

Brad Thiessen, Northeastern, junior, goaltender — Like John Muse last year, Thiessen played every minute of every game so far this season. The Hockey East goaltender of the year has a 2.07 GAA and .932 save percentage.

David McIntyre, Colgate, junior, forward — He didn’t get the nod in the ECAC, and probably won’t get recognized here, but that’s only because Colgate was a 10th-place team in the league. But McItyre was responsible for 25 percent of his team’s offense, with 21 goals and 43 points, and throw in his remarkable plus-18 rating, tremendous for a sub-.500 team.

Brock Bradford, Boston College, senior, forward — Had as many power-play goals (10) as any other player on his team had overall. Finished with 25 goals overall, and, again, if his team was strong this year, he’d be a shoo-in for this list. But with his team playing better lately, it could help him out.

Ryan Stoa, Minnesota, junior, forward — And here’s yet another player with a strong year for a team that struggled. However, Minnesota didn’t struggle as much as BC or Colgate, and Stoa did put up 24 goals and a plus-17. His presence alone was a huge factor in every game, and if his team had a little bit better season, he’d be my pick for the Award, period. Even still he should get serious consideration.

Jacques Lamoureux, Air Force, sophomore, forward — Yet another selection with a caveat involved. He leads the nation with 31 goals and is a plus-20, but he will not get as much credit because his team plays in a weaker conference. Nevertheless, Air Force is a legit top 20 Pairwise team, had some big wins early, and his numbers are so staggering, they are hard to ignore. He had three goals in a two-game series against Bemidji State, and two in one game against NCAA-bound Yale.

Ian Cole, Notre Dame, sophomore, defenseman — On a tremendous, well-balanced team loaded with quality candidates — Erik Condra, Christian Hanson, Kyle Lawson, Jordan Pearce — it’s Cole that stands out. He was the only one of them to be named First Team All-CCHA. He anchors the power play, and was a plus-15, leading the team.

Louis Caporusso, Michigan, sophomore, forward — 23 goals and 23 assists, 10 PPG — a dynamic player on one of the country’s top teams.

Chad Johnson, Alaska-Fairbanks, senior, goaltender — An outstanding .939 save percentage, and led a team with one 10-goal scorer to the CCHA semifinals. First Team All-CCHA.

Colin Wilson, Boston University, sophomore, forward — I guess the No. 1 team in the nation deserves two picks.

Just missing the cut: Jamie McBain, Wisconsin, defenseman; Zane Kalemba, Princeton, goaltender; Carter Camper, Miami, forward; Aaron Palushaj, Michigan, sophomore; Ryan Lasch, St. Cloud State, forward; Chay Genoway, North Dakota, defender; Viktor Stalberg, forward, Vermont.

UPDATE: The list just came out … among my list, Bradford, Stoa and Cole did not make it. Instead, three others from the “just missing the cut” list did: McBain, Kalemba and Stalberg. I can live with that. I was happy to see McIntyre make the list. I don’t mind swapping McBain for Cole. But Bradford and Stoa deserve it over the other two.

Changes in the NHL overtime system have led to more games going to overtime. Link here.

In 2000, the National Hockey League began rewarding teams for ties at the end of regulation by granting a point in the league standings to teams that lose in overtime. That makes overtime games worth one more point than other games, because winners of any game get two points. In the nine seasons since that rule change, the probability of games going to overtime has increased by 21% compared with the nine seasons before the change, according to Justin Kubatko, vice president of Sports Reference LLC, as teams have scrambled to hold on for overtime and the guaranteed point it confers.

If you don’t know what the headline references, click here and make sure your speakers are on.

Someone in the Minnesota Legislature has a bad idea, and it could affect all college sports, including hockey (primarily women’s).

Rep. Bob Dettmer, R-Forest Lake, and Sen. Ray Vandeveer, R-Forest Lake, introduced legislation on March 2 that would ban state money from being used directly or indirectly for an athlete who is not a citizen of the United States.

“We just feel that if we’re going to give state using taxpayers money that we want the opportunity for students in the United States first,” said Dettmer.

Shouldn’t scholarships be awarded based on merit and not residency? After all, no one is stopping United States citizens from applying to attend any university they want, and no one is stopping them from getting all the financial aid they would need.

University of Minnesota system schools do not use state money to fund athletic scholarships. If this bill is passed, it would have more of an effect on St. Cloud State and Minnesota State. SCSU athletic director Morris Kurtz pretty much nailed the counterpoint to this bill.

“They are wonderful additions,” Kurtz said. “We welcome them, their backgrounds, their cultures and their differences, and we learn from them. So it would certainly disappointing not only from a student athlete standpoint, but just from a student point.”

It would also be disappointing from a fan standpoint. Paying customers generally don’t care where the players on their favorite college team hail from. It doesn’t matter if St. Cloud State’s star forward went to high school in St. Cloud, Duluth, Roseau, Madison, Boston, Los Angeles, or Helsinki. They just want to see their team win, and they want their university to be represented well.

It’s not surprising that these lawmakers hail from Gopher Country. Like the men’s team, the Gopher women’s team recruits primarily in Minnesota. Because the pool of talented high school girls hockey players in the state isn’t quite as deep as the boys yet, it’s necessary for all the Division I schools in the state to recruit outside the border. Minnesota-Duluth has been highly successful bringing in European players, and they have four NCAA championships to show for their global recruiting. That would be double Minnesota’s total titles.

I guess, if you can’t beat them, take away their players.

It’s that time of year again in the ECAC. Time for league partisans to gather in Albany and complain about how they’d rather be somewhere else. But where else is there that really works?

Every league has teams it needs to succeed in order to have a successful tournament. For the WCHA, it’s Minnesota.  Hockey East has its big four teams – BC, BU, UNH and Maine. In the CCHA, it’s Michigan and Michigan State.

It’s pretty well accepted that there are three teams that draw well enough on the road in the ECAC to be decent draws in Albany. Cornell, Clarkson, and RPI are the teams in question, and the latter has a built in upside in the same way Minnesota is big for the WCHA – the local team.

Let’s take a look at who’s come to the tournament since it moved to Albany.

2009: Cornell, St. Lawrence, Yale, Princeton

2008: Cornell, Colgate, Harvard, Princeton

2007: Clarkson, St. Lawrence, Quinnipiac, Dartmouth

2006: Cornell, Colgate, Dartmouth, Harvard

2005: Cornell, Vermont, Colgate, Harvard

2004: Clarkson, Colgate, Dartmouth, Harvard

2003: Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Brown

In each year, including this year, only one of Cornell and Clarkson has been present in Albany, and never the big ticket local team in RPI. No Union either, which would also have been a local draw. Vermont in their ultimate season in the ECAC in 2005 could have been a big draw, but the effect was blunted by their basketball team’s huge upset of Syracuse the same weekend.

Now, consider the Lake Placid years. Bear in mind that five teams made the tournament in the later years.

2002:  Cornell, RPI, Clarkson, Dartmouth, Harvard

2001: Cornell, St. Lawrence, Vermont, Dartmouth, Harvard

2000: Cornell, RPI, Clarkson, St. Lawrence, Colgate

1999: Clarkson, RPI, St. Lawrence, Colgate, Princeton

1998:  Clarkson, Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Princeton

1997: Cornell, RPI, Clarkson, Princeton

1996: Cornell, Clarkson, Vermont, Harvard

1995: RPI, Clarkson, Colgate, Princeton

1994: Clarkson, RPI, Harvard, Brown

1993: Clarkson, RPI, Harvard, Brown

Look at that – in every year (save 2001) the tournament was held in Lake Placid, at least two of the big three were present, and all of them were present in 1997, 2000, and 2002. St. Lawrence even makes a fourth big draw in 2000.

Clarkson qualified for Lake Placid every year the tournament was held there except in 2001. They have a large following and the same would have been true if the tournament had been in Albany all those years. Since the tournament moved, the school with that kind of record is now Harvard, which has been at Albany every year but 2007. The difference is pretty stark.

Throw the championship game into the mix and it gets even starker. For a 12-team league, it’s still pretty easy to determine who’s usually going to be vying for the title. Last year’s final between Princeton and Harvard was the first in almost 20 years – since St. Lawrence and Vermont did battle in 1989 – that the title game lacked at least one of Clarkson, Cornell, or RPI. 2008’s title tilt was between two schools notorious for poor turnout.

Since the tournament moved to Albany, it’s been hung with a number of poor-drawing teams each year and has been characterized by the immediate downturn of the one program that would be a big local draw. The only Albany tournament that may have significantly drawn better in Lake Placid was the 2007 edition, due only to the inclusion of both North Country teams.

Sure, you could expand the tournament to five teams again, but that would probably require moving back to the pre-Albany model, whereby two teams missed the playoffs entirely. It probably isn’t going to happen.

This all ignores the other fundamental question that must be asked. If not Albany, where would the tournament be held?

Boston? The league moved out of Boston in 1993 because the ECAC tournament had become more of a sideshow to the bigger, more popular Hockey East tournament, which more often than not featured better teams than the ECAC. Returning to Boston, though the city offers more in the way of fan amenities, would be a return to second-class status – the year’s biggest celebration of the league overshadowed by Hockey East.

Back to Lake Placid? You’ve just moved the tournament farther away from 10 of the league’s 12 schools and haven’t solved the main issue alluded to earlier. True, with Clarkson’s recent resurgence, you’d be able to count on a strong regional contingent, but then again, they didn’t exactly light the world on fire this year. RPI may have a resurgence in the future, but they only won 10 games this season. Better hope Cornell stays where they are.

Let’s not forget that for all of the magic of Lake Placid, it’s a notoriously hard town to get to. It’s at least a 45 minute drive from the nearest Interstate, and in March, those twisting, turning roads through the Adirondacks are not always the safest.

Where else could realistically be considered? It’s the most central location you can find that has adequate amenities. Syracuse? It’s no college hockey town. Rochester? Atlantic Hockey is already there, and besides, it’s farther west than any ECAC school. Bridgeport or Hartford? Come on. New York City? It’d be awfully hard to find open space on the Madison Square Garden schedule in March, given that the Rangers and Knicks are in season, with college basketball’s Big East championships held there as well around that time. Besides that, the tournament would be swallowed up and ignored in NYC.

Let’s face it – Albany makes sense from a logistical and geographic standpoint. Perhaps the Times Union Center lacks the magic of Herb Brooks Arena or Boston Garden, but the lack of energy in the building can hardly be blamed entirely on the city itself. Did someone in the league office break a mirror back when the decision to move was made? It’s been seven years of bad luck ever since.

After the game against RPI (photo: Mark Anbider)

It’s easy for non-Cornell fans to look at Mike Schafer’s one-game suspension tonight — following his Friday rant about the officiating — and call it a “tirade,” or accuse him of “whining,” etc… But that’s only because they don’t understand.

Schafer, yesterday, criticized the officiating for changing the way it was calling the game in the postseason — not calling it tight enough with the interference, as has been the directive for years. And, he said, this doesn’t help the ECAC in the national scene. Schafer has a history of making these kinds of pointed comments, but if you’ve seen him in action, you know that he is far, far from the type of coach that pisses and moans behind the  bench all game — and he is not the kind of coach that berates officials all game, and so on.

When Schafer makes these kinds of comments, he a) knows exactly what he’s doing; b) is very measured in his comments – he is not flying off the handle; c) is willingly taking the risk of getting suspended; and d) is telling the truth.

And, apparently, it’s effective. Saturday’s game resulted in a couple dozen power plays, and Cornell won 4-0. But that’s not here or there. What’s important is that he was right. Well, let me take that back … I wasn’t there. But I did see the Princeton-Union game Friday, and with ECAC Director of Officals Paul Stewart there, I did make a comment during the game that I felt a lot more was being let go — both ways — than usual. From what I’ve heard, same was true in Ithaca. So, assuming that was the case in Ithaca too, then Schafer is right.

But let me digress for a second. I had to laugh when I read Schafer’s comment about him making similar remarks seven years ago, about hitting from behind penalties. He was right then too. But I laugh because I remember it clearly — I was doing radio for Cornell at the time. I remember Schafer specifically waited for me to get off the radio so that I could be there to record his comments. He wanted to make sure that everything he said went online verbatim. He wasn’t flying off the handle, far from it. If he was, he wouldn’t have been cool enough to wait that long. He knew exactly what he was doing.

So I could picture the same thing taking place last night — and that’s why I know he doesn’t just rant half-baked. It’s purposeful. And in 2003, the league did crack down more on hitting from behind. In fact, I ran an article that year explaining how hitting from behind calls — throughout the league — had gone up dramatically in the months after Schafer’s comments compared to before it.

Now, back to the comments themselves. His point about calling the game differently, and how it affects the league in the national sense, is dead on. The league is never going to say this, but it wants its top teams to go through to Albany — because this means more ECAC teams will make the NCAAs, and get better seeds. To do that, it has to make sure it sticks to the officiating standards that have been set in recent years in relation to interference, and not back off just because it’s the playoffs. It might be old school to say “let them play” in the playoffs, but that is exactly the wrong approach that we need anywhere in college hockey.

The goal is not to have a waltz to the penalty box all night — because, that may increase scoring, but it doesn’t increase the quality of the game. The goal is to call the penalties so that the players won’t take the penalties in the future.  That opens the game up, and allows the more skilled teams to be more effective.

So we’ll see what kind of effect Schafer’s comments have. But so far, it’s nothing but positive for everyone, it seems to me.