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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Sad news comes to us today out of South Bend, where Notre Dame play-by-play man Mike Lockert passed away in his sleep this morning.

Mike was one of those people who was just thrilled to be working in and covering the game. He talked last year in Denver at the Frozen Four about how much he enjoyed college hockey, after having spent time in the past with other major sports, so he brought an interesting perspective. It was fun to see how someone relatively new to the game had come to see and appreciate the things we have enjoyed about it. His enthusiasm for the game and Irish hockey was infectious. You couldn’t help but smile being around him or listening to him call a game.

I remember talking to him after the championship game, and how disappointed he was at Notre Dame’s loss. And saying to him that the way things are going, he’ll get more chances to call a national championship — and might be right back here again next year. I never would have thought this would have happened.

So it is with much sadness that we at CHN remember Mike today and ask you to keep his family and friends in your thoughts and prayers.

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Someone sent me a link, tipping me off to a press release from a company in Kansas City that does architectural work for athletic arenas. Here is the link:

http://www.crawfordarch.com/pdfs/Penn_State_Hockey_Study.pdf

Don’t bother clicking, it doesn’t work anymore.

It was a press release, saying that the company had been commissioned to do a study, with the purpose of building a 6,000 seat ice hockey arena for Penn State’s campus. The release also specifically said the arena’s purpose was to house a Division I men’s and women’s team.

As you probably know, the idea of Penn State — a seven-time champion at the club level, and a team that packs its tiny arena — becoming a full-fledged Division I program has been dreamed about for a long time. The idea of a school like that starting a program is a nice feather in the cap for college hockey. It’s also something many people fear, since it could start the wheels in motion for a Big Ten Hockey Conference to form, which would have widespread ramifications, most of them negative, in many people’s opinion.

In any case, it would be big news.

So I made some calls. I called Penn State’s athletic department. I spoke to the athletic director’s office, and a spokesperson in the office of athletic communications. They never heard of the release.

They sent me to their facilities person, Amy Mann. She never heard of it.  She said that, if there was such a plan in the works, she definitely would have heard of it.

So I e-mailed the club coach. No response.  I called the old club coach, Joe Battista, who now runs the Nittany Lion Club. No response.

So I called the name of the person on the press release.  She said she was just someone the architecture company hired to do some marketing. She gave me the number of someone at the company, David Miller.  I called him. He didn’t answer. I left a message asking about the release, and wondering what the status and nature of the project was. No response.

This was all around early afternoon. By 3 p.m. (ET) the press release link no longer worked. Still no return calls from anyone.

We, however, have grabbed the Google cache version of the release, and you can view it here.

Dare I speculate on what happened here?

It reminds of the time, oh, about seven years ago or so. There was an ad in The Hockey News saying Hofstra University was looking for a men’s hockey coach for its “soon-to-be” Division I program. There was a whole lot of chicanery and wishful thinking involved with that one.

My guess is, this was a combination of the club program trying to push the ball forward, and the architectural company trying to embellish reality.

Penn State screwed up when it built the Bryce Jordan Center, and didn’t put ice making facilities in it. That was a dozen years ago. At this point, don’t expect D-I hockey at Penn State any time soon.

UPDATE: A local State College, Pa., paper was able to get someone at the university’s physical plant to admit that a “what if” study was done. The guy indicates that they’ve done a number of these studies over the years. So the bottom line is, it appears that people at the architecture firm severely jumped the gun with the release — embellishing reality a bit, as we first suggested — and when people started sniffing around, they pulled the release (or were ordered to).

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This is great.

Former Alaska-Anchorage forward Justin Bourne is writing a blog now at The Hockey News web site. If his first entry is any indication, this guy has a great future.

Please check it out. I laughed, I cried, I cringed. It was funny, poignant, insightful, well-written. I can’t do it justice describing it. Just go read it.

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Adam had an interesting post about hits from behind.

He mentioned some comments over the weekend by Alaska-Anchorage head coach Dave Shyiak, who was peeved over a major penalty issued to one of his players.

While I understand Shyiak’s frustration, and I agree that the NCAA mandate is kind of dumb, I don’t share his take that it’s “ruining the game”. In fact, I think we have a problem in that we aren’t getting enough of these major penalties called.

Mat Robinson clearly didn’t mean to hit Nico Sacchetti from behind. Sacchetti turned his back at the last second, and Robinson had already committed to what would have been a clean shoulder-to-shoulder check. Sacchetti wasn’t necessarily turning to draw a five-minute major, but those last-second turns sure do seem to happen a lot these days.

To me, the problem is twofold.

For starters, too many officials are finding a way around the five-minute major mandate. Instead of labeling obvious hits from behind as such, they call minor penalties for boarding, cross-checking, charging, elbowing, or whatever. Until all officials are following the mandate at all times, instead of almost applying it when they feel like it, there is no reason to continue with the mandate. If the problem is that “five and a game misconduct” is too much, how about just assessing a five-minute major and not taking the offending player out of the game?

The other problem is that we are seeing a ton of these last-second turns. I can’t imagine players are intentionally trying to take hits in the back so they can fall into the boards and risk a serious injury. Nobody is that stupid. However, how can you tell Mat Robinson not to hit Nico Sacchetti because the latter turns his back at the last second? It makes absolutely no sense, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s probably physically impossible to pull up in many of these situations.

I’m all for eliminating hits from behind in our game. I think it’s an important component toward restoring respect for the game from all who play it. But I think we need to take a serious look at how it’s being done, and realize that it’s not working the way anyone intended.

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Did you see Anchorage coach Dave Shyiak’s comments after last night’s game? Hmmm…. Shyiak was upset about a hit from behind call that created a 5-on-3 and Minnesota’s game-winning goal.

“Too many players are turning their backs. Hitting is part of the game. I think [the checking from behind call] is ruining the game,” Shyiak said. “As coaches we gotta make up our minds. Do we want to allow hitting? Otherwise we should just the say no checking and play women’s hockey. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

Ruining the game? I wouldn’t go that far. In fact, I think the hit from behind call is very important. However, I happen to agree with him about that call. It was a lousy call. It was a borderline 2-minute penalty at best, and in no way deserved a 5-plus-game DQ.

So maybe it was just Shyiak’s emotions getting the better of him, but the hit from behind call is important — but we need to get it right.

The ironic thing is, this comes in the WCHA, where things are relatively laissez-faire. The league took a couple of extra years than the other leagues to install the officiating mandate to crack down on obstruction. And the league has seen more flat out fights — or something closely resembling them — this year than probably the rest of the leagues combined. And the WCHA office does very little about it, choosing to allow a certain level of this stuff without making fighting Game DQ calls, and without suspensions. The general policy of the WCHA is to allow the teams to suspend players before they take any action, and usually the league just goes along with it.

So the irony is clear there, and I think the WCHA officials should be more pro-active, not less. Though, again, in this particular case, Shyiak had a right to be upset.

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