College Hockey Exile: Week One

Overview

This will attempt to be a (boring/mediocre) weekly chronicle of a college hockey fan's attempt to follow the season from what is essentially a college hockey "no man's land," Cleveland, Ohio. This will mostly consist of me watching high numbered extended cable channels on weekends, listening to the radio with a bad wireless connection, and complaining.

Based on my present location, this should include visits to Quicken Loans Arena to watch former BU players play (Kenny Roche) and coach (Joe Sacco) for the new local AHL club, the Lake Erie Monsters. I'll also probably drop in on division III club team Case Western Reserve University at the Cleveland Heights Community Center at least once.

The real highlight will be an exodus to Ann Arbor for the BU-Wolverines series in 2 weeks.

Impending Disaster

Speaking of Michigan, when I watched BC's attempted comeback in the first round of the IceBreaker on FSN-Atlantic last Friday, I had mixed feelings about Michigan's victory on a cheap own goal in sudden death OT. I like seeing BC get beat, but Michigan would have been a nice non-conference scalp for Hockey East on the whole. In the scheme of things, one non-conference loss rarely has a large effect on the league as a whole... of course, I didn't know how the rest of the league was faring on Friday night.

On Friday, Hockey East went 1-7-0 in non-conference play. This included losses to teams from ECAC Hockey (Clarkson over UMass, St. Lawrence over Providence), the CCHA (Miami over Vermont, BC's aforementioned loss to Michigan), the WCHA (Denver over Maine), the soon-to-be disbanded CHA (Robert Morris over BU), and Canadian Interuniversity Sport's Atlantic University Sport (New Brunswick over UNH, thankfully an exhibition).

What a colossal disaster.

The league's lone win came via Merrimack (last place in the HEA Coach's Pre-Season Poll) who beat Niagara.

At this point, Hockey East's interconference record is 3-9-1, better only than Atlantic Hockey's 0-10-1. All other conferences are over .500.

I'm not saying HEA is the second worst conference (down from their usual position of second best), some of those results were wacky, like BC beating themselves or BU losing despite outshooting RMU 35-15 and still losing to three unanswered late goals, but the panic button must be hit. Unlike football and basketball, hockey's postseason berths are decided by a wholly objective process. League reputation is worthless if you don't win this season. 27 (plus playoffs) of each HEA teams' games are inconference, leaving only room for 7 non-conference games (plus extra for exempted tournaments). That means there's not alot of time to get the out of conference wins necessary to garner a respectable RPI or PWR. At this pace, HEA could be looking at getting only 2 teams to the dance since the dawn of the 16 team field.

What to Watch

Flipping between a pair of games Friday at 8PM:
- North Dakota @ BC on CSTV
- "BU Killer" Robert Morris @ Wisconsin on FCS-Atlantic

Sunday at 4PM:
- BC @ Vermont on ESPNU

Backpedalling to the Playoffs

With an ugly looking 4-2 ENG loss to Northeastern, the Boston University Terriers Men's Ice Hockey team heads into the Hockey East Playoffs on a 2 loss skid, and really hasn't looked good since they took 3 points in 2 games from UNH a few weeks back. Tonight's loss probably also did damage to BU's burgeoning "John Curry for Hobey Baker Award" campaign, as the goaltender let in a couple really soft goals in the first period, and the guys in front of him really couldn't do anything to reverse the momentum. A bright moment of hope came in the third when Boomer Ewing put a one-timer past NU's Thiessen to cut the lead to 3-2, and BU sustained momentum for several minutes before imploding due to a slew of needless penalties, particularly the minors by Morrow and Straight down the stretch.

Now, BU is only one point up on Boston College for the 2 seed in the Hockey East playoffs, and BC still has a home-and-home series with the New Hampshire Wildcats. BC only needs a single point to take the 2 seed, by virtue of winning the regular season series with the Terriers. This probably means a quarterfinal series date with either Maine or Vermont at BU, a prospect no Terrier fan is relishing.

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In other news, congratulations to the Boston Red Sox, on kicking off the Grapefruit League campaign with a stunning... 4-4 10 inning tie with the Minnesota Twins. Ah, spring training baseball, "I live for this!"

"2006-2007: The Search for Hockey" Hits a Couple Snags

Granted I went to a mere 1 Cleveland Barons AHL game during my first two Cleveland winters, but this year was supposed to be different. From 2001-2002 to 2003-2004, the location where myself and my girlfriend spent the weekend was based on who was hosting a better opponent, my Boston University Terriers or her University of New Hampshire Wildcats. With her graduation and move to Cleveland coming in 2006, and the Barons featuring a pair of memorable UNH players in Josh Prudden and Garret Stafford, our date option of choice for my final year in Cleveland seemed assured. Then two things happened:

-The Barons moved to Worcester.
-The QuickenLoans Arena purchsed the dormant Utah Grizzlies AHL franchise... but announced the new team wouldn't launch until 2007-2008.

So staring a hockey-less year in the face, two developments took place:

-It was announced that BU would be playing in the IceBreaker Tournament in Oxford, Ohio, celebrating the opening of Miami University's new arena, along with Cornell and Western Michigan. Knowing, perhaps, more Miami U. alums in Cleveland than any other school, and more Miami U. fans than any other school besides Ohio State, plans for a 4.5 hour road trip entered the theoretical stages.
-I noted that a junior team, the Cleveland Jr. Barons, played in the NAHL, and boasted alumni which included BC's Peter Harrold and Maine's Colin Shields... surely this could provide decent entertainment for at least a few games this season.

In the past few weeks, however, a couple developments emerged:

-BU was awarded hosting duties for 2007's IceBreaker. Since a school can only exempt the same tournament from their games limit once every 4 seasons, they dropped out of this years installment, opening the door for Vermont to take their spot this season. I'd still like to go... but the tournament has certainly lost some of it's luster.
-I spotted the NAHL's divisional alignment for next season today. The Jr. Baron's were notably absent. There's no notice of what happened on either the team's or the NAHL's websites, and there is no coversation about it on various message boards (strange considering the uproar the collapse of the 3 Montana based franchises caused last month). From the look of the Jr. Baron's site, they may have joined the ranks of the lower ('B' or 'C') junior leagues, taking them from a spectator sport to a 'friends and family' affair. Crap.

Any advice for where to catch hockey in Greater Cleveland this winter is greatly appreciated.

25th Anniversary

We should all take a moment today to recognize the 25th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice and the overall accomplishments of the USA Men's Hockey Team of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympic Games... or as I like to call them "Rizzo, Silky, O.C., Craig and those 16 dudes from the Midwest." Thanks guys.

Sux2BU

Ah yes, that old Boston chant "Sux2BU." At times it is heard as often as "Yankees Suck" on Huntington Avenue, on the Heights, and in Harvard Square. Both of these phrases were invented by those bitter and envious of the nearby hegemon, the team that shatterred their dreams so often, that many wanted them to lose more than they wanted their own teams to win.

Through all of this though, fans of the Boston Red Sox never had the gall to say it was the Yankees fans who were bitter and envious.

Yesterday, however, Boston College's school newspaper issued an editorial which was entitled "Always Remember: It Sucks to BU," in which they state "There's no two ways about it - the Terriers are just plain envious of all things BC."

National Championships: BU-4, BC-2.
Beanpot Titles: BU-25, BC-13.

Oh yeah, BU is quite envious of that outstanding track record.

Boston College, in their blind arrogance, likes to pretend they are the dominant force in New England collegiate sports, but Boston College has fewer national championships than many of the other schools in New England, including Boston University, Yale, Connecticut, Vermont, Harvard, and Dartmouth. Their best ever performance in the NCAA basketball tournament was an appearance in the Elite 8, which puts them in a tie with BU (way to go!) and behind other local programs such as Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Providence.

They like to chide BU fans for not having football, and blame "megalomaniac ex-chancellor John Silber" in the article for cutting the program. Football was cut only a couple years after an undefeated regular season (wow, that's right kids, more recently than BC) , because there was little fan interest, because football fit BU's demographics poorly, and because it was decided that it would be better to save the lost money for a new venue for hockey and basketball and to renovate Nickerson Field to make it better for soccer. Similar decisions have been made by Vermont and Providence. BC, meanwhile, struggles through an easy schedule, never wins its conference, never sells out a small stadium for anyone not named Notre Dame (who has announced they will stop scheduling BC in favor of BYU), and plays in illustrious minimum payout bowls such as the Carquest Bowl and Continental Tire Bowl. Here's a trivia question for everyone, which Boston based school has played in a bowl game in Pasadena, California, in college football's most revered stadium? That's right kids, Boston University. The school that dropped football, because it doesn't make economic sense in a region that doesn't watch college football.

Another pearl from the article was "Boston College: No. 37 in the nation, according to U.S. News and World Report. Boston University? No. 56, and you'll never hear us chanting "safety school."" First of all, school's are ranked by silly criteria like library size and a average alumni donation and not actual academics in the U.S. News Rankings. Boston University, along with several other schools, has elected not to participate in U.S. News self-administered survey, which causes a bunch of "N/A"s to be averaged in... for which we are penalized. This is why this is the only poll BCers ever bring up, because every time real criteria is used, either the difference becomes negligible, or BC falls behind BU. I'd also like to take issue with the never chanting "safety school." I've heard it with my own ears. I've also walked up an aisle at Conte Forum wearing a BU jersey while hundreds chanted "BC Reject," which I'm sure was because I deserved it, and not because ever envious BU had just beaten BC in the conference hockey tournament. Not that it matters anyways, because once graduates of either school travel west of the shelter of Route 495, they learn that if you went to BU, people assume NYU rejected you, and if you went to BC, that Notre Dame rejected you.

More jewels from the article include "Remember John Sabo? He was the BU forward indicted on charges of aggravated assault after he stomped on someone's head outside a local bar. Go Terriers!" BCers will remember Bill Romanowski right? You know, the guy who had multiple suspensions for violating the NFL's drug abuse policy, and who ended his career by assaulting a young teammate in the locker room (ending the young man's football career as well)? How about William Green? He got a 4 game suspension last year for violating the league's substance abuse policy too, plus a suspension this year for taking a swing at an opposing player during pregame warmups. How about Mike Cloud? Might he have violated the substance abuse policy too? This doesn't even bring into account the two gambling scandals in recent memory. But John Sabo is a bad person whom BU should be derided for.

I could go on, as the BC article continues to move from the outdated, to the false, to the laughable, but anyone can read the article on their own if they just click the following link and give Boston College a bunch of personal information:

http://www.bcheights.com/news/2005/02/07/Editorial/Always.Remember.it.Sucks.To.Bu-854708.shtml

Lastly, congratulations to the Boston University Terriers for defeating the Boston College Eagles 2-1 in the opening round of the Beanpot on Monday. Boston University has never failed to make the finals in my time as a fan, and has never lost an opening round game to Boston College, in 7 meetings, during my lifetime. Thank you for keeping these streaks alive because I am so envious of Boston College's outstanding accomplishments.

Playoffs at Nickerson Field

Tonight, the Boston University Terriers host the Big Green of Dartmouth College in the first round of the NCAA men's soccer championship tournament. It's not that I'm a big college soccer fan, it's that I'm astounded that an America East Conference team was good enough to get a national tournament home game in any sport. This is a rare day for AEC and BU fans... hopefully they'll take advantage of it and pull out a win.

In other New England collegiate sports news:
- #15 BU, first place in Hockey East, visits UMass-Lowell tonight, a school still searching for its first league win of the year. At the beginning of the season, if you had told me that their situations would be reversed at this point in the year, I wouldn't have been in the least surprised.
- Northeastern is the last undefeated team in Hockey East. Granted, they've played the fewest games so far, but it took them 9 games last year to get their first win, so it's pretty impressive for them. They visit #6 UNH tonight.

Veteran's Day

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=frei_terry&id=1920697

This is in honor of Dave Mears, hero of Sugar Loaf Hill, lineman for Boston University. Great story by ESPN.