Taking a page from basketball, where the ACC played (plays?) the Big East as a kind of season-opening challenge series...wouldn't it be a great college hockey event if the ECAC met HE at the beginning of the year?
The format could be #1 vs #1, etc., down to #10 vs #10 based on prior year's regular season standings. 5 games played in Albany, 5 in Boston, all on the same weekend. 3 games Saturday, 2 on Sunday. They could jigger who-plays-where a little so that they'd make it as easy as possible for fans to see their teams. Or they could just put odd numbers at one location and evens at the other.
This would give several teams from both leagues a chance to play some of the teams they used to run into before HE existed. It would generate semi-random pairings of teams that might not otherwise meet. It just seems like it would be a heck of a lot of fun for the fans, too.
OK, back to your regularly scheduled "Cornell beats up on Union/RPI" threads.
Karl_'77_who_really_misses_the_games_against_BU
Cornell/Colgate vs. BU/BC would be an awesome way to open the year.
Wish something like this were easier done than said. I think it would require NESN or YES to come in and help arrange it..... it certainly helped the ACC-Big 10 challenge that ESPN/ESPN 2 would televise all the games and it's been a great success since. HE's commissioner used to be the ECAC commissioner so it can't really be a foreign concept. ACC/Big 10 challenge uses home courts though - though in some cases they use a bigger arena nearby (e.g. Illinois uses the United Center).... and in this case I don't see the schools giving up their gates also - and it would be interesting to see some schools going to places they normally don't - UNH or Maine coming to Cornell or vice versa?
Leaving out Q and UVM, let's just go down based on last years reg season standings:
Cornell-BC; Harvard-BU; Colgate-UNH; Dartmouth-Maine; Brown-UML; SLU-Northeastern; Union-Providence; Clarkson-UMass; Princeton-Merrimack. Have it the Friday/Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Well, considering that Harvard has BC and BU scheduled every damn year for some reason in the fall (beanpot scouting?), I doubt BU and BC want even more ECACHL scheduling. C'mon Jack and Jerry, loosen up the damn schedule and screw the F'ing Cantabs.
The f'ing Cantabs are a short trip for Jack.
Now, personally, I wouldn't mind another Boston trip once in a while.
[Q]RichH Wrote:
Well, considering that Harvard has BC and BU scheduled every damn year for some reason in the fall (beanpot scouting?), I doubt BU and BC want even more ECACHL scheduling. C'mon Jack and Jerry, loosen up the damn schedule and screw the F'ing Cantabs.[/q]
I enjoyed the hell out of our last series with BU (and not just because we went 3-1; the weekend at WBA was probably more fun); it's too bad we haven't done it again.