Dec 9 Polls

[jtwcornell91]

Harkness, actually.  ;-)

[Greg Berge]

There was also a poll out of Albany during the 80's, I believe Don Birkmeyer (one of the formative influences of TBRW) had something to do with it.

I do not recall Cornell having been ranked this high since I became a fan in 81-82.  IIRC, the Big Red finished the 1997 season #4 in RPICH.

I assume Cornell spent most of the late 60's through early 70's at or near #1 in the national polls of that period.

[adamw]

The lineage of the USCHO.com poll goes way back ... it's sort of like the New Jersey Devils ... started as the Kansas City Scouts -> Colorado Rockies -> New Jersey

It started as the Albany Times-Union Poll.  I'm not sure when that started, but it was before 1988.

Somewhere in the early 90s, it was taken over by Tim Leonard, RPI beat writer for the Troy Record.

In 1996, Tim left the paper ... and I took over the poll as the "Around the Rinks/USCHO" poll ... Around the Rinks was a weekly 30-minute magazine show on college hockey, which ran one season on AudioNet (which also has its own lineage: AudioNet --> Broadcast.com --> Yahoo! Broadcast --> $6 billion for Mark Cuban's pocket).  The show went great and was building a nice on-line audience, but with my acceptance of full-time pro hockey job, I couldn't continue it, and officially handed over the reigns completely to USCHO.

In essence, you can say that the USCHO.com poll started in 1996-97, not 1997-98.  But no records exist for 1996-97 when it was ATR/USCHO.

I'm currently researching the Albany Times-Union polls, and will post the findings if I get them.

The WMPL Media Poll ran concurrent to the Times-Union poll, and started in the early 70s.  There was another media poll run briefly by a station in Maine.  Not sure the start/end dates.

[Al DeFlorio]

I don't remember any polls back in the "glory" days, but that certainly doesn't mean there weren't any.  Gotta remember there were only 25-30 Division I teams then (old ECAC and old WCHA) so a "top ten" wasn't very meaningful.

[RedAR]

I knew that.  No, really, I did. ::nut::

[Jim Hyla]

Nice to see Don Birkmeyer's name. He was one of the only sources of comprehensive data back then. He wrote the "Intercollegiate Hockey Newsletter". In it he listed all schools and their records, as well as short write ups of their games. Considering that it was before "modern" communication, it was a major task. Unfortunately age took its toll and he had to quit. It was taken over, but never took off again; undoubtably because of the very "modern" communication that I'm using right now. He published about every other week during the season, and more frequently as playoffs started. I have issues going back to the 60's I guess. I still need to organize all that stuff.

I don't ever remember any polls listed early on, but this will encourage me to look back. If they existed, he would have them. I suspect the Michigan Tech poll was one of the first.

[CUlater \'89]

Adam's descriptions jibe with my recollections.  The Sun used to have those polls available (although they were not often published) and The New York Times used the Albany Times-Union poll as its poll-of-record.

Although I don't believe The Hockey News had a weekly poll, in the season preview for the '90-'91 season, Cornell was ranked #2, IIRC.

[RichS]

I definitely remember there being a "national" poll back in '70-71 which was my first year at Clarkson, but have no recollection of who produced it.   I specifically recall that after Tech beat cornell 2-1 in OT in Potsdam, our next game was 3 days later at BU which was #1 in the polls.  Both of the other aforementioned teams were very high in that poll as well.

What was the more recent poll from the midwest...guess it was that M Tech one from Houghton, Mich that Jim mentioned?

[Jim Hyla]

Well just looked through some of the old "Intercollegiate Hockey Newsletter"(s)(IHN). Interesting stuff. I found an account of the BU disqualifications in 1973. I'll try and post that later.

In regards to polls, the first "official" one that I can see was in Dec. 1976. In that issue Mr. Birkmayer says [Q]The Uni. of N. Dakota is top ranked in the first ice hockey poll ever conducted by the NCAA ... Rules Comm.. The poll was conducted on Tues. Nov. 30 and will be repeated every other Tues. ... .

A five member selection comm. voted the Sioux No. 1 followed by Clk. and Wisc..   ...

Input to the ... poll will be provided by members of the East and West advisory comm. which are selected by the Ice Hockey Rules Comm.. A total of 18 athletic admimistrators and coaches ... will provide input to the poll. [/Q] As an aside Cornell was in the others receiving votes category, followed alphabetically by Gustavus Adolphus. ::nut::There may be others I'll keep looking.

Unfortunately I also saw the Cornell program for the loss to Yale in 1967. I keep that on top to remind me when I think we are invincible.

[marty]

Polls or no polls the last time the team was rated this high must have been the 72-73 season.  (Pre-season assessment aside.)  Correct?