Guaranteed ECAC Title vs Guaranteed NCAA Advance

[KeithK]

[q]Are you, perhaps, a fan of the Atlanta Braves? ;-)[/q]Ask yourself, which team would you rather root for?  The Braves with their 14 division championships in 15 years and many, many playoff disappointments or the Florida MArlins with their two wild card World Championships and lousy finishes most other seasons including the two purges.  I'd pick Atlanta's results in a heartbeat.

Not a perfect analogy, of course, because Atlanta has actually won the World Series once during this run.

[Scersk '97]

I am underwhelmed by any scenario in which we fail to win an ECAC championship.

4b starts to sound a bit attractive until I remember the absolutely crushing feeling of the semifinal loss in Buffalo.  Without the ameliorative qualities of that championship afterglow, Thursday in Buffalo would have been rather black.

[calgARI '07]

[quote jtwcornell91][quote calgARI '07]The #1 goal is a National Championship and thus whatever takes them closer is what I want.  It's great to win the IVY and ECAC, but all that really matters is that National Championship.[/quote]

You know, I used to find that sentiment very annoying in BU fans, like the one who said after getting upset by Providence in the 1996 Hockey East tournament something like "at least that's over so we can concentrate on the one that counts".[/quote]

Well I'm annoyed by just the opposite.  I want to win everything.  But two years ago, there were actually some people who were satisfied with the Ivy League Championship and the embarrassment on home ice.  Winning championships is imperative, but go and ask Schafer or Moulson what they would take over anything else and they would tell you a National Championship.  I think winning the ECAC is great and very important but I don't like how the team celebrates as if they've won the whole thing after they win it.  In the NHL, the conference champion rarely even touchs the Campbell or Wales trophy when they are awarded it.  In college basketball, powerhouse teams are very excited by winning their confernece post season tournament but their focus all along is winning the National Championship.  I know college hockey is a little different in that regard and that's fine.  But it's all about ultimate supremacy as far as I'm concerned and I refuse to acknowledge Cornell as one of powerhouses of college hockey until 1970 isn't the last NCAA Championship that they've one.  I would have been pissed if Cornell lost to Harvard in the ECAC Championship last year but not that much more pissed than when they had lost to them in January because I knew they were going to the NCAA Tournament.

[Jordan 04]

[quote Section A Banshee]The question is often posed, would you rather have a team that is consistantly dominant for years at a time but never wins national titles, or one that wins a national title and then has a stretch of really awful years afterward.  I will always choose the first one.  The in-game experiences mean more to me than notches in the belt.[/quote]

The only reason that is posed is because the 2nd option has to be made to look as bad as possible for it to even have a chance of being overtaken by the first.

The answer to this scenario is easily the 2nd one, even if having to accept the awful years.

The "in-game experiences" will occur whether or not the team is competitive. If the Mets win the World Series this year, I wouldn't care less about the final results of the last 5 years, and the next 5.  Dae-Sung Koo still doubled off Randy Johnson last year and "stole" home on the next play, and David Wright still made the 2 sickest catches of the year, despite the final mediocre results.  And Piazza still homered in his first game back from his groin tear during a 66 win season. And so on and so forth...

*sigh*  14 more days 'til pitchers and catchers...

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote calgARI '07]Winning championships is imperative, but go and ask Schafer or Moulson what they would take over anything else and they would tell you a National Championship.[/quote]
I don't think anyone ever said anywhere they would "take" an ECAC championship over an NCAA championship.  That oversimplification completely misstates the issue being discussed here.  

Nor do I recall anyone ever saying they were satisfied by an Ivy League championship.  I would guess all that most, if not all, of us think about in terms of the Ivy is that we'd prefer not seeing the banner hanging in someone else's rink--in particular at Lynah East.

[Josh '99]

[quote Scersk '97]4b starts to sound a bit attractive until I remember the absolutely crushing feeling of the semifinal loss in Buffalo.  Without the ameliorative qualities of that championship afterglow, Thursday in Buffalo would have been rather black.[/quote]If I recall correctly, that Thursday afternoon was pretty black anyway.  :-/

[KeithK]

I know I'm very much in the minority when I say this, but I kind of feel like you shouldn't be playing for the National Championship if you can't even win your own conference.  Win or go home at each stage.  I really hope that when Cornell wins their next national title they also win the ECACs.  Otherwise part of me will think it somewhat tainted.

[Beeeej]

[quote calgARI '07]I want to win everything.  But two years ago, there were actually some people who were satisfied with the Ivy League Championship and the embarrassment on home ice.[/quote]

Really?  Who, exactly?

Beeeej

[Josh '99]

[quote KeithK]I know I'm very much in the minority when I say this, but I kind of feel like you shouldn't be playing for the National Championship if you can't even win your own conference.  Win or go home at each stage.  I really hope that when Cornell wins their next national title they also win the ECACs.  Otherwise part of me will think it somewhat tainted.[/quote]So do you think there should be no at-large bids, then?

[Trotsky]

[quote KeithK]I know I'm very much in the minority when I say this, but I kind of feel like you shouldn't be playing for the National Championship if you can't even win your own conference.  Win or go home at each stage.  I really hope that when Cornell wins their next national title they also win the ECACs.  Otherwise part of me will think it somewhat tainted.[/quote]

Six conference tourny champions.  Top two get first round byes, bottom four play (a.k.a., the ECAC and the CCHA play the two minor champs).  Survivors meet in the Frozen Four.

Go sell the WCHA on it and we're all with you.

[Scersk '97]

I'm with Keith.  The all-WCHA Frozen Four from last year, while probably exciting  on the ice, was a big yawn as far as I was concerned.  I really don't think the 5th-place WCHA team or, this year, the 5th-place CCHA team has any business playing for a national championship.  Frankly, I'd rather see another Atlantic Hockey or CHA team in.

Of course, what a clearly ECAC-type viewpoint.  If we get four teams in this year, which would, no matter how much it's been discussed, be quite unlikely, I won't complain.  Just, geez, another year of Wisconsin and CC and Denver and North Dakota and Minnesota...  There's kind of a "rich get richer" quality to it.

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote KeithK]I know I'm very much in the minority when I say this, but I kind of feel like you shouldn't be playing for the National Championship if you can't even win your own conference.  Win or go home at each stage.  I really hope that when Cornell wins their next national title they also win the ECACs.  Otherwise part of me will think it somewhat tainted.[/quote]
I can still remember vividly when only conference champions were invited to the NCAA basketball dance (and perhaps a few worthy independents).  I can tell you it made for some very exciting ACC tournaments.

[ugarte]

If I know that we aren't going to win it all, we better win the ECAC (1a and 3a). I'll still take the conference championship if it is open ended anyway (2a) unless I know that we get to the Frozen Four (4b).

Repeat after me: "The conference championship matters." These are the teams that we see every year, the rivalries that we care about, the fans that we interact with. Maybe it is provincial, but I don't care what Scooby thinks of us. I want RichS to know that we have a better team - and I want it to hurt like hell when he is celebrating a win by the Knights at Lynah. Once the conference championship stops mattering, the whole season is just data for the PWR and that is depressing.

Keith - I don't like the one-and-done sorta-randomness of one tournament (conference) being the only deciding factor for entry into another (NCAA). Basketball learned this lesson a long time ago.

[KeithK]

[q]Keith - I don't like the one-and-done sorta-randomness of one tournament (conference) being the only deciding factor for entry into another (NCAA). Basketball learned this lesson a long time ago.[/q]True.  I'm also in the minority thinking that the RS championship is more indicative of the better team when you have a balanced schedule.  I've said it here before - having a tournament to decide the champion made perfect sense in the old unbalanced schedule days but not so much now.

That said, it is the way the ECAC decides its championship, so it is important.  Besides, there's a lot of history to the tournament that gives it more validity to me than if it were just recently invented.

Josh - I am against at large bids in principle.  I am also against baseball wild cards (with a passion) and would go so far as to root against my team if they were the wild card team (and did in 1997, though not in 1995).

[ugarte]

[quote KeithK]I'm also in the minority thinking that the RS championship is more indicative of the better team when you have a balanced schedule.[/quote]I think a lot of people would agree with this but still think that the tournament is too much damn fun to give up, even if it means that the best team in the conference doesn't always go to the NCAA's. Me, for example.