Ice Question

[It's the Journey...]

So this has been bugging me. Why the hell is there not a standard size for NCAA Ice Hockey? We have standards for the field of play in every other sport! But the standard for hockey seems to be just play on ice.....

[BGFan]

From the NCAA rule book: Dimensions
- As nearly as possible, the dimensions of the rink shall be 200
feet long and 85 feet wide. The corners should be rounded in the arc of a
circle with a radius of 20 feet.

Many of the arenas were built prior to this actually being in the rule book. The Olympic sized ice became a fad after the 1980 miracle on ice game. Any more, new arenas are built to the NHL standard of 200 x 85.

The expense of resizing the Olympic ice down is prohibiting for many of the schools since seating would also need to be altered.

[gmartin]

So this has been bugging me. Why the hell is there not a standard size for NCAA Ice Hockey? We have standards for the field of play in every other sport! But the standard for hockey seems to be just play on ice.....

Actually, baseball and softball are unique to every field. They don't have the same distance in the outfield. In the NHL, Boston Garden ice is 9 ft shorter then the other 30 teams in the league. What about that Hill at Minute Maid Park in the outfield. I think everything should be standard except for baseball but it's not. NMU clearly has an advantage. If you recruit to your larger ice and you practice on your larger ice going to a smaller ice you'll be more conditioned. However, going from a larger ice to a smaller ice does affect your play. The rebounds are different. The pucks off the boards are different. Less room to skate. So going from a larger ice to a smaller ice even though you'll be more conditioned it's more difficult to play. However in this case BG may be less conditioned for the larger ice and it will affect their play.