Offseason Thread

[pdt1081]

I'm having fun. Same situation as Rich. Happy for the kid.

Ya never know anymore. From the article I posted, it sounds like they did everything they could to get him some attention for elsewhere. I'm sure it's a decision Coach struggled with for awhile.

While it may be a first to have a current coach's son officially on the team (St Jean's dad was a volunteer assistant under Buddy), I can 100% say he's not the first to dress in a practice.

[Falconwriter]

BG has signed Peter Eigner, Coach Eigner’s son.

He went to St. John’s Jesuit in Toledo, and he recorded a .910 save percentage in 2019-2020 as a goalie.

I assume he slides into the Brett Rich role as the third goalie who likely never sees the ice.

Hurray nepotism.

His tuition is paid for without using an athletic scholarship. Why not? That's a tough position to recruit for anyways.

Pretty sure he counts against the scholarship total, even if the university is not paying for it in the usual hockey scholarship way. The NCAA does not typically allow teams to circumvent scholarship limits by having it paid another way. For instance: if a football player also plays basketball, he will count against the basketball total (because it's a smaller scholarship base). The only way this might not be the case is if there's some financial guideline about how much a family has to pay out of pocket (even a coach) to have the son be considered a walk on and not count against the scholarship formula.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

CCHA Twitter feed is reporting that Mitch McLain signed with the Milwaukee Admirals.

I like how the CCHA is approaching social media. They aren't missing any opportunities to promote current and former players, coaches, league administrators, etc. You can't compare what the crappy WCHA did during their entire existence to what Dominic Hennig has done in a couple of months.

[nodak651]

First off, BGSU will be fine... and will stay at the top of the WCHA even if this next year sucks. BGSU is a solid program, and you have the facilities, arena, money, and fan support that is just flat out better than most of the CCHA schools. There's no reason why BGSU shouldn't and won't be right with Mankato at the top of the conference more years than not. As long as you do that, tournament access will come and anything can happen in the tourny... BGSU has been consistent and that means a hell of a lot more to recruits than flash in the pan teams, IMO.

This post is really about the CCHA as a conference, however, and their membership strategy. Sorry in advance for rambling a bit..

I know you guys hate your current conference situation, largely due to travel, and the potential additions to D1 & CCHA are also far away, but I'm curious to what you guys would think of the CCHA changing it's mindset/strategy, and instead of shrinking membership, moving to an all of the above approach? With UAA being the lone exception, and assuming Lindenwood, Augastana, and UAH would actually play D1 hockey with a conference invite, why not invite them all and make a super conference, and try to add even more teams if the opportunity presents itself? The CCHA could then create divisions with uneven scheduling, which would allow schools to play more games in their geographic region? More teams and lopsided scheduling shouldn't really impair any teams chance of entering the NCAA tourny field, because the conference champ in the ccha/nWCHA has typically had a good enough pairwise ranking to get in regardless. The pairwise is fair, so as long as a team is good enough and wins games... they can get into the tournament.. arguably as opposed to sports like football and basketball where teams from "weaker" conferences routinely get shafted. This could potentially help with travel, help college hockey overall, and it could actually increase the chance of making the NCAA tourny for good CCHA schools because the good teams wouldn't have to play eachother as much - for example, BGSU and Mankato wouldn't canabalize each other as much, because they would be playing less head to head games where someone is guaranteed to lose (kinda).

Do you guys think this approach could actually be better for BGSU than the status quo? LONG term, giving new teams a conference landing spot would make it easier for programs to commit to D1 and fund a program (I think this could be Augastana/Lindenwoods problem for example), and EVENTUALLY once the CCHA has enough programs, it could finally split to create two more geographically centered conferences, which would be better for everyone.

CCHA for example could even do 3 pods of 4 teams each, if BGSU could get two Atlantic teams to join - such as Robert Morris, Canisius, or Niagara, who were all rumored to join BGSU in the past, in a new conference. The teams in the pod could each play eachother in two home/home games each year, and you would have one two game series vs the teams in the other two pods each year, which would equal 20 games. The league could then schedule an additional cross division/pod game or two each year to get to 22 or 24 games, or the schools could use the extra non-conf games to improve sos, or they could schedule non conf games with CCHA teams if needed, which wouldnt be counted towrds league standings. This last option kind of sucks, but the Big Sky does this in football because there are so few D1 football teams out west.
Pod 1: BGSU, Ferris, Atlantic Team 1, Atlantic Team 2
Pod 2: Tech, Lake Superior, N Michigan, and Bemidji
pod 3: Mankato, St. Thomas, Augustina, Lindenwood

Thoughts?

[Schadenfreude]

I know you guys hate your current conference situation, largely due to travel, and the potential additions to D1 & CCHA are also far away, but I'm curious to what you guys would think of the CCHA changing it's mindset/strategy, and instead of shrinking membership, moving to an all of the above approach?

Ideally, I think the CCHA would trade a couple of western schools to the NCHC in return for the two other MAC hockey schools. That seems unlikely, but I think that's the dream.

I'll bet the CCHA looked at the western members of Atlantic Hockey at some point, and that's not crazy, but given that we are adding St. Thomas (giving the CCHA a clear Minnesota wing) I wonder how much sense that would still make, especially with Robert Morris potentially giving up on hockey, anyway.

The point of bringing back the CCHA was to tighten the conference footprint. Opening up the conference to anyone and everyone but Alaska schools seems at odds with that philosophy.

[nodak651]

I know you guys hate your current conference situation, largely due to travel, and the potential additions to D1 & CCHA are also far away, but I'm curious to what you guys would think of the CCHA changing it's mindset/strategy, and instead of shrinking membership, moving to an all of the above approach?

Ideally, I think the CCHA would trade a couple of western schools to the NCHC in return for the two other MAC hockey schools. That seems unlikely, but I think that's the dream.

I'll bet the CCHA looked at the western members of Atlantic Hockey at some point, and that's not crazy, but given that we are adding St. Thomas (giving the CCHA a clear Minnesota wing) I wonder how much sense that would still make, especially with Robert Morris potentially giving up on hockey, anyway.

The point of bringing back the CCHA was to tighten the conference footprint. Opening up the conference to anyone and everyone but Alaska schools seems at odds with that philosophy.

There's no doubt about that, but after ditching UAH and UAA, the fact remains that the CCHA is still terrible for travel, despite the recent efforts. The end game would be to incubate new programs and grow the league so that the conference can split, and two conferences that actually have a tight footprint can be formed. In the meantime, Adding some teams and splitting the league into pods would help to limit or even reduce travel costs, and I think it could actually improve the likelihood of the league getting a 2nd NCAA bid each year.

What do people say the deifinition of crazy is? Trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right? The new CCHA is a good step, but they haven't changed enough, IMO.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

Given the recent 3-year history of the nWCHA, the nCCHA should consistently be a 2-bid league especially when factoring out the UA* teams. And since the nCCHA won't ever be a consistent 3-bid league, I don't see the value in adding a bunch of startup teams. Won't help in the tournament calculation and they don't bring anything to the table with respect to fanba$e.

I don't give a crap about nurturing new programs. If some school wants to start a new D1 program and they aren't in metro Detroit, Chicagoland, or the Twin Cities, let them create their own conference. I also don't give a crap about growth for the sake of growth or creating pods for some split sometime in the future. Right now it's "show me the money." NBCSN will not be outbidding FloSports for the broadcast rights to Augustana at Ferris St. Hell, they don't want the broadcast rights to BG at Mankato. What does Lindenwood bring to the table other than another 13 hour bus ride?

And I don't think it's right to say we hate our current conference situation. We hated the last one but that's been fixed. Remember that we turned the Nachos down once and nothing has happened that would change our minds on that. We're good right here. Though as Shad said, reuniting the MAC schools outside the Nachos would be the best case scenario for us. But BG makes plans assuming W and Miami State aren't ever leaving.

Lastly, nCCHA travel costs are way less than Nacho travel costs which is one of the main reasons why we all formed the league. Just ask Miami State who, according to their message boards and Adam Wodon, is struggling with travel costs. Non merci.

The Nachos (sans Miami State) have all the money, let them go the pod route and incubate new programs.

Conclusion: I understand the points you're making and appreciate the outside the box thinking, but from my perspective it's all a non-starter.

[Hockey John]

First off, BGSU will be fine... and will stay at the top of the WCHA even if this next year sucks. BGSU is a solid program, and you have the facilities, arena, money, and fan support that is just flat out better than most of the CCHA schools. There's no reason why BGSU shouldn't and won't be right with Mankato at the top of the conference more years than not. As long as you do that, tournament access will come and anything can happen in the tourny... BGSU has been consistent and that means a hell of a lot more to recruits than flash in the pan teams, IMO.

This post is really about the CCHA as a conference, however, and their membership strategy. Sorry in advance for rambling a bit..

I know you guys hate your current conference situation, largely due to travel, and the potential additions to D1 & CCHA are also far away, but I'm curious to what you guys would think of the CCHA changing it's mindset/strategy, and instead of shrinking membership, moving to an all of the above approach? With UAA being the lone exception, and assuming Lindenwood, Augastana, and UAH would actually play D1 hockey with a conference invite, why not invite them all and make a super conference, and try to add even more teams if the opportunity presents itself? The CCHA could then create divisions with uneven scheduling, which would allow schools to play more games in their geographic region? More teams and lopsided scheduling shouldn't really impair any teams chance of entering the NCAA tourny field, because the conference champ in the ccha/nWCHA has typically had a good enough pairwise ranking to get in regardless. The pairwise is fair, so as long as a team is good enough and wins games... they can get into the tournament.. arguably as opposed to sports like football and basketball where teams from "weaker" conferences routinely get shafted. This could potentially help with travel, help college hockey overall, and it could actually increase the chance of making the NCAA tourny for good CCHA schools because the good teams wouldn't have to play eachother as much - for example, BGSU and Mankato wouldn't canabalize each other as much, because they would be playing less head to head games where someone is guaranteed to lose (kinda).

Do you guys think this approach could actually be better for BGSU than the status quo? LONG term, giving new teams a conference landing spot would make it easier for programs to commit to D1 and fund a program (I think this could be Augastana/Lindenwoods problem for example), and EVENTUALLY once the CCHA has enough programs, it could finally split to create two more geographically centered conferences, which would be better for everyone.

CCHA for example could even do 3 pods of 4 teams each, if BGSU could get two Atlantic teams to join - such as Robert Morris, Canisius, or Niagara, who were all rumored to join BGSU in the past, in a new conference. The teams in the pod could each play eachother in two home/home games each year, and you would have one two game series vs the teams in the other two pods each year, which would equal 20 games. The league could then schedule an additional cross division/pod game or two each year to get to 22 or 24 games, or the schools could use the extra non-conf games to improve sos, or they could schedule non conf games with CCHA teams if needed, which wouldnt be counted towrds league standings. This last option kind of sucks, but the Big Sky does this in football because there are so few D1 football teams out west.
Pod 1: BGSU, Ferris, Atlantic Team 1, Atlantic Team 2
Pod 2: Tech, Lake Superior, N Michigan, and Bemidji
pod 3: Mankato, St. Thomas, Augustina, Lindenwood

Thoughts?

My thoughts are let the NCHC carry the freight for the new programs. Simple and direct answer.

[pdt1081]

The point of bringing back the CCHA was to tighten the conference footprint. Opening up the conference to anyone and everyone but Alaska schools seems at odds with that philosophy.

That's not true at all. The new conference was formed because there were a few schools who couldn't guarantee they'd be playing the next season, while they were trying to put together the league schedule in May. Those teams got hammered out of conference, but were allowed to play a certain way during league play that kept games close, and would titanic a team's Pairwise if they managed to steal one. None of those schools even attempted a major fundraiser until hockey was cut from their school.

The other aspects were the leadership at the top, as well as the Women's side of the conference. There's what, one or two CCHA schools that have varsity women's hockey? Yet the men's teams were partially funding the women's side of things.

[footballguy51]

Suggesting that the CCHA become an incubator for start-up programs sounds entirely too much like MAC football. We've had random teams in MAC football that didn't really make sense, only to have them take off as quickly as possible. Marshall (geographically, at least it was close) was at least a full member, but Central Florida, Temple, and UMASS were all football only schools and took off when they saw better options. Temple and UMASS were teams that were really terrible but I think we wanted to try and convince them to become full members of the conference. Instead, we nurtured them and then let them disappear, and we really saw nothing beneficial from that relationship. In the eyes of the other conferences, I think it made the MAC look bad. Why do that to the CCHA?

[jpfalcon09]

So the GLI as we know it is no more. Michigan and Michigan State will host games going forward against Tech and a fourth team (this year it's WMU). Really disappointing to see it move to this format.

[Schadenfreude]

So the GLI as we know it is no more. Michigan and Michigan State will host games going forward against Tech and a fourth team (this year it's WMU). Really disappointing to see it move to this format.

That's a real bummer.

[mbenecke]

The GLI news is tough.

At least we stole their trophy in our last appearance.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

With the showcase format, I assume there will not be a GLI champion this year, correct?

Sounds like this is a temporary patch and that Tech will be looking for a new home for the tourney going forward possibly without UofM and MSUCKS.

[jpfalcon09]

With the showcase format, I assume there will not be a GLI champion this year, correct?

Sounds like this is a temporary patch and that Tech will be looking for a new home for the tourney going forward possibly without UofM and MSUCKS.

Always felt either Van Andel or the Huntington Center would have been good alternative sites given the smaller capacities and minimal increases in travel.