what if? (hockey)

[ditt1605]

Ok, so the other thread on reorganizing the Hockey conferences got me thinking. What if we just started from scratch based on geographic location? I took a look at all the schools and came up with 5 conferences that were geographically aligned (or as close as possible. damn you Huntsville!). School states in parenthesis.

Conference 1 = 10 teams
- American International (MA)
- Bentley (MA)
- Holy Cross (MA)
- Harvard (MA)
- Boston College (MA)
- Boston (MA)
- UMass - Amherst (MA)
- UMass - Lowell (MA)
- Merrimack (MA)
- Northeastern (MA)

Conference 2 = 13 teams
- Army (NY)
- Canisius (NY)
- RIT (NY)
- Clarkson (NY)
- Colgate (NY)
- Cornell (NY)
- RPI (NY)
- St Lawrence (NY)
- Union (NY)
- Niagra (NY)
- Princeton (NJ)
- Mercyherst (PA)
- Robert Morris (PA)

Conference 3 = 12 teams
- Ferris St (MI)
- Lake Superior St (MI)
- Michigan (MI)
- Michigan St (MI)
- Northern Michigan (MI)
- Western Michigan (MI)
- Michigan Tech (MI)
- Bowling Green (OH)
- Miami (OH)
- Notre Dame (IN)
- Alabama - Huntsville (AL)
- Wisconsin (WI)

Conference 4 = 10 teams
- Brown (RI)
- Providence (RI)
- Maine (ME)
- Dartmouth (NH)
- New Hampshire (NH)
- Vermont (VT)
- UConn (CT)
- Sacred Heart (CT)
- Quinnipiac (CT)
- Yale (CT)

Conference 5 = 12
- Air Force (CO)
- Denver (CO)
- Colorado College (CO)
- Nebraska - Omaha (NE)
- North Dakota (ND)
- Alaska - Anchorage (AK)
- Alaska - Fairbanks (AK)
- Bemidji State (MN)
- Minnesota (MN)
- Duluth (MN)
- St Cloud State (MN)
- Mankato (MN)



A couple of things:
- MA and NY each have 10 schools. MI has 7.
- Regardless of who else is in their conference, the western schools will have the most travel.
- With the exception of conference #2, they all have a pretty good mix of power houses and doormats.
- If both AK schools are in the same conference, I can’t see a visiting team going up there twice in a season.

 

[Son of a Badger]

Except for Minnesota in a different conference as Wisconsin, which I can see by how you're setting up things, I really think you're onto something.

 

[MrGopher]

That's an interesting way to look at it. We all know that conference alignments would never simply 'restart' with no regard for history. But looking at the map, that's how I would divide it too.

 

[ditt1605]

I originally had WI in with the MN schools, but then realized that there would be 3 conferences with an uneven amount of teams and WI is close enough to the MI schools for that to make sense.

There is no way that this would ever happen in real life, but I just thought it would be cool to see what things would look like.

I was just really shocked at how many schools NY and MA have. I guess I never realized where a lot of those "name" schools were. I was also a little surprised that MI came in third. So much for MN being the state of hockey...

 

[MrGopher]

I was just really shocked at how many schools NY and MA have. I guess I never realized where a lot of those "name" schools were. I was also a little surprised that MI came in third. So much for MN being the state of hockey...

We are the state of hockey. The reason isn't the number of college programs, it is the competition and passion at the youth and high school levels. College hockey does contribute to that reputation though.

You'd be surprised how many Canadians are on the teams from the northeast schools, and michigan schools. Plus baseball, basketball, and football are so much higher on people's minds than hockey in those states. Hockey in minnesota is very much comparable to the basketball, football and baseball cultures within the state.