Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Column: Dear College Hockey, It's Time To Properly Discuss Allentown Hosting The Midwest Regional

Two hours separate Allentown, PA from New York City. Ninety minutes on a good day if traffic and cops cooperate.

And for a third straight March, a town not pertaining to be in the middle nor west of Pennsylvania, let alone America, will be home to NCAA Hockey's Midwest Regional after the 2020 and 2021 regionals were announced earlier this month.

In a way, it's fitting. College hockey contains many misnomers. Providence didn't host the Providence regional. (Sorry Minnesota State.) There's a school called American International.

Directions don't mean much in a sport where Western Michigan is not in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. Northern Michigan, a team in the Eastern Time Zone playing in the WCHA, shares a home with Alabama-Huntsville and is far south of conference mates Alaska and Alaska-Anchorage. The WCHA has a larger national footprint than the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.

Even the Big Ten doesn't come close to having ten teams.

Somewhere in that misnomer, the issue does not lay with having the Midwest represented by a Billy Joel song. (Obviously, that's more of a Springsteen thing.) From all accounts, Penn State and the staff at PPL Center do a fantastic job behind the scenes in Allentown putting on the weekend. It's exactly what teams and NCAA should want - a new, modern facility which is appropriately sized for an NCAA Tournament regional.

No, the issue runs deeper.

Monday, April 8, 2019

BLOG: Five Important NCAA Hockey Tournament Upsets History Forgot

A week passed since American International became the second Atlantic Hockey team in as many years to topple top overall seed St. Cloud State. Even then, I'm not sure how to place the upset in the pages of history.

It's big. Long a punching bag to the rest of college hockey, AIC had never had a season above .500 before this year. St. Cloud State, a year after being upset by Air Force in the NCAA Tournament first round, became the first team to be the number one overall seed in two consecutive years. Throughout the season, SCSU played like the best team in college hockey.

A week later, I get the feeling this is one - the third time St. Cloud State has been upset as one of the top two teams over the past four seasons - that will be remembered among college hockey fans more than the Air Force and Ferris State ones. However, it's also easy for the upset to be forgotten. Several major ones have. Others become footnotes in lists every time the latest upset happens.

There is a difference between being memorable and an upset. RIT upsetting Minnesota State in 2015 was the first time a No. 1 overall seed was upset by the No. 16 overall seed yet no one would call it as massive or monumental as when Holy Cross upset Minnesota in 2006; even though it wouldn't be a top-five upset by the numbers in 2019. Penn State, laughed off by many in college hockey and not seen as worthy as a high three seed in 2017, obliterating Union 10-3 is not an upset by the numbers yet remains memorable for more than what happened on the ice.

After reading several lists and tweets last week over what would be the biggest upset in college hockey history, I wanted to go in a different direction. In 2019, there are several upsets that had some serious ramifications on the college hockey world that history has somewhat forgotten.

Rather than ranking the top upsets, I wanted to go through the most important ones that should get more digital ink.