Illinois expecting add B1G hockey on May 14
From @JoeMeloni on twitter who writes for College Hockey News-
Per a Big Ten source, the conference recently instructed teams not to schedule non-conference games for the 2021-22 season and beyond, likely to allow the league time to figure out its new conference format with the University of Illinois D1 elevation gaining momentum.
The morning's biggest college hockey news: Looking like the @bigten has scheduled a news conference for May 14 outside Chicago. The safe bet is it's the long-awaited announcement that the U of Illinois will be the eighth @B1GHockey program. @TheRinkLive
Whoa. Big news indeed.
Awesome, another sport that they can suck at!
Are they trying to out-Rutgers Rutgers???
It's not so close to Chicago. It's in the middle of a cornfield.
Yeah Wisco and ND are closer with better allure
The skating Alma Otters!
Hopefully they add womens' hockey as well.
Assuming this is true, it will be interesting to see if the B1G goes to a 28-game conference schedule (4 games against each opponent). My guess is that most teams would be in favor of this but Minnesota would not.
I'm also curious about when Illinois' first season will be. Obviously 2019/20 is impossible, and even 2020/21 might be very very difficult to achieve. I will assume 2021/22 unless they say otherwise.
Penn State announced the program in September of 2010, with men's and women's programs launching in fall of 2012 and the new arena (and B1G membership) coming in 2013. (I just pulled this info from wikipedia, fwiw).
So 2021 seems like a safe bet. They still need a coach and they need recruits and it takes time to put all of that together.
Yeah, Illinois is coming from a very similar spot to where Penn State was - established, strong ACHA program. Seems like they'd probably need 2-3 years from an announcement to be able to field a viable D1 team
I still got eligibility. Lets go ferda!
The improbably dream appears to be coming true. This will bring B1G hockey to 8 members (including associate member Notre Dame) and fills in a fairly empty piece of property in college hockey's geographic footprint. Excellent news, in my opinion.
Now, if we can just get B1G teams competitive again, and fans re-engaged? That would be great.
Fans are not engaged because B1G Hockey is boring. I makes me very sad to say that I have never been less interested in College Hockey. This comes after two decades of die-hard support. We lost the unique nature of the game with the demise of the CCHA.
B1G hockey is objectively less boring than the CCHA was. Too many teams in the CCHA were willing to play "Ron Mason hockey"--try to grind the game out, make no effort to generate scoring chances, and wait for a power play. With Penn State and Minnesota added to the conference, there is much less of that now.
College hockey has changed, though. I think the advent of the Big Ten has nothing to do with the change. More 24-year-olds playing out the string. More 19-year-olds leaving for the pros. There is significantly less talent in college hockey overall than there was 10 years ago, which means fewer scoring chances generated and more .930 save percentages.
Look at teams like Massachusetts this season. They were a 1-seed, and in the championship game they generated essentially zero scoring chances over the entire game. That's not fun hockey to watch. I wish I had a cure, but my only idea is "convince the talented players to stay longer." That's not really a solution that can be implemented in the real world.
I think we're talking about different things. A lot of people miss the opponents and the regional nature of the CCHA rather than the type of hockey that was actually played on the ice (or the ice itself--nobody laments the demise of the Joyce center, and for the good reputation of Ferris fans, their arena is not, shall we say, a full four quarters of a facility).
The talent issue is weird, though. More players than ever are playing in the NHL following NCAA hockey careers, so talent isn't totally emptying out. But the effort made to make the NCAA an NHL pipeline has had real costs to the teams recruiting NHL-caliber players, and I think that has become an issue. Michigan fans love guys like Dylan Larkin and Kyle Connor, but we only got a year with each of them instead of the two or three you could get in the past.
I'm not sure that this is why people are staying home, though. People say they miss the regional rivalries in the CCHA, and I do too, but games against big programs the caliber of Minnesota or Notre Dame used to be schedule highlights and there are more of those and they don't move the needle quite how they used to.
In B1G terms I think a significant problem is that the teams just haven't been very good. Wisconsin and MSU, historical powers, have been embarrassments. Minnesota and Michigan have been mostly mediocre, with an isolated FF a piece in the B1G era. Ohio State has gotten better, but they aren't exactly drawing capacity at their rink. Michigan's key rival is MSU, but since MSU has been in the basement for so long, how fun can it be?
The answer is, not very. When Michigan and Michigan State are both excellent, attention will grow. When a home series against Wisconsin has a #1 seed riding on it, people will be more excited about it. When Minnesota is a defending national champion or something, people will want to watch.
None of those things is the case right now.
It's not like it's just the B1G, either. College hockey is flagging right now.
OK, maybe redhed and I are looking for different things when assessing "boring" hockey. Your last sentence is the issue I was trying to address in my last few paragraphs. Even as a Duluth resident, I'm sure you admit that this season's NCAA championship game was borderline unwatchable, right?
Yes, the NHL has more college players than ever. But more of those college players spent fewer seasons playing college hockey than ever. And, unfortunately, it's the top scoring talent that leaves earliest.
The national championship game was a curbstomp and it was basically (and visibly) over after 10 minutes. As a clinic in dominant play, it was interesting, but UMD's style is not particularly eye-catching and there was no drama whatsoever.
I didn't feel wronged, exactly, and I can admire excellence, but UMD's excellence is not a style that is enjoyable to watch for a neutral.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, Big Ten hockey is terrible for fans and here's why: Four historical powers in one conference. Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and MSU all expect to be good given their history. That's half of the conference. You've also got Penn State and Notre Dame with brand new ice arenas who just made huge investments who also expect to be good. Then Ohio State who's been good the last few years. When Wisconsin and Minnesota were in the WCHA both them plus Michigan, MSU, and Notre Dame were making the tournament regularly. There's only so many places 4 historical powers can finish in an 8 team conference. When none of the historical powers make the tournament like this year interest falls badly. Minnesota has been losing fans for a while now and it fell off a cliff this year. The Kohl center was similar. Also since hockey and basketball seasons are at the same time hockey is hardly ever on BTN. You could watch more Michigan hockey games on FS Detroit. To me it seems like an unsustainable league.
I get that argument. But it didn't stop Hockey East from forming in 1980, and it didn't stop them from being successful.
One thing the Big Ten is not is "unsustainable." Big Ten Men's Gymnastics is unsustainable, but here it is after 90 years, still existing, with no possibility of going anywhere unless another school drops the sport.
B1G teams aren't bad because they're in a strong league, though. They're bad because they are bad. It is quite possible for more than half of a league to make the NCAA tournament, and there's precedent for that in years when the old WCHA was "up." It is not at all hard to imagine an 8-team B1G putting 5 teams in the tournament if there are 5 or 6 really strong teams in the league.
It's harder to imagine there being that many good teams at once, but that's because the teams have been so shockingly mediocre.
The tv issue is more grating. The CCHA college hockey package was pretty good, and since it centered around Michigan and Michigan State, more of our games were on tv. The BTN package has become pretty bad, and the use of an additional for-pay service to stream lower-quality versions of the same games is galling.
Honestly, though, one issue Michigan fans have is that at the same time hockey has been mediocre, basketball has been extremely good. It diverts attention.
Regarding the TV package - BTN is horrible for hockey. Horrible. It's not the production values, but rather the horribly inconsistent scheduling of TV games.
Hockey is on but it's on at very random times. When I tune in BTN, I tend to find a hockey game more by luck than by design.
I've said this before, but the following schedule should be feasible for BTN for the winter sports (times are ET):
Friday nights: 2 hockey games, every Friday night. Either 6/8:30 (if both games in the east) or 7/9:30 (if an east and central game). 8:30 PM local is NOT too late for Friday night face-offs, if anything it might get a rowdier crowd.
Saturday: this is mostly college basketball. Slots at 12, 2, 4, and 8:30. That leaves time for another hockey slot at 6.
Sunday: Split the 12, 2 and 4 slots for wrestling meets, women's college hoops, and random events for the other winter sports (swimming/diving and gymnastics). Still room for a men's basketball game in the evening (6 or 7).
If you do that, BTN has 3 of the 8 hockey games every weekend (8 once Illinois comes in).
The other games are either (1) Notre Dame home games that can air on NBCSN, or (2) inventory BTN can sell to Sinclair (if Sinclair is buying the FSN networks as rumored).
That probably increases hockey coverage and nets just as much revenue as BTN+ pay-per-view.
Would be welcome news to college hockey. Illinois has been rumored to be returning to D1 for probably 20 years now. If this is true, you can probably expect a regional hosted by Illinois somewhere in their vicinity not long after they get it going
Would be nice.
Tarzan like how title written
Very surprised Illini going through with this, considering their revenue sports suck right now and the state is practically bankrupt due to their outlandish pension commitments.
Always thought Nebraska would be the next B1G team.
Oh yay, another team for an already uninteresting hockey league.
More boring Big Ten hockey. College hockey is being killed by the NCAA and the Big Ten. As the small east coast teams turn it into 20-something's trying to extend their career into the AHL, the Big 10 seems intent on squashing interest by televising games mostly on pay per view and weird scheduling techniques that, at least at Michigan, put most games in Oct- December. And what is with all the ties? Who even knows who won the Big 10 this year? No one because it didn't matter and no one saw it. Yost continues to empty out - instead of a waiting list for season tickets it is rare that you can't get tickets from the box office on game day. Dumpster fire smoldering.
Awesome. Can we now please send Minnesota and Wisconsin back to the WCHA?
/asking for every upper Midwestern college hockey fan.
College hockey has an array of issues presently, but I am more comfortable with having the guys in their early-mid 20s playing out an additional year (and getting their degrees) than seeing 18-19 year old kids doing a one-and-done (or two) before leaving for the pros.
College hockey has an array of issues presently, but I am more comfortable with having the guys in their early-mid 20s playing out an additional year (and getting their degrees) than seeing 18-19 year old kids doing a one-and-done (or two) before leaving for the pros.