Penn State "Close" to Annoucing New Ice Arena/Div. 1 Hockey

Submitted by douggoblue on

The Altoona Mirror is reporting that Penn State is "close" to announcing a new ice arena and the addition of Men's and Women's D. 1 Hockey.

http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/content.detail/id/541062/Penn-State--close--to-adding-arena--Division-I-hockey.html?nav=746

 

Needless to say this would be cool, and a huge boost to the mythical Big Ten Hockey Conference.

Six Zero

August 6th, 2010 at 3:50 PM ^

Girl's hockey seems to be growing quite a bit in this state.  I've played against some of the Hershey Jr. Bears girls team players in open hockey, and in one house league played against a member of the DC Pride.  Some of 'em are pretty good, as good as the boys their age.  I'm betting these kids would love to grab a free PSU education just so they can play D-1 ice hockey.

Search4Meaning

August 6th, 2010 at 4:21 PM ^

Second - we'll treat your hockey team to the same welcome to D-! hockey as we did your football team when they joined the Big Ten.

Third - get used to it.  Red and the boys are already getting ready to school you on the finer points.

Go Blue Hockey!

redwings8831

August 6th, 2010 at 4:23 PM ^

No Big Ten Hockey Confefence. It would be a huge detrement to the landscape of college hockey as a whole. You'd be severely weakening two of the major conferences in division one right now and what would you do with the non big ten quality programs like Miami, Denver, North Dakota, Northern Michigan, etc. I'm all for Penn State taking the vacant spot in the CCHA but having a Big Ten hockey conference would hurt the collegiate sport as a whole.

psychomatt

August 6th, 2010 at 10:43 PM ^

It would be great to have a B10 hockey conference, but most of the best teams in the MIdwest are B10 teams. If you sucked all of those teams into one conference, the CCHA and WCHA would survive via some reorganization of the remaining teams but they clearly would take a major hit.

Instead, the B10 should consider approaching ALL of the Div 1 hockey conferences and cut deals to have the media rights to their games. That way the BTN would have additional live content that would be attractive to hockey fans in the existing BTN footprint as well as a new, unique appeal to many viewers in the Northeast (BC, BU, NH, UConn, Ivy League) and West (Colorado, North Dakota). It wouldn't be enough alone to get the B10 on expanded basic, but it would generate some money through a sports tier and move BTN closer to being a national rather than a regional network.

Steve in PA

August 7th, 2010 at 12:03 PM ^

When I was there I worked at the Ice Arena.  The coach, Joe Batista, was working very hard to get PSU up to D1 specs.  He even started a women's team that was REALLY bad and had girls that never skated before.

I think that hockey lost the support of the administration sometime around 2000-01 because Joe Batista took a job elsewhere in the AD as the President of the Nittany Lion Club.  The hockey team was Joe's baby, so there was a reason for that shift.

I would love to see D1 hockey at PSU so I would have another sport to watch Michigan beat them at!