What's up SCSU?

I have been on vacation this past week and I am catching up on some of my reading when I came across this interesting article in the Saint Cloud Times. I am not sure why St. Cloud State President Earl H. Potter III is continuously making some of these statements, on one hand he said, that SCSU isn't going to accept an invitation to the NCHC, a league that his school was never invited to join, and then he does a one 180 and said he would be willing to listen "if" the NCHC wanted to add SCSU. Now we have this. Now Potter is trying to talk down the NCHC, two years before they play their first game.

Mick Hatten; SCTIMES ---- St. Cloud State President Earl H. Potter III has said that the university has looked at the numbers and win-loss records for teams in the newly formed National Collegiate Hockey Conference and for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association teams.

“The NCHC doesn’t look like such a sweet deal for all of these teams,” Potter said.

Here’s a look at some of the numbers that Potter is talking about.

The past six seasons, St. Cloud State has been coached by Bob Motzko. So we’ll use the records of teams from the past six seasons as the base.

The NCHC will, as it stands, have five teams from the WCHA in its inaugural season of 2013-14: Colorado College, Denver, Minnesota-Duluth, Nebraska-Omaha and North Dakota.

Here are the records and winning percentage of those five teams when they competed against each other last season: Colorado College (5-5-1, .500), Denver (5-7, .417), Minnesota-Duluth (3-5-1, .389), Nebraska-Omaha (5-5, .500) and North Dakota (9-5, .643).

Alaska-Anchorage, Bemidji State, Michigan Tech, Minnesota State-Mankato and St. Cloud State will be the five teams left in the WCHA after those five leave for the NCHC.

Here are the records for the future NCHC teams against the teams that plan to remain in the WCHA from last season: Colorado College (9-6-1, .594), Denver (13-2-2, .824), Minnesota-Duluth (10-3-2, .733), Nebraska-Omaha (8-6-2, .563) and North Dakota (15-0-2, .889).

St. Cloud State President Earl H. Potter III is right there are going to be some winners and there are going to be the teams that finish at the bottom at the new NCHC. These 6-8 teams are going to be beating the hell out of each other and depending on who they play in their non-conference schedule they would be on the out side looking in when it comes to the NCAA Tourney. The same thing is going to happen to the B1G teams as well.

On the other side of this argument is that the PWR ranking of the WCHA is going to go down with the exit of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Denver, Colorado College and University of Nebraska Omaha. With these seven teams leaving the WCHA isn't going to be receiving 4-5 at large NCAA Hockey tourney bids anymore either, it's a mathematical fact. In the past season the WCHA had 10 teams in the top twenty of the PWR ranking, however, the WCHA will not be as strong in the PWR rankings and will have less teams in the NCAA tourney as well.

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