Are Canadian schools coming to Division I hockey?

Here is an article that gets one thinking – will it be that long before CIS schools are playing in the NCAA Division I hockey? Why or why not? Also, I didn’t know that fellow Big Sky Conference School Eastern Washington is currently playing in a league with teams from the CIS.

Vancouver, BC (Sports Network) --- That once-thought pipe dream took a step toward becoming reality several weeks ago when it was announced that Burnaby's Simon Fraser University was approved as the first international school in the NCAA.

While SFU currently does not have a varsity hockey team - it has a sports club which competes in the British Columbia Intercollegiate Hockey League, a 6- year-old organization which boasts seven members including, one American team from Eastern Washington University - that hasn't stopped school officials from openly pondering the possibility of the school competing in NCAA Division I hockey sometime in the near future.

SFU's 17 NCAA varsity sports teams compete in NCAA Division II, meaning they would have to petition to be allowed to play in Division I hockey. There is no Division II hockey available and, as per NCAA regulations, they would not be permitted to play in the lower-tier Division III hockey.

NCAA hockey almost certainly would thrive in a market like Vancouver which is not only unwavering in its support of the NHL's Canucks - they have the longest active consecutive sellout streak in the NHL at 407 games, counting regular season and playoffs - but also has embraced major junior hockey in the form of the WHL's Giants and Junior "A" hockey with a handful of BCHL teams located within the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley region.

While it would be untrue to suggest that any hockey league based in the area will automatically succeed in terms of gaining instant fan support - the AHL's Abbotsford Heat and the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Men's University of British Columbia Thunderbirds have proven to be exceptions to the rule - the high profile of the NCAA combined with the fact the league is seen as a stepping-stone to the NHL for many of the top-end talent playing there would certainly help it garner attention not only among the student population but in the general public as well.

Fairbanks and Anchorage belong in same league

Image via Wikipedia
Here is another argument by Dermot Cole of the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer for UAA and UAF being in the same conference (the WCHA). What also caught my eye in this article was that this was another argument for the glass being half full instead of being half empty.

With these possible changes the Nanooks and Seawolves could now fight for an at-large NCAA tourney bid much easier and they wouldn’t have to compete with the bigger schools to get into the NCAA tourney (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan State, UND, DU). This has been an emerging opinion that has countered the argument that re-alignment is going to kill college hockey. Of course the flip side of this argument is that there are no guarantees that the bigger aforementioned schools are ever going to want to travel to Alaska to play either of the Alaska schools. Also, another argument is having two Alaska School in the same conference could raise travel costs for the WCHA and cut into the time the athletes spent in the classroom because the extra travel could take them away from the classroom. In the past the Alaska schools have paid the travel costs of the teams that travel to Alaska, there is no guarantee that the agreement to pay the travel costs would continue if both schools were in the same conference. It would be interesting to see if this agreement continued.

FAIRBANKS — With all the turmoil that has hit the college hockey conferences, I hope officials of the university campuses in Fairbanks and Anchorage can somehow find a way to get UAF and UAA in the same league.

It seems to me this would be one way to improve college hockey in Alaska. It could even be a way to save some money on scheduling and travel.

The Nanooks and the Seawolves can’t control the big schools Outside and they will not become members of the Big Ten, but they can do something about this.

Many of the big hockey schools have abandoned the conferences in which UAF and UAA play, and it’s not clear where the Alaska schools will be when it’s all over.

The CCHA, the conference the Nanooks belong to, is losing most of its biggest draws. The decimation of the conference is likely to lower the profile of the UAF hockey program, but the remaining teams could be more competitive among themselves. UAA is facing a similar situation.

One of the challenges for the Alaska schools is whether Outside teams would be willing to seek the necessary approvals to play one weekend in Fairbanks and the next in Anchorage. It does seem there are options for online studies that could reduce the amount of lost classroom time and make that a plausible alternative.

Travel time is an issue, but travel costs for visiting hockey teams have been paid for by UAF for years.

UAF spent more than $928,000 on travel last year for hockey travel. Of that total, $451,000 was for the Nanooks traveling to games and $397,000 was for the teams traveling to Alaska.

In addition, UAF spent $37,000 on recruiting trips, $32,000 for getting officials to Alaska and $10,000 for Nanook coaches going to league meetings and other work-related trips.

A friend of mine who follows college hockey closely suggests it is possible that whatever combination emerges, the absence of the major schools could lead to a more competitive situation for the Fairbanks and Anchorage teams and an improved chance of getting into post-season play.

The CCHA has lost Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State to the new Big Ten Conference and Miami (Ohio) to the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.

The league alignments are changing for the 2013-14 season.

No one really has a clue what’s going to happen to the college hockey landscape until after the 2013-2014 season when the new league(s) kick off play. The re-alignment process isn’t over by any means there are still other teams moving and we aren’t sure where those teams will end up.

If UAA and UAF were to end up in the same conference would teams playing in Alaska twice get an extra four non-conference instead of two non-conference games added to their schedule for playing four conference games in Alaska? In the past, the carrot for teams traveling to Alaska to play in a tourney or play non-conference or conference games against UAA and UAF was getting the extra games added to your non-conference schedule, which could mean two more home games and extra money. So I would have to say that there is an economic incentive for teams to make the trip to Alaska even if the Alaska schools don’t pay for their travel. An extra two non-conference game could mean 100,000-200,000 extra dollars added to the athletic departments bottom line (that’s just a guesstimate).