The potential shakeup of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association led athletic directors from the Central Collegiate Hockey Association to stage a conference call Friday morning and discuss possibly meeting with their WCHA counterparts.
The CCHA conference call came on the heels of a report Thursday on the Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald website that five members of the WCHA — North Dakota, Colorado College, Denver, Nebraska-Omaha and defending national champion Minnesota-Duluth — are leaving to create a new conference that begins play in the 2013-14 season and that the new league also will include current CCHA program Miami (Ohio).
The potential shakeup of the WCHA also follows the formation of the Big Ten Hockey Conference earlier this year. The Big Ten is set to drop its first puck in 2013-14 and will consist of current CCHA teams Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State, WCHA programs Minnesota and Wisconsin and college hockey newcomer Penn State, which has former Alaska Nanooks bench boss Guy Gadowsky as its head coach and is slated to begin play in 2012-13 as an independent.
The possible shakeup of the WCHA leaves that conference with five teams — Alaska Anchorage, Michigan Tech and Minnesota schools Bemidji State, St. Cloud State and Minnesota State in Mankato. The Herald report mentioned, too, the possibility of the new conference extending an invitation to Notre Dame of the CCHA.
Fellow CCHA member Western Michigan is also a potential candidate for membership, giving the potential new conference eight teams.
With three teams bound for the Big Ten and the possibility of three being in the potential new conference with five current WCHA programs, that would leave the CCHA in 2013-14 with five teams — the Nanooks of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Bowling Green State of Ohio and Michigan colleges Ferris State, Lake Superior State and Northern Michigan.
The possible threat of a dwindling CCHA brought eight of its athletic directors, including Forrest Karr of UAF, together Friday for the conference call.
“We would like to meet with the AD’s from the remaining WCHA schools,” Karr said Friday evening by phone.
“Getting people together in one room to talk will have the best end result,” Karr continued. “If both conferences operate behind closed doors and try to steal the perceived best remaining schools from each other, we’ll end up with two small weak leagues that can’t schedule home games with the other leagues (because of financial reasons).”
The remaining schools in the WCHA, according to UAA athletic director Dr. Steve Cobb, are scheduled to meet Friday in Minneapolis.
“We’re going to develop a strategy of how to move forward,” Cobb said Friday by phone. “UAA has no intention of being anything but a WCHA member.”
No date or location for the CCHA’s proposed interconference meeting with the WCHA has been set, and Karr would not speculate the outcome of a meeting that would be represented byseveral good college hockey programs.
For example, Notre Dame was a Frozen Four team this year and was the national runner-up in 2008 and North Dakota has seven NCAA national titles among its history. The Nanooks also played for the first time in the NCAA Tournament in 2010, losing to eventual national champion Boston College in a semifinal of the Northeast Regional in Worcester, Mass.
“The more hockey people in the same room together, the better result,” Karr said. “There are all kinds of different configurations you can come up with.”
Though Karr wouldn’t speculate, one rumored configuration is a super conference that would feature many of the non-Big Ten bound CCHA and WCHA members, including the two Alaska schools.
At least three articles Thursday and Friday on College Hockey News.com touched on the subject of a super conference.
Karr, however, is concerned with how the changing landscape of college hockey will affect the Nanooks.
“We’ve known for a long time that the conference landscape was changing,” he said. “Our priorities have not changed. We need to consider what’s best for our student-athletes and we don’t want to see any college hockey programs fold as a result of selfish decision making.”
Contact staff writer Danny Martin at 459-7586.
Kids not wanting to ride on a bus isn't a deciding factor in this, it is about what's fiscally responsible and it doesn't look good for UAF or UAA unless they are willing to pony up lots of cash on top of what the travel costs will be.
And if they do end up playing both teams in Alaska in one year, they could schedule the games so that they're playing the teams one weekend after another. That would allow that team to stay in Alaska for a week.
UAF and UAA end up staying in the lower forty-eight when they have a couple of away games in a row, so that kind of schedule isn't a stretch. And while the coaches hate the travel, for the players, it's the only break they have from traveling by bus. They probably kind of like coming to Alaska.