College Hockey Almost Certainly Not Done Changing

One-time Minnesota Wild executive Bill Robertson was named the new commissioner of the WCHA Tuesday. Robertson will replace Bruce McLeod, who ran the league for 20 years and will retire in June. Robertson will actually join the league next month, providing a bit of a buffer between his official arrival and McLeod's official departure.

(Notice how I resisted jokes about McLeod's departure actually having taken place about a decade ago. I'm actually proud of myself for that.)

Robertson's task is not a small one, but he's not alone.

College hockey is not in a stable position, for a variety of reasons. Namely, there are schools in virtually every league that aren't happy. Something is irking them, be it travel, scholarships, finances, or administrative issues of some sort.

I'm not here to say everyone was happy with the old arrangement. I'd bet there were unhappy types back then. It just wasn't as vocal a group, and everyone had their traditional leagues to lean on. The WCHA and CCHA had their warts, but they'd also been around for a long time and had experienced a ton of success, both on the ice and off.

(Example of off-ice success in the old alignment? Look what the WCHA Final Five became at its zenith, in the early and mid 2000s.)

When the Big Ten and NCHC plucked all the "big-name" programs from those leagues, the CCHA died completely and the WCHA changed dramatically.

Now, it seems the majority of hockey people involved in these leagues would probably revert back to the way things used to be, if only it was that easy.

Since we know that won't happen, it might be time for fans to resign themselves to more changes.

With that potential inevitability in mind, here are a few ideas -- both mine and others -- that could help alleviate the concerns of programs and remove some of the "buyer's remorse," as Mankato Free Press scribe and wonderful human Shane Frederick tweeted Tuesday.

The WCHA should cut to 24 conference games.

Will this create more holes to fill in non-league schedules? Absolutely. But the NCHC (ten) and Big Ten (14) have plenty of them, too.

Why should the WCHA cut from 28 to 24? Money.

Last season, every WCHA team visited Alaska at least once. Four teams went twice, playing road series against both Alaska-Anchorage and Alaska. Two of those teams made two separate trips north, while Michigan Tech and Minnesota State spent a whole week up there. With a 24-game league schedule, it could be structured so three teams don't go to Alaska at all during a season, and certainly you wouldn't have four teams going twice.

Not only does it remove some of the financial strain, but it makes travel a little less than a pain.

The WCHA should seek to expand.

This one will be a little controversial. I know that there are some teams in Atlantic Hockey that want to go to 18 scholarships. That's been the case for a while. If the WCHA finds two of them, expands to 12 teams, and goes to a two-division format where the Alaska teams are in separate divisions but locked into playing each other four times a season, the league could settle travel concerns without necessarily cutting the league schedule.

A so-called Eastern Division would comprise the two AHA teams, one of the Alaska schools, Alabama-Huntsville, Ferris State, and Bowling Green. The upper Michigan teams, Bemidji State, Minnesota State, and the other Alaska team would make up the West.

Structuring a full league schedule could be difficult. If each team in the division played a home-and-away, that would be 20 games. With a 24-game conference slate, that would leave four games, two home and two away, to be played outside the division. Doing that would mean only two teams out of 12 would have to make the double-trip north, and that would be easily handled around school breaks to minimize academic impact of the travel. At 28 games, you'd have eight games to play against the opposite division. Either way, there would be teams in the league that did not meet during the regular season.

In addition, I'm told the travel arrangements for UAA and UAF are different, and it's more expensive for teams to go to Anchorage. I'm not sure how this is possible, but Robertson needs to fix it if it's the case.

The NCHC should run its tournament the way the Big Ten does.

This has been suggested to me multiple times.

I'm not sure how it would be executed, but there are a couple options.

The first is to bring every team to Minneapolis, which would allow for travel arrangements to be made far in advance, thus making that side of things cheaper than it is now, where arrangements are made on short notice. The negative? Four games on Thursday. You think the tournament wasn't attended well this year? Wait until -- as an example -- Denver and UNO are playing a quarterfinal game at like 10am on a Thursday.

The other option? Take six teams to Minneapolis and play single elimination. Top two get byes into the semifinals, and there are two quarterfinal games Thursday. Same format as the Big Ten. Teams couldn't arrange their travel until late notice, but the tournament would be structured to succeed. Gives the teams at the bottom even more to play for at the end of the season, because they have to fight for inclusion into the conference tournament.

Why go this route? Look at the crowds drawn for first-round campus-site playoff series this season. It could be argued that teams are better off playing in a centralized location and building a cool event that way.

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None of this is guaranteed to help, but it's clear change is coming.

I don't know what that change will be, but I'd be stunned if we kept this configuration in place any longer than schools are contractually obligated to stick around for. We might see new leagues formed, we might see current leagues dissolved.

We welcome Robertson to college hockey. Hopefully he doesn't end up regretting what he got himself into, and hopefully all the leagues can find common ground and work together for the good of the sport.

Commissioner For A Day: College Hockey

I did this a few years ago, back before I had labels on posts, but you can find the 2006 series by searching the site for "Commissioner For A Day."

I'm bringing it back, largely because I'm tired of not writing on the site, and also because I think there are ideas to improve many of the pro sports I enjoy watching.

Oh, and because UMD's offseason is entirely too long because the season ended prematurely.

I figured it was natural to start the series with college hockey, because it's the sport I dedicate a lot of my winter life to covering. It should be noted that the majority of these ideas are mine and none are being blatantly stolen from anyone.

Your input is welcome, as always.

No more regionals at random sites.

The NCAA regional system is completely broken. Not partially. Completely. Inadequate facilities -- bad ice, small locker room areas, poor press accommodations, problems with internet access -- are hosting events in front of small crowds, while fans who can't afford the expensive short-notice flights are stuck struggling to find someone they know who has ESPNU or ESPN3 so they can watch games on television.

The TV ship has sailed. It isn't going to get any better. I've said for years that you need access to ESPNU if you want to watch the NCAA regionals. More than that, a die-hard college hockey fan should prepare themselves to do what is necessary to get BTN, NBC Sports Network, and CBS Sports Network if they want to follow the sport during the regular season. If you get those three channels, you have ESPNU, too. They're usually on the same tier.

So let's work to fix the regional site issue.

A few years ago (not sure the exact moment, but it was between when the funding for Amsoil Arena was approved and when it opened), the decision was made to move regionals to truly neutral sites. Before, places like Mariucci Arena and Ralph Engelstad Arena could host regionals. But the NCAA pushed away from that, deciding that arenas that served as a team's designated home facility wouldn't be allowed to host, and neither would facilities with Olympic-sized ice surfaces.

That rule should go away. Yeah, it's somewhat irritating to watch host schools gain spots in the Frozen Four while playing on home ice (Michigan, Minnesota, and North Dakota have all had this luxury in the past). But it's even more irritating to watch a team earn that spot with practically no one in the stands.

Ticket prices are a problem, yes, but if a St. Cloud State fan could afford to fly from wherever to Toledo for that team's regional this year (during Easter weekend on short notice), the $80 pricetag for a three-game pass wasn't going to stop them. That's pretty simple math.

Lowering ticket prices might draw more local fans to the games, which wouldn't be a bad idea if the NCAA insists on keeping the system as is. But I think a better way about gaining a championship atmosphere is allowing home rinks of 5,000 or more seats to host regionals. Let places like Amsoil Arena, The Ralph, Mariucci, Yost, Compton Family Ice Arena (Notre Dame), Conte Forum (BC), and so many others host these tournaments. Put the games in places where college hockey already has a following, lower ticket prices a hair, and see what happens, even if the host doesn't qualify.

(There is a push for best of three first round series on the campus sites of the high seeds. I like the idea, but it adds an extra weekend to the tournament, and I'm not sure it's feasible. I still think the best way is to give the top four seeds the options of hosting regionals on their home ice, provided some easily-met standards are reached. But there doesn't seem to be a ton of support for this, so I'll compromise and propose what is said above.)

Goodbye, dumb rule where a team that scores on a delayed penalty still gets the power play.

I started calling it the "Double jeopardy rule," after the law that prevents a person from being charged twice for the same crime. I have always thought it ridiculous that the powers-that-be in the sport thought this was a good idea.

Basically, the rule says that if a team scores a goal while on a delayed penalty, the penalty is still called and the power play still happens.

You'll notice that no other level of hockey has thought this was a good idea.

So how did it happen? I was told at the time that the rule basically slipped through because so much attention was paid to an even dumber proposed rule, one that would have kept teams from icing the puck while short-handed.

It's all about increasing offense, which is a fine endeavor, but it goes about it the wrong way. It really has no effect outside of being a dumb rule, because it's so rare that a team would score on a delayed penalty. It's even more rare that said team would then turn around and score on the ensuing power play.

If offense is the goal, let's try actually calling the penalties that are in the rulebook, especially those relating to obstruction. What a concept!

Any body contact foul that drives a player into the boards is an automatic ten-minute misconduct, optional ejection.

It's been a few years now since college hockey instituted a rule that called for mandatory major penalties and ejections for checks from behind that took place along the boards.

Have you noticed yet how the officials handle those?

If they don't want to call it a check from behind, it becomes a boarding penalty, or elbowing, or whatever.

Time for that to go. In order to truly promote safety, that discretion has to be taken away from the officials. But not completely.

There are times where an illegal hit simply doesn't rise to the level of an ejection because of mitigating circumstances. Players are deliberately turning their backs to draw illegal contact, which is beyond stupid because of the risk involved, but whatever. Players will also throw themselves into the boards to "sell" these hits. Yes, really. I've seen it happen.

To give the officials some discretion, any illegal hit along the boards should carry with it an automatic ten-minute misconduct, with the officials having the ability to eject the offending player if the hit is deemed to be severe enough.

Find a way to curtail embellishment.

Calling a coincidental minor for unsportsmanlike conduct on a dive isn't working, stripes. It just isn't.

How about putting a team short-handed because one of its players took a blatant dive to sell a penalty? Do that a few times, and see how that works.

Yeah, coaches hate it when players do something to negate a power play. They hate going short-handed even more, though.