Yet Another Report of College Hockey’s Death Was an Exaggeration

It’s truly amazing to me how today’s version of “journalism” is making wild statements with no supporting evidence and expecting them to be accepted as fact. I shall call this fiat journalism.

The latest relevant example comes from Brandon Mileski, aka Tenna-Gardsy, one of two interchangeable producerish people on KFAN. Blandon, like Dan Myers before him, has pronounced college hockey dead. I’m not sure who died and made him coroner, but let me be clear, college hockey is not dead.

And it was so, and I saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Congregants, let us turn in our hymnals to the article and pick it apart, as I so love to do.

I guess no one went to the West Regional Final in St. Paul. It featured Denver, who came in like a wrecking ball against BU the day before, but has 7 actual fans. They all showed up, so that was a big win for them, attendance-wise. It also featured Ferris State, whose fans had no idea they were even going to be in a regional until a week prior. It didn’t feature St. Cloud, and I’m not going to fault a single one of those 3-4k people who opted not to attend the regional final. I assume they did what normal people do when their team loses in a catastrophic fashion: drank themselves into oblivion. So I appreciate that they did not drive to St. Paul whilst in a fugue state.

Brandon turns then to the Northeast Regional and rightly takes BC fans to task for not going to the game. Since the game was not on Sunday, the C&E Catholics can’t even use that as an excuse. A source (let’s call him Bruce C. – no, that’s too obvious, let’s go with B. Ciskie) tells me tUMD had a decent turnout for being a thousand miles away from home. There were even RWD family members in attendance. #CarpenterNation.

UND and Michigan played in front of the Michigan band, 500 people who sing along to the stupid Michigan band, and 4500 people who drove their houses to the game, including this fellow, Biddco’s best friend.

Finally, a regional with boring teams had crappy attendance. Film at 11.

Now here’s the point where he’s supposed to advocate for home sites for the regionals, ignoring the logistics of that “solution.” But he throws us a curveball: he thinks the regionals should be arranged geographically and then seeded.

(As an aside, how come no one takes to task the host schools? Holy Cross hosted the Northeast regional, and they got praised for being organized and stuff which is nice, but maybe try marketing sometime. The entire ECAC hosted the East Regional and still no one attended. Try harder. “Pray you get North Dakota” is not a strategy.)

Here’s the proposed bracketology:

West Regional: SCSU vs tUMD, UND vs. DU.
Well, why even bother having the games in Tampa? Here’s your Frozen Four.

Midwest Regional: Michigan vs. RIT, Notre Dame vs. Ferris State
And here’s your NIT!

Northeast Regional: BC vs Northeastern, BU vs. Harvard
I think they already played this in February.

East Regional: QU vs. Yale, PC vs. UML
This is… just as crappy as the actual regional. GROUNDBREAKING.

This is so dumb. You literally could have four one-seeds via the PWR in one bracket (I mean, if you throw records out the window, you already do in the West). Or four four-seeds. Yes, that is desirable. I’m totally on board. People were already whining about how the four seeds don’t even deserve to have a seat at the table. In this case, one would be guaranteed a spot at the Frozen Four. He says the strange lineups he suggests wouldn’t happen every year, because the Goofs or Mankato or – is he freaking serious???? – Wisconsin might be in the West regional. WISCONSIN. I die. But, UND and DU are fixtures in the NCAA tournament. They are not going to want to play each other year after year in regional matchups. Same with BU and BC. Not when there are cupcakes to be feasted upon in the form of AHA and WCHA autobids.

Brandon likes his idea because it’s like the MSHSL. Their sections are decided strictly on geography. (They’re not. What up Elk River?) You know what else is loosely based on geography? College hockey conferences. And their tournaments. Which provide auto-bids to the NCAA tournament. Kind of like the MSHSL sections do. And then the state tournament isn’t based on geography! So weird.

The penultimate paragraph incorrectly uses “than” instead of “then.” Blah blah blah participation trophies or something.

The regionals are one weekend. Monkeying around with them is missing the point. If college hockey is actually dying, reconfiguring the regionals is about as logical as worrying about your underwear when you’re hit by a bus.

His final words on the subject are: “College Hockey is dying. Lifestyle changes are needed to save its life. Geography is the best medicine.” So many metaphors here. Lifestyle changes aren’t medicine! What kind of a quack doctor does he go to?

And what he really means is men’s college hockey is dying. But here’s another instance of assuming men’s college hockey is college hockey, not a component of college hockey. (And what he really really means is men’s NCAA D1 hockey is dying.) Women’s college hockey is growing, as more teams improve and as opportunities for women before and after college hockey expand. The women’s D1 tournament has its own problems (let’s all rehash Bemidji vs. Princeton one more time!), but problems are not actually synonymous with death.

And here I thought I’d have nothing fun to blog about in the off-season. Thank goodness for crazypants theories like this one!