In a press conference on the South Bend Indiana campus of the University of Notre Dame, it was announced that the Irish would join Hockey East in the fall of 2013. ND is the first new addition to HE since Vermont jumped ship from the ECAC in 2006.“We think we’ve made a great move in the right direction,” Lynch said, “and we are thrilled to welcome Notre Dame to Hockey East and look forward to many great years together in our conference.”
With this announcement, Hockey East gains their 11th member and will be looking for a 12th. If the league goes to 12 teams each team will play each other twice for a total of 22 league games, as opposed to the current 27 game schedule.
Hockey East will be considering many teams for the 12th member. The Warrior Rink Rat Blog has a list of team that could possible join. They include RPI, UConn, Niagara, Syracuse*, Qunnipiac, Alabama Huntsville, and Holy Cross.
* Out of all they teams mentioned, I would love to see Syracuse start up hockey and join the league. Just like Penn State did last year, 'Cuse could and probably should already have an ice hockey team. Up-state New York is a hockey breeding ground and if schools like Union, Niagara, and RIT can fund hockey, I'm sure the Orange Men could do it. All they would have to do is put down a cooling system in the Carrier Dome and boom, they have the biggest arena in college hockey.
In Other News.
The 2013 NCAA regional locations were announced today. Brown will host the East Regional at the Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence. UNH and Verizon Wireless arena will be home to the North East Regional. For the west, Michigan hosts in Grand Rapids and Bowling Green will host in the newly formed hockey hot bed of Toledo Ohio.
How the NCAA thinks they will draw any fans in Toledo is beyond me. Just another example of why they should go to the best 2-of-3 series format, on the higher seed's campus. Hey, they did it in the 80's and early 90's, why not now?
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