After tonight’s NCAA hockey tournament East Regional championship game, the Times Union Center is going to take a break from college postseason hockey.
The TU Center won’t have the ECAC Hockey tournament championship round or the NCAA East Regional for the next three years. The ECACs are going to be in Atlantic City, N.J., for three years, starting next season. The TU Center recently won the rights to host the New York Federation High School basketball tournament, which takes place the last weekend of March. That eliminates the TU Center from submitting bids for the 2012 and 2013 NCAAs.
“We’re obviously disappointed that the ECACs aren’t going to be here, and we fully intend to bid on that again,” TU Center general manager Bob Belber said. “The NCAA regional is something that we’ve had every other year for a number of years.”
Belber wants to see how the Federation tournament, which had been at the Glens Falls Civic Center, works out.
“There’s guaranteed rent involved with that event,” Belber said. “It’s not a huge risk to the building. And we want to see how the attendance will do. Regional hockey comes with a certain amount of honor and pride in hosting it, but also a fairly significant risk with a sizeable guarantee. You never know how well you’re going to do, attendance-wise, until virtually the end of the tournament. A lot of it depends on what schools you get.”
Belber said that he will submit a bid for future NCAA tournaments.
“I don’t think it’s a bad idea to take a break,” Belber said. “The fact that the ECACs are going to be away for the next three years, also, might actually be good that we’re not bidding for the NCAA regionals for the next three years because more focus and attention is on college hockey when the ECACs are here. If we get the ECACs back, then, certainly, we’re going to want the regionals back.”
Ten-year anniversary
Friday marked the 10-year anniversary of what was, at the time, the second-longest game played in NCAA men’s Division I hockey history.
St. Lawrence beat Boston University, 3-2, in four overtimes. Robin Carruthers beat goalie Rick DiPietro from close range 3:53 into the fourth OT. The game, which started at 12:05 p.m. and ended at 6, took 123 minutes, 53 seconds to play, is the longest ever played in an NCAA tournament. It eclipsed the old mark of 100:28 when Maine beat Michigan, 4-3, in triple overtime in the 1995 Frozen Four semifinals in Providence.
Since then, the game has fallen to the fourth-longest game in NCAA men’s Division I hockey history, thanks to a pair of five-OT games played by Union. The Dutchmen hold the top two spots. They played the longest game ever two weeks ago, dropping a 3-2 decision to Quinnipiac in Game 1 of the ECACH tournament quarterfinals that took 150:22 to play. No. 2 on the list is the 3-2 loss to Yale in Game 2 of the ECACH tournament first round that lasted 141:35.
The third-longest game ever occurred in Game 2 of the WCHA first-round series between Colorado College and Wisconsin. Colorado College needed 129:30 to beat Wisconsin, 1-0.
All-decade team
The ECACH All-Decade Team for the 2000s was announced Friday, and the first team was dominated by the Ivy League.
Heading the list is Brown goalie Yann Danis, who was the league’s Player of the Year and Ken Dryden Award winner in 2004 after leading the Bears to a third-place finish. Danis was 15-11-4 with a 1.81 goals-against average, a .942 save percentage and five shutouts.
The other Ivy League representatives on the first team are Yale’s Jeff Hamilton and Dartmouth’s Lee Stempniak at forward and defensemen Doug Murray of Cornell and Noah Welch of Harvard. The only non-Ivy Leaguer on the first team is St. Lawrence forward T.J. Trevelyan.
The second-team members are forwards Andy McDonald (Colgate), Dominic Moore (Harvard) and Matt Moulson (Cornell); defensemen Drew Bagnall (St. Lawrence), Reid Cashman (Quinnipiac) and Kent Huskins (Clarkson); and Cornell goalie David LeNeveu.
Categories: College Sports
