Cost prohibitive would be the buzz phrase at nearly every

school that thinks about this. Without the big dollar donor (like Pegula at Penn State) it would be highly unlikely to see a school add hockey.

But if we're dreaming, another Big Ten school would be nice, especially one of the Illinois schools, although that would likely have a negative impact on our recruiting since historically we have mined that market well. But if we're talking about what's best for the sport, it isn't necessarily gonna be good for one individual program. Navy also always seems like a good fit to go along with Army and the Air Force. At one point people thought Syracuse was tinkering with starting a program.

I'd tend to think shying away from far-flung locations south and west would be best. Arizona State has a nice little thing going, but I am thinking of schools that are to the east of the NCHC footprint for the most part. Any school with a well-known name due to football or basketball success. While I am not opposed to schools like Long Island, Lindenwood or any of the other newer programs venturing into D1 hockey, it has done nothing to "grow" the sport in the way we usually think of that term. You could see how interest lagged pretty significantly in South Bend when Notre Dame was in Hockey East and playing schools with a good hockey pedigree like Maine virtually every other HE program without the words "Boston College" on their jerseys. No one who thinks about buying a ticket to watch Notre Dame at the CFIA will ever care about Augustana or Stonehill.

But I'm also not certain that growth in programs is necessary. When I got into this sport there were fewer than half as many teams who were able to compete for an NCAA title. I don't mean realistically having a chance at winning, I simply mean the teams from the old WCHA that we were a part of and the old ECAC teams. 10 in the WCHA and I believe 17 in the old ECAC, and every year it was 2 from each. Even in 1985, with the tournament expanded to 8 teams and the first season of Hockey East wrapped up, there were only 36 teams total in the 4 real conferences. Right now with auto bids going to all conferences there are 58 teams with a chance at an NCAA bid, 59 if you throw in Arizona State.

I think something that growth would help with would be maintaining the current in-flux of highly touted NHL prospects coming into NCAA hockey. If some high profile, name-brand schools were added to the mix, it might be the thing that would draw even more of these players to the NCAA and away from the major juniors. When a kid tells people he's going to Minnesota or Michigan or Notre Dame to play hockey, hockey fans and casual sports fans take note. When he says he's going to play hockey for the Soo (Sault Ste. Marie) Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League, it doesn't matter that Wayne Gretzky played there, his casual sports fan friends say "what the heck is that?"