Minnesota: No longer the sacred hockey state?

Last year at around this time, I was an emphatic Wisconsin Badger hockey fan. I watched each game with pride and with a sense of passion. I even paid money to watch the away games on my computer. Devoted, I would say.

On a Thursday night, I watched Wisconsin dance their way through the competition and cheered when they won on Friday. I was so thrilled I booked a plane ticket, hotel and rental car to watch their WCHA championship game. The arena was filled, just like every night before. I saw people with jerseys from Boston to Alaska. This truly was the meccha for College Hockey. Then the leagues fractured.

Today I watch with utter disdain as the once proud venue's of Minnesota cannot fill the glass seats much less sell out. It's horrible. I thought about this for a while and came to a grave conclusion: the state of Minnesota is no longer a landing pad for College Hockey's finest. This is a sickening feeling knowing that the best conference in all of hockey is playing in a small arena on the western side of Michigan, with half of their talent from last season.

One this is for sure, St. Paul should remain the home of the WCHA. But the B1G and NCHC need to take a walk.

The B1G conference is a pretty solid group of teams. With Michigan bowing out in the first round, this league needs a bracket buster to advance 3 teams. That probably won't happen if Wisconsin and Minnesota get their way. Which brings me to a point: If WI and MN play each other, the stands will be packed and the crowd will be large. That's because the Xcel Energy Center is down the road from the University of Minnesota and roughly 4 hours away from Madison. The nearest team after that: Ohio State which is a long 12 hour drive from Minneapolis.

But the NCHC isn't off the hook either. Like the B1G, they are a new conference. Unlike the B1G, they don't have money. Take a look at the center ice for the B1G games at the Xcel center. Yeah, that's the B1G logo. Not even Red Baron's WCHA Final Five paid enough to remove the Minnesota Wild logo. So it's easy to think that this year's Frozen Face off, which features no teams from Minnesota, will be a dud played in an arena not set up for hockey. The closest team is North Dakota, which depending on speed can take roughly 4-5 hours. The Fighting Sioux don't have traveling problems. But Western Michigan, Denver, and Miami do. With the Gophers playing in St. Paul, I doubt many fans will want to boo UND in favor of watching the state team wallop on WI and whoever wins tonights game.

So yes, it's going to be ugly.

The worst part is that the NCHC cannot afford to have a bad showing. They don't have the guaranteed money that the B1G has. So unless SCSU or UMD can pull a big crowd next year, change needs to come. Unfortunately that 10 year contract with Target Center is going to weigh heavily.

Here is my proposal: Dump Minnesota, for both the NCHC and the B1G. MN and WI are both heavy weights in college hockey, but they won't fill an arena when they are not playing. Gopher and Badger fans will come to Detroit. It just happens to be that the Motor City is also very close to MSU, MI and a decent drive from Columbus. Factor in PSU being in the same time zone and I wouldn't bet against Detroit being a better destination.

As for the NCHC, they are new. Like anything new, they don't have much money. With UNO downsizing to a smaller campus arena, one could assume that the fan bases should settle within the next 3 years. So why not scrap Minneapolis in favor of the better seeded teams getting home ice? Make changes so that the home arena is required to allot a certain percent to the away team. Just imagine the championship being won at the Ralph or in the historic Herb Brooks National Hockey Center.

Play the NCHC out for a little. Figure out where fans won't travel, and where they will. I can tell you this from my personal experience: Many of the smaller schools don't travel well.

So let's ditch Minnesota entirely.