7 Quick (Hockey) Takes

Years ago, I read a mommy blog that regularly posted "7 Quick Takes" every Friday. This was before hot takes; the takes had no temperature. So today I offer you, 7 quick hockey takes.

1- Mercyhurst's Mike Sisti was inducted into the Erie Sports Hall of Fame last night, along side 11 other inductees. Sisti is currently 2nd in all time wins for NCAA Division 1 Women's Hockey, with 462, and is the only head coach the Mercyhurst's women's program has ever had. The induction is no surprise.

2- Providence concluded their coaching search recently, announcing Matt Kelly as the new head coach. Kelly spent his entire career in women's hockey, with his most notable accomplishments being an assistant coach at the NCAA winning Clarkson team of 2014, and then being a scout for the US Women's National Program since 2014. Although he doesn't have head coaching experience, being part of the staff that broke the WCHA strangle hold on the National Championship speaks volumes. It's not unreasonable to think Kelly will continue to get opportunities with USA Hockey as well on the coaching side now, which I imagine only helps recruiting. Basically, I think this is a hire that has promise.

3- One of Kelly's challenges will be out recruiting BC, who has dominated Hockey East for several years. BC has won the regular season in Hockey East 4 of the last 4 years, and their conference tourney 2 of the last four years. But in addition to BC, Kelly's Providence will need to beat Northeastern, who won the Hockey East tourney this year. Northeastern announced their incoming 2018-2019 class this week. Of note was Alina Mueller, a two time Olympian for Switzerland. The Ice Garden pegged her as someone to watch in their Olympic previews, and they were right. Mueller led the tournament in points, with 10. That's a little misleading as Switzerland was in Group B, but I'm still excited to watch Mueller next year. If anything her performance could be an indicator of how the international Group B level compares to NCAA. Northeastern streams all their home games for free, and it's a quality feed worth watching, btw.

4- The NCAA rules committee approved some changes for the 2018-2019 season, impacting both men's and women's hockey. One of the changes is overtime, whereby the committee mandated that all leagues will do a five minute OT, and end in a tie if need be. In addition to that, each team gets a time out to use during the OT, regardless of if they already used their timeout earlier in the game.

Many leagues are pushing back on the OT rule change, because they don't like ties, want to play 3 on 3, or just want decision making autonomy at the league level of play. The oversight committee has a final vote on July 25, so whether the new rules actually come into effect is still in question. I haven't heard anyone talk about the additional time out given for OT, and that's the part of the rule I'm interested in. I think the additional time out might help underdog teams even the playing field a bit as it will give them a chance to give their best line a breather and squeeze one more shift into an OT, to counter the depth of their opposition. It might be enough for an underdog team to stave off an OT loss, or even help earn an OT win. I'm all for it, as a fan of a bubble top ten team that occasionally sees itself in OT versus some of the nation's best.

5- The Athletic posted a Q&A with Sami Jo Small, GM of the Toronto Furies, CWHL. One of the questions was "What does Hockey Canada have to do to catch up to the Americans, who have won the last four world championships and, now, an Olympic gold?" Isn't that something? Small didn't bat an eye at the question, so my perception is that she accepts Canada is now chasing the USA. I think many hockey fans would agree. It's not noted in the article, but the US has also won the last four U18 World Championships. Among other points, Small talks about the need for Hockey Canada to be more supportive of the CWHL in order to develop players, and I could not agree with her more. The same point applies to USA Hockey and the NWHL, but because USA Hockey probably has a closer relationship with the NCAA and appears to have the edge in player development right now, I'd say Hockey Canada (or anyone) supporting the CWHL in a way that develops its elite post college players, is more critical need right now.

6- Small also indicates that she thinks USA will have a competitive edge merely because of the population in USA relative to Canada. It's an interesting argument, one I hadn't heard before. It certainly sounds reasonable, but just seeing what I see in Ohio with the lack of rinks I don't know.

I know in Columbus, rinks are essentially built and operated by a company that has ties to the Blue Jackets. They are doing great work, but the population of Columbus is about 860,000 people, and there are 10 sheets of ice available for public use in Ohio. So 86,000 people per rink. By contrast my little town I grew up in, in Canada, had three rinks, about 4,000 people per rink.

I would love to see an explosion in ice hockey players in the US, particularly Ohio, but as an adult I am finally seeing the barriers to entry that I always heard about growing up, like rink shortages.  In Ohio, we have so much work to do. We've had an NHL team for almost two decades, we have an NCAA Division 1 hockey program at Ohio State. In a state of over $11 million people we have...900 female players, aged 19 and younger. 

 7- By contrast Minnesota has a population of about 5.6 million people and 12,000 female hockey players, 19 and younger. Hey Minnesota, what's your secret? Please send us some rinks and hockey pr people.

That's all. Happy Friday. Draft well, Blue Jackets.