AMHERST — The UMass hockey team’s opponent this weekend is either an odd curiosity or a sign of things to come in college hockey.
The Minutemen welcome Arizona State to the Mullins Center, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m.
College hockey has historically thrived in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region and a pocket in Colorado. It’s been a beloved regional sport with fierce followings and tradition at schools that in many cases aren’t otherwise national athletic powers.
There are teams in Alaska and even Alabama, but those are outliers with limited impact.
Arizona State is a true big-time athletic department dipping its oar in college hockey. Tempe, Arizona, is far from regular hockey country, but the infrastructure of a Pac-12 school gives it a leg up. It already has resources in place in terms of training, weight rooms and student-athlete services that many of the programs that are only Division I in hockey will never have.
Sun Devils freshman goalie Joey Daccord, an NHL draft pick of the Ottawa Senators, is from North Andover. It wasn’t that long ago when he’d have almost certainly played in Hockey East or the ECAC. If ASU can be competitive, it’ll start regularly stealing recruits who would have gone to Northeast programs. Given a choice between Tempe and Orono, Maine, how many recruits would choose to become Black Bears?
The Sun Devils follow Penn State among recently added Division I programs. While Penn State is in or at least close to college hockey’s traditional footprint, it still represents another football power strapping on skates. UConn’s increased commitment to hockey is showing sings of paying dividends, too. But just being a big-time school doesn’t guarantee anything. Union College has been a better hockey program than Ohio State.
But having those resources in place helps.
If Arizona State is successful, will others follow? It’s not that hard to picture Pac-12 hockey. The Big Ten only has six teams. A potential Pac-12 of Arizona State, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Washington and Southern Cal would make a nice looking conference. That would make college hockey a national sport. That’s a little scary for Hockey East programs, many of whom have hockey as their signature sport.
When Florida and Northwestern decided to play women’s lacrosse, they poured money in and were immediately a national power. If they did the same in hockey, would New Hampshire, Northeastern, BU and Vermont have the resources to keep up?
Hockey East schools will probably still thrive with New England kids, but a lot of Canadian recruits who grew up without the Beanpot or conference tournament games in the Garden will be harder to convince.
If they pop up at all, those issues won’t come to the forefront until the future. In the present, Arizona State’s growing process as an independent and UMass’ will intersect at the Mullins Center.
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage