UMaine coach calls NCAA’s changes to Division I hockey ‘a good thing’
Adjustments are coming for Division I males’s and ladies’s faculty hockey packages, the NCAA just lately introduced.
Starting this season, groups can schedule exhibition video games in opposition to different Division I groups with out in search of a waiver from the NCAA.
As well as, groups will be capable of begin their full practices per week earlier.
Division I groups are allowed to have eight hours of apply per week in September — 4 hours on the ice and 4 hours off the ice — earlier than that expands to twenty hours per week the primary full week of October.
Now the boys’s packages will be capable of leap from eight hours to twenty hours for the final week of September. The ladies’s packages begin per week sooner than the boys.
Groups often play one exhibition sport the primary week of October, sometimes in opposition to a Canadian faculty.
UMaine was scheduled to play the College of Prince Edward Island in an exhibition sport this previous season however journey restrictions attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic compelled the sport to be canceled, because it did for different exhibitions between U.S. groups and Canadian schools.
Faculties had been allowed to ebook an exhibition in opposition to one other U.S. workforce. UMaine wound up enjoying Quinnipiac from the ECAC.
UMaine head coach Ben Barr stated the 2 modifications “aren’t an enormous deal, nevertheless it does provide you with extra flexibility and that’s an excellent factor.”
He stated the exhibition sport rule received’t make that massive of a distinction for UMaine as a result of it’s simpler to schedule Canadian groups.
“Each faculty will deal with it in a different way,” he stated. “It’s not a foul factor.”
UMaine has often performed Canadian faculty groups from the Maritime provinces, particularly powerhouse the College of New Brunswick, which has received eight Canadian nationwide championships.
“Within the massive image, whether or not you play an exhibition sport in opposition to the College of New Brunswick or the College of New Hampshire, there are execs and cons to each,” Barr stated.
He stated getting an additional 20-hour week isn’t a significant growth as a result of they often get the work they should get in throughout an eight-hour span through the week anyway.
A unbroken growth in Division I faculty hockey is the addition of recent packages.
Lindenwood College from St. Charles, Missouri, will start play this coming season as will Stonehill Faculty (Massachusetts) and Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, will begin within the fall of 2023 and can be within the Central Collegiate Hockey Affiliation.
Lengthy-established packages Alaska-Anchorage and Robert Morris didn’t have groups this season, however each can be returning throughout the subsequent two seasons.
Lengthy Island College and St. Thomas College from St. Paul, Minnesota, simply got here on board throughout the previous two years.
LIU’s first season was 2020-21 and St Thomas’ was this previous season.
“The extra groups the higher,” Barr stated. “There are sufficient good hockey gamers on the market.”
