premier

[TOTALHOCKEY]

Does anyone know what is going on with the premier league? If it does not fly this year I guess we will see some power houses at nationals. Any and all comments welcome.

[CoachChrisG]

Premier isn't even a legitimate league. Add this to pretty much the end of the CRHL in most part because of how they treated the non lindenwood and michigan teams. They should just form NARCh teams because it's obvious that they have no respect for the rest of the schools who are doing the best they can and improving every day.

[MBurke]

While I can't say I agree with the decision to form Premier last year, I do understand the reasons behind it and the rationale of the teams involved. NCRHA is hopeful that they can address the needs of the more advanced teams this year while still promoting unity on a national level.

It's not that the teams had no respect or didn't care; they experimented with a different way of going about divisonal structure. It is apparent now (in hindsight) that perhaps not enough teams were ready to make that jump, and hopefully a middle ground has been reached this year that is amicable to all.

Mike Burke
Commissioner
Eastern Collegiate Roller Hockey Association
http://www.ecrha.net

[John_S_Osborne]

>>It's not that the teams had no respect or didn't care; they experimented with a different way of going about divisonal structure. It is apparent now (in hindsight) that perhaps not enough teams were ready to make that jump, and hopefully a middle ground has been reached this year that is amicable to all.<<

I think I've said this before, but I think in the future we'll have to seriously look at more "experiments", as Burke called them, as options in furthering the college roller hockey organization.

I think in terms of scheduling and logistics, the ECRHA because of its geographical size and the amount of member teams it encompasses is going to hit a breaking point in the next few seasons. It's coming to a point now where an event is running every weekend throughout the year, and the schedules for those weekends are getting packed.

What you will see happening, I think, is perhaps on a small-scale basis, certain games being pulled out of the hockey weekend format and onto a home-and-home basis. For example, at Drexel, we're relatively close to certain ECRHA DI members (UMD, Towson, Rutgers, Delaware, maybe Penn State). It wouldn't hurt for Drexel's games against those teams to be played in home-and-home format outside of the hockey weekends.

This really is how I think the goals of Premier will come about: sheer size will dictate that previous structures will not work, something will be done to augment it, and eventually, the hockey weekend format as we know it will be gone (over many years).


- john

[Rule613a]

I see this happeneing too. On Long Island, there aren't really enough teams yet to do this. But I can see all the teams in the Philly area doing this, as well as the Delaware Valley. As more and more schools find out about this league, and more and better facilities are being built, it'll come along.

[bsurh35]

This is exactly what is happening in the Midwest. We are allowing ANY of our teams to compete outside of the hockey weekend format. All they need to do is send us an official NCRHA scoresheet, and the game is valid. This will be a great middle ground for all teams. Of course MSU and Michigan are going to want to have a home and home series, and that is great, but this year they are also in the same league as everyone else. It turns out to work nicely for everyone.

[doors207]

when these games are outside of your weekend events, are league refs used or is there some standards that need to be met other wise it could just be treated like some scrimmage with house refs...

[cakeuneke]

League refs are used.

[hockey10175]

Refs suck.

[CoachChrisG]

The problem the Premier teams don't understand is that not even NCAA teams can afford to have a cross country league with no regions. Had they just raised the bar at the D1 level this mess wouldn't have ever happened. It just looks from the rather arrgant attitudes of MSU and Lindenwood's coaches and managers, (and in MANY instances their players,) that they would rather the rest of the programs fold and aknowledge them as masters of the hockey universe by default. It's a shame that their egos won't allow good, meaningful change which is why the CRHL is thankfully all but dead.

C.C.

[paddymac]

C.C. your very critical and you come off as ignorant to me. How are you involved with college hockey? The Premier program was not trying to become a cross country league. The intention was to start regional conferences not have Michigan fly out to California for two games and vice versa. The Premier teams weren't against the other teams and weren't trying to prove their supremacy. That has been done on the court.(I'm not trying to say all the other teams out there suck, but the 6 Premier teams have a rich history of winning.) The Premier teams were made an enemy because some people didn't like the idea and the rest didn't understand it. The premier teams were trying to change the way things were done a bit. One of the strong points from our perspective were the longer games and also having home games coupled with not playing 5 games in a weekend. I like traveling and seeing other teams play, but driving to Anytown, USA and playing 5 games in 30 hours is not conducive to fostering growth in College Roller Hockey. As for the Premier teams' "arrogant attitudes" I don't see this. The Premier program was to continue even though most the teams had left the CRHL and the NCRHA was created. As teams in the Premier program we decided that without the backing of the rest of the teams in the country that we could not grow so we decided to leave it and join the NCRHA. We still believe that something similar to Premier has to be the future of College Roller Hockey and will work within the NCRHA to create it.