2012 Nationals Talk

[Kevin Smith]

Here are my DI picks for Wednesday

98097 11:00AM M UMSL Eastern Michigan
98098 11:00AM R Grand Valley State Central Florida
98099 12:15PM M UNLV Neumann
98100 12:15PM R Illinois Towson
98101 1:15PM M Lindenwood Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
98102 1:15PM R West Chester Bethel University
98103 2:15PM M Michigan State Long Beach State
98104 2:15PM R UC Santa Barbara Ohio State
98105 3:15PM M Arizona State Metro State - Denver
98106 3:15PM R Connecticut Colorado State
98107 4:30PM M Hofstra North Carolina State
98108 4:30PM R Missouri State North Texas
98109 5:30PM M Grand Valley State Towson
98110 5:30PM R UMSL Neumann
98111 6:30PM M Illinois Central Florida
98112 6:30PM R UNLV Eastern Michigan
98113 7:30PM M Bethel University UC Santa Barbara
98114 7:30PM R Long Beach State Lindenwood
98115 8:45PM M West Chester Ohio State
98116 8:45PM R Michigan State Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
98117 9:45PM M North Texas Connecticut
98118 9:45PM R North Carolina State Arizona State
98119 10:45PM M Missouri State Colorado State
98120 10:45PM R Hofstra Metro State - Denver

[housley]

Good picks. Some of my observations:

With the size of these rinks, I think UCSB's Travis Noe is going to be even more dominant. Have fun covering him on that big rink.

I think Pool D will be the most competitive. Looking forward to those games. Looks like any of those 4 teams could win it.

ASU is playing very shorthanded this weekend so I'm removing them as my darkhorse pick. Don't think they'll do well. My new darkhorse from the lower pools: Missouri State.

Michigan State looked real good practicing last night, I think they'll surprise and take the top pool away from Lindenwood in round robin.

I think Lindenwood takes it all. Just like 2010, I don't think they'll let someone take the title from them 2 years in a row.

[LBHOCKEY]

The West Coast are 9-2-1 in Division 1 so far. LB is tied with Lindenwood in Pool A and SB IS leading in Pool B while UNLV and ASU have already won their Pools. Great job West!

Good luck to Long Beach, SLO, Santa Barbara, UNLV AND ASU.

Let's bring the Trophy back to the West where it belongs!

Go Beach!

Bill Burrows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=LA4J4kzKxoA

[housley]

Wow……UNLV vs. Bethel in the championship game? I'm going to bet nobody in the world predicted that pairing. Gotta love all the upsets.

I thought this year did reaffirm the strength of the WCRHL with Long Beach tying Lindenwood, ASU giving them a close game, and UNLV upsetting them. Plus UC Santa Barbara did well.

But I think even more so this year showed how competitive this league has become. We have 4 different national champions in the past 4 years. Lindenwood is still the favorite every year and it's a surprise when they lose, but it is a good thing so many teams have a shot at the title now.

[ISFN]

Where were the goal judges (or even a 3rd ref) during the championship game(s)?? Horrible decision by the NCRHA to pad their pockets instead of ensuring a fair, legit game(s) would be played.

UNLV- Best goalie in the tourney.

NU- #17, Solid skater, NU is par without him. Same with Eastern's #6, strong solid skater.

ASU/UNLV- Extremely good 'teams', played a very well team game (hiding the weaker skaters and being successful)

[PMoyer3]

Yea, the wrap around goal against UNLV in the championship game definitely went in and bounced off the tight net and into the goalie's hand. I did agree with the delay of game at the end though when the Bethel guy covered the puck along the boards.

I don't think the NCRHA was trying to "pad their pockets", that's a little far fetched. Every game all year long has had 2 refs so while it would have been better to have additional coverage for the championship games, it was consistent with how every other game was staffed. There was definitely an officiating inconsistency across the board though. I also felt like I was watching World Cup Soccer with all the dives and the refs calling every one of them...I guess they were consistent with that.

Cal Poly also got screwed in their elimination game when a goalie interference was called on a scoring play in overtime. There's a picture circling around, clearly showing the shot and the player who supposedly interfered about 3-4 feet away from the goalie with a defender in between them. Then to be short handed and lose because of it is a pretty tough way to exit the tournament.

There was just a lot of random calls that I think were questionable throughout.

I also used to be completely on board with the way the pools are put together but after I started seeing team after team from Pool A and B fall to teams that I don't think they would normally lose to, I don't know if it's the most fair way to organize the tournament. It was clear that the Pool A and B teams were definitely fatigued by the time playoffs came around. Especially the shorter benched teams. The only exception to this was Bethel of course who seemed to gain energy as the tournament went on. They also had one of the biggest rosters from what I could tell. It also just feels weird to me that a team in Pool A and B can lose all of their games and still get a bye in the first round. Same goes for a team that goes 3-0 in a lower pool and doesn't really help their situation much.

I know there's no perfectly fair way to run a national championship tournament but I think something like having one regional champion in each pool would be a start then fill in the rest based on records and region. There's no reason that anyone should play a team from their own region in pool play. Then for playoff seeding, just place everyone based off of points and goal differential or goals against or whatever. I prefer goals against because then it doesn't promote running up the score against a weaker team. I know the idea behind the current system is to have competitive pool play games and have marquee match-ups early but I think it's actually having a negative effect on the playoffs.

I thought the venue was awesome though. The Olympic Oval was a great facility and gave you the sense of something bigger happening there with the history of the place. Also, lots of exciting games as usual. Overall, good tournament, even with my above criticisms.

[hockeykid12]

Overall I would say it was a pretty good event. The oval was a great venue I felt like the floor became more and more unfriendly to the puck as the games went on.
The d1 game was fantastic. I will say thou the refereeing I thought was atrocious for the most part, I know Pat tries to get the best refs, but some of them were brutal, I think the red wearing number 2 and 7 were by far the worst ones I saw.
I will agree that i feel the pool play needs to be reworked a bit. However the argument of poll a-b being fatigued is flawed, each team is put into there skill level poll so the fact linden wood played great teams doesn't mean uconn was able to slide by because they played the same skill set of teams equal to theirs.
Overall it was good other than central Michigan sandbagging d2!

[PMoyer3]

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...49806342_n.jpg
It's pretty blurry but you can see the positioning. I think the puck is in mid-air between the defenseman and the Poly forward at the time of the picture but clearly the Poly forward is not interfering with the goalie.

[GoRangrHky]

I agree that you need goal judges at least for a few of these games, at least for the finals. I was standing right by the net where UNLV hit that last crossbar, and while I didn't think it went in, there were a lot of people that there said it hit the back bar and went out. Bethel went right down the rink and scored on the other end immediately after.

Officiating was not as good as I had hoped. I saw one ref yawning for a good portion of the games on Saturday. The "approchability" that was spoken so highly of at the meeting quickly diminished into nothing by the time the weekend was over. Fair and legitimate questions were turned into the normal arrogance and brashness by the officials as the tournament went on, but I guess that's to be expected. But hey, when they're at the bar until 1am the night before the DII/JC/B semis and finals, I guess you get what you get.

That being said, there were some who were great, one who even took me aside after the game and explained his position on a call he made, without me even asking him to. I disagreed with him still, but the fact that he wanted to see where I was coming from and want to have an honest talk about it was great. I unfortunately didn't see him again the rest of the weekend, but it was a shorter guy with a sweet 'stache from Colorado. Props to him.

I still like the pool play the way it is. I think that giving an advantage to teams that have a deep team and are well conditioned should be something that the league promotes. Too much of roller hockey is dominated at the tournament level by teams that have one or two guys that only have to play a 24 minute game and don't have to skate much. I think that the college game forces teams to become deeper teams, work on their conditioning, and play good, hard games the whole way, and that the games are 36 minutes long. That's where a true champion comes out. If Lindenwood or any other school is concerned about their first three games, then take those easy and save it for the elimination round. Or just don't show up with 7-8 guys, bring a full squad and get them out there.

[ISFN]

Well considering that in the past the NCRHA has paid for goal judges and this year they did not, I would say yes that MONEY went somewhere right?

The pool structure as I have mentioned before is flawed, but so is the selection committee, but either way you have a selection committee either before (the tournament even starts) or after (the round robin play, the old way) so why not go back to the old system, make the round robins completely random, and then allow the selection committee (comprised of coaches and staff who are present at the tournament watching games) then make a decision as to who gets what seed, cause right now you have regional directors ranking teams who they haven't seen and that isn't going to change, the random round robing/selection committee is the fairest and most legit way.

Make the round robin selection an event, an online/pod cast of the teams involved in nationals, pulling each team out of a hat one by one and placing them into pools completely random, much like The World Cup pools. Like people have said its irrelevant anyways...

[Bthumme]

My thoughts on the event:

The Oval was a fantastic facility. Worlds better than the Middleton Ice Arena. but with that said, the way for the players to get to the floor was...interesting. What I also don't get is there were I think 12 locker rooms...and Only 8 got used. With games running behind and what not on one rink, some locker rooms were always behind, and players constantly rushed out. Why not use all locker rooms? Also the showers were really lame, it's stupid to have to hold your hand over a sensor to keep it on.

I thought the refs were fantastic. But then again, when you aren't playing in the most competitive games, it's a lot easier to not worry about the refs.

It sucked only bringing 4 skaters and a quasi backup goalie (all that could afford to come). Due to possible sanctions though we really had no choice. The worst part was being up halfway through our games, only to hit a wall in the third period and lose by 5-ish.

I was disappointed with the lack of coverage the event got. The live scoring is great, don't get me wrong, but how come we can't even get the games streamed or at least all on the radio? I know this requires money and more than one person, but I think this type of event deserves more coverage. I think there were 2 d2 games plus the finals broadcasted, and if i recall just the b and JC games covered. Every other Bethel game was on the NCRHA "radio"....but they have their own "radio" announcer, so some games had two people calling the game, while pretty much every other game had nothing. And there was no live streaming.

In regards to the last statement, maybe it would be better for the NCRHA to have two separate national events...one for D1, and another for d2/jc/b. That way games aren't going from 7am to 1145+ at night, and perhaps more coverage can be devoted to each league.

-I thought the bethel/unlv game was very exciting, but thought an unsportansmlike penalty should have been called for excessive celebration on their second goal. I get it, it's the national championship game, but going over to the boards and climbing up and pounding the glass is excessive for the first period.

-Congrats to CMU for having at least one team from michigan bring home some hardware. As well as Eastern for a good showing, considering that a lot of people were upset they even got selected.

-Hopefully us (western michigan) can get our act together and get a "team" to show up for next year.

-And finally, to all the other players/coaches/fans/refs/event staff we talked to, pretty much everyone in SLC was a class act.

[danglsauce]

Having 3 refs for roller hockey is a waste of money. Youre better off with goal judges. We had 3 in ECRHA last year for Regionals and he dropped the puck and got in the way.

[PMoyer3]

Well considering that in the past the NCRHA has paid for goal judges and this year they did not, I would say yes that MONEY went somewhere right?

The pool structure as I have mentioned before is flawed, but so is the selection committee, but either way you have a selection committee either before (the tournament even starts) or after (the round robin play, the old way) so why not go back to the old system, make the round robins completely random, and then allow the selection committee (comprised of coaches and staff who are present at the tournament watching games) then make a decision as to who gets what seed, cause right now you have regional directors ranking teams who they haven't seen and that isn't going to change, the random round robing/selection committee is the fairest and most legit way.

Make the round robin selection an event, an online/pod cast of the teams involved in nationals, pulling each team out of a hat one by one and placing them into pools completely random, much like The World Cup pools. Like people have said its irrelevant anyways...

I can only guess that the money went to the facility. Seemed like they stepped their game up in that respect.

I like the suggestion of making a round robin selection event but I still think it should be a general rule that teams from their own region don't play each other in round robin and each regional champion should be in their own pool. After taking part in the seeding selection committee one year I cannot in good conscience support that system coming back. In theory it is great but in practice it's more about "political" lobbying or "try not to get in Lindenwood's bracket" than what I would consider a fair seeding method.

The easiest solution to the problem of staff not seeing games is to bring back Winterfest to its previous legitimate status as a nationals preview. It is a joke in its current form.

[sauceboss]

UNLV GOT ROBBED!!!

I was watching behind the net and the puck definitely hit the back bar and popped out. It's a damn shame, they deserved to win especially after that Lindenwood game.

If you look at the path UNLV had to take compared to the path Bethel took, UNLV takes the cake. NCRHA should look into having goal judges for next year at least for the championship games because that is just not right for such a big game.

I can't imagine what it would feel like to be a UNLV player right now, to go all that way, beat the teams they did and then lose a national championship because of a missed call.

[BEEZERAL]

Bethel benefited from blown calls? Im shocked... SHOCKED I tell you.