Milan Dragacevic, Head Coach of the UBC Thunderbird men's hockey team for the past 12 years and the man who led the charge to secure 5 more years of existence for the varsity team has been fired. Dragacevic himself admitted that the program was not at the level he had hoped it would be at this time.
UBC probably has the highest admission standards of any school in the country, the majority of CIS hockey players would have a difficult time meeting admission requirements and this is the biggest obstacle to recruitment facing hockey at UBC.
Definitely not slagging on UBC; I don't know enough about the program to judge whether the last 12 years have been a success. But I will say that a number of schools with admissions averages *close* to UBC's have seen a lot more on-ice success than the TBirds - UWaterloo, Western, and McGill have admissions averages in the low- to mid-80's range (compared to UBC's mid- to high-80s), and each have had more prolonged on-ice success than UBC.
It's certainly a challenge, and it narrows the recruitment field, but it doesn't make it impossible to find high-end talent. For instance, 11 of the 23 members of Waterloo's 2013 OUA West champ team were Academic All-Canadians.
Other CW teams seem to be finding them, too. In the 20 years that the Governor General's Academic All Canadian Awards have been given out, the top CW men's academic athlete has been a hockey player six times - 2 from UofA, and one each from USask, Manitoba, Regina, and Lethbridge. So, there are super-smart men's hockey players playing all over CW and the rest of the CIS - why aren't they going to UBC?
Are there other factors in UBC's struggle to draw high-end players who are good in the classroom? Can't be the gorgeous geographical location. I remember reading once that CW sometimes has trouble keeping WHL grads from heading east. Is that a possible contributing factor too?