LIU adding D-1 Men's Hockey Program
- Thread starter Corso
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tealhockey
@overtheboards
Most surprising is that they start ASAP. It doesn't even sound like an interim year of club or whatever. (In this economy???)
mk80
Registered User
- Jul 30, 2012
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This is a surprising move. They just finished their first season of women's hockey, which is technically D1, but the conference isn't on par in terms of competitiveness yet with other women's programs. With no previous mention of men's D1 hockey on the way, let alone for next season this has certainly shocked the college hockey world. Also in the midst of this pandemic you'll be hard pressed to find many college athletic departments expanding this year, even Illinois is postponing their announcement of a team.
Not completely surprised being from the area. Ever since the bobcats left Twin Rinks at Eisenhower there has been a desire to add a big-ticket tenant. I believe there is a spare team locker room with lounge, dry room, and top of the line facilities that the Islanders did not commandeer. It doesn't hurt that the Nassau Coliseum is back to a full-time hockey rink and if LIU draws the support necessary they could move in fulltime once the new rink in Belmont gets the Islanders. Lots of options but also, this year is going to be ugly if they do begin now; not exactly recommended to start searching for a coach 4 months before the season with no recruits coming in yet. Wish them the best, always good to see the game grow.
Barclay Donaldson
Registered User
I am skeptical for year one. They must quickly find a full staff, roster of at least +25 players with recruiting season finishing up without have a coach, arena, or conference announced, and there doubts about when the season next year is going to start. It is exciting that they are joining the NCAA D1 ranks, but how they're going about it isn't anywhere near ideal.
SemireliableSource
Liter-a-cola
Apparently, the recruiting questionnaire says 2021-22. Perhaps there was a typo in the press release or by immediate competition, they mean a year of ACHA D1 first.
Yeah I imagine this upcoming season will at most be some hybrid Club/ D1 build up. I know the release suggests a full start next fall but I'll believe that when I see it. But besides that I'm super excited by this, out of nowhere but I've been dying for LI to get a program by now.
The whole downstate/ NYC metro area needs D1 hockey. Always thought Stony Brook would be the Long Island school to go for it with a successful club team. Hopefully LIU is successful and other nearby schools follow suit (Stony Brook, St. Johns, Rutgers, etc.). This makes a lot of sense given the uptick in Long Island hockey. LI, and north Jersey have been advancing and producing a lot of quality players (NTDP quality but also just good D1 players too), and being the only close school should help them get off the ground.
The whole downstate/ NYC metro area needs D1 hockey. Always thought Stony Brook would be the Long Island school to go for it with a successful club team. Hopefully LIU is successful and other nearby schools follow suit (Stony Brook, St. Johns, Rutgers, etc.). This makes a lot of sense given the uptick in Long Island hockey. LI, and north Jersey have been advancing and producing a lot of quality players (NTDP quality but also just good D1 players too), and being the only close school should help them get off the ground.
Barclay Donaldson
Registered User
Being in a hockey hotbed has little to do with a school adding a NCAA D1 team.
California and Illinois have both been Top 10 in USA Hockey participation for a long time, but they don't have a single NCAA program. New Jersey has a high rate of participation as well, yet only one NCAA program. Pennsylvania is Top 5 in participation yet only have 3 programs, comparatively fewer than the other states with similar participation levels, and one of them in Penn State would still be a club team if it weren't for a $102 million donation by Pegula.
Schools add D1 hockey because they believe it will eventually make money or they have money to spend on it. Schools like Niagara, RMU, and RIT added hockey because they believed it was profitable, and others like Quinnipiac and Merrimack added it because it was the financial leader of what they were going to build their athletics program around. The two most recent examples of Penn State and Arizona State only added hockey because they were gifted a lot of money by a donor and hadn't professed any interest in adding hockey until that money came in. No one adds hockey because it would be easy to recruit from the local area.
Long Island has been putting out consistent D1/ NHL Draft level talent consistently since 2014. Of course the top guys will still be going to the top schools, but there are many more D1 quality players coming out of Long Island that LIU cold have a good chance to pick up. Granted I know it will take a while and the program has some hurdles ahead but it's very exciting nevertheless.
Sonny Milano
Jeremy Bracco
Charlie McAvoy
Adam Fox
Tage Thompson
Shane Pinto
Robert Mastrosimone
Marshall Warren
Christian Sarlo
Danny Weight
Tyce Thompson
Matthew Coronato
Jeremy Wilmer
Ryan Ufko
Eddie Romano
Tanner Adams
Ryan Fine
And these are just LI kids, a successful D1 program on LI can pull the quality players from LI, NYC, South-west CT, Hudson Valley and NJ.
CrazyEddie20
Hey RuZZia - Cut Your Losses and Go Home.
Really? You think so?
Milano went to the OHL - he was never going to college and a player of his caliber either goes to a top program or goes to Major Junior. He'd never go to a start-up program at a fourth-tier college like LIU.
Bracco went to BC, McAvoy went to BU, Fox went to Harvard, and so on - LIU isn't going to be immediately competitive in hockey with those schools and is not now and will not ever be competitive with them academically.
This isn't Penn State. This isn't ASU. This is a local private commuter college without a huge benefactor starting a program that has no rink, no funding, no coach, and no players.
They'll be hunting for players among the scrapheaps with UAH.
The area doesn't "need" Division I hockey. It doesn't have Division I hockey, but it's hard to say that the area needs it, considering that college sports have mid-level drawing power in the NYC area. St. John's hoops doesn't sell out the Garden nightly anymore. College football is absent and largely irrelevant.
You misread what I said. I acknowledged almost all of those top names will continue to go to the top schools. I just used those names to highlight the growth of talent on Long Island over the last several years and that it is the tier of players beneath them that LIU could land. My point was Long Island has been producing top draft talents but also many more players who won’t be nhl or draft prospects but can be decent/ good D1 players.
And who cares what we "need". Its growth for the game of hockey in the area and it's exciting. If they can't draw fans and the program loses too much money then it won't exist for too long, but we don't know that. D1 hockey doesn't need to be selling out MSG, plenty of D1 programs do well enough in smaller venues. It's exciting to see college hockey expand anywhere.
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Do they actually have a suitable rink that isn't close to the rink that ASU currently using?
Nah man, you're just naturally pessimistic. It's okay, some people are like that such as there are naturally optimistic people in the world today too. Everything has to start from nothing, everything starts with an idea. Your favourite songs that you listen to today were not worth a million dollars five, ten, twenty, fifty, or one hundred years ago depending on what music you like...yet they are now. What I'm implying is everything that is powerful and wealthy on this Earth all started as nothing and the same analogy can be used with LIU.
With all the buzz regarding certain schools like Illinois and Navy, the step-child LIU shocks the college hockey environment by being the 61st programme. Will be interesting to see their development towards DI because I don't think they even have an ACHA team. For the record, ASU and Penn State both had very good and long traditioned ACHA club teams before jumping to DI.
LIU Adding Men's Program
NCAA shocker: Long Island University announces new men's program for 2020-21 - TheHockeyNews
LIU Adding Men's Program
NCAA shocker: Long Island University announces new men's program for 2020-21 - TheHockeyNews
Barclay Donaldson
Registered User
Get real.
Have you read anything anyone else has said on this thread? Have you looked at the questionnaire sent out by the school? I doubt you have looked at this for more than 2 seconds. They are so many doubts that the consensus opinion is they will have to play a mixed NCAA schedule the first season. It's four months until puck drop and they don't have an arena, head coach, staff, or any team to build off of. Even the women's D1 team didn't have a permanent home, they switched between two rinks. Illinois and Navy are both intelligently delaying the starts to their programs. Because 4 months is not enough time, especially with COVID still rampant in North America.
It's not pessimism when there are serious and legitimate doubts. That's called realism. There's a big difference. Learn it. Arizona State had a NCAA D3 caliber club team, a year to prepare, and they still played a mixed NCAA/club schedule their first season. Penn State made the transition 3 years after the initial announcement. Four months is far too soon, especially when most of teams have their schedule completed.
I don't understand your analogy at all, because there have been infinitely more "ideas" that have face planted out of the starting gate than ones that are "powerful and wealthy" today. Ever heard of University of Findlay hockey? Wayne State? URI trying to get hockey? Minnesota-Moorhead? Any one of a dozen other schools that have tried to add NCAA D1 hockey on a short term effort? And you're trying to say that everything that is great started out this way? There's infinitely more things that failed that started out this way. I can't think of anything great that was started in these sorts of conditions. I can think of many great things that were started in optimal conditions.
Get real.
Truthfully, I haven't because this caught me off guard, but I knew what your opinion was even before I came into this thread. However, I actually agree with you one million percent. If they think it is a viable option to go straight to DI using just this offseason, especially with what has happened with Covid then they're fools. If they plan on starting a club team this season and then go into DI next season that's fine. None of this matters eight or so years from now when the programme will be in full swing. Nobody cares about how something starts, they care about is the end product even though there are legitimate issues on how they're planning this thing currently.
There numerous rinks in the area with available dates/facilities/etc. Being that LIU can utilize facilities in Brooklyn and Long Island they can play out of Aviator (I am not sure if there is the room with the 2 USPHL junior teams and only 2 dedicated team locker rooms but as a temporary solution maybe) and on the island, they could utilize the twin rinks at Eisenhower Park. There are 2 dedicated team locker rooms there (initially built for the NY Bobcats EHL and LI Gulls 18U). Ballpark estimates put fan capacity at about 1,500 spectators. Now the Islanders are using one team room and the other sits vacant. In addition, I bet you that the Nassau Coliseum would be open to hosting some games as it sits vacant most nights, even with the Islanders returning.
I am curious to see if they are still subject to the regulations about having a rink on campus as they are going to have athletes split between the 2 campuses and neither campus having a rink (or really the land to build a rink or even the need for another rink in the area).
JMCx4
Censorship is the Sincerest Form of Flattery
Has that really been or is it now an NCAA regulation? On the women's hockey side, Lindenwood U in the St. Louis area has never had a campus rink. UA-Huntsville men play at Von Braun Center downtown. Colorado College has played off-campus for a long time (though soon to move back to campus into a new arena), as did University of Nebraska-Omaha for 10 years. University of Alaska-Anchorage played in Sullivan Arena in town for many years before moving to campus last fall. So either it's a regulation with caveats, or it's not a reg at all.
Barclay Donaldson
Registered User
The women’s team played its home games at Iceworks in Syosset and at Northwell Health Ice Center in East Meadow plus one game at the Nassau Coliseum. The AD said the school is in negotiations with three venues to play home games, but didn't specify the three. I would assume it would be the three mentioned above. I can't imagine that they would allow themselves as a serious D1 team to split between two rinks full time like the women's team did.
As of the 2019 NCAA D1 regulations manual, there are no regulations requiring an on-campus rink, and plenty of D1 teams have off-campus rinks with no intention of putting one on-campus. I can think of AUH, AIC, Canisius, RMU, UConn off the top of my head that meet those two conditions. The NCAA simply needs to approve the facility per section 3.2.4.9.3 "Covered Event."
CrazyEddie20
Hey RuZZia - Cut Your Losses and Go Home.
Nothing LIU has done since announcing their men's hockey program has indicated that they are a serious Division I team.
Barclay Donaldson
Registered User
They clearly think they can do a lot in 4 months time. I haven’t seen much that would indicate they aren’t a serious Division 1 program either.
mk80
Registered User
- Jul 30, 2012
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I hope there has been at least some sort of internal planning and behind the scenes work for this that we don't know of.
Beyond the challenges of recruiting and scheduling, the current climate with the virus adds the challenge to an incoming coach of supply chains being thin worldwide, and numerous hockey equipment suppliers having converted to making medical equipment like face shields, masks, and gowns, to having factories shut down all together. At the beginning when the virus was still a foreign concept, there were the articles about NHL players having to ration their sticks because of factories in China being closed from the lock downs.
So beyond a coach having to put together a roster from scratch, without a current club team to at least transition some players with, ASU & Penn State both had some ACHA players, mainly seniors the first seasons of their NCAA programs to fill recruiting gaps. Scheduling a entire season with most if not all teams essentially having their schedules already completed, especially at the NCAA D1 level; unless the AD/women's coaching staff have been ordering extra sticks, helmets, gloves, jerseys, ahead of time for a men's team, it's going to be extra tough for a coach to order that with delays caused by the pandemic, not to mention recruiting also being at a standstill with campus visits postponed until further notice for all sports.
That is all on top of not even having a coaching staff in in place with T-minus 4 months remaining to get all this done.
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Indepth look at the programme with pros and cons;
https://thehockeywriters.com/long-island-university-d1-hockey-program/
https://thehockeywriters.com/long-island-university-d1-hockey-program/
