The prospect that the ECAC announcement that was rumored to occur on Tuesday would be streamed or televised were fairly bleak considering the league's inability to secure a network to broadcast the league's marquee event. However, around midnight last night (12:00 am Tuesday), the ECAC page added a splash image as its intro to the men's ice hockey page. The image, for those who are unfamiliar with the Lake Placid facilities, is that of the outside of the Olympic Center facility that is attached to the much more famous Herb Brooks Arena.

The formal ECAC announcement came at around 11:10 am on Tuesday. The ECAC formalized that the league had come to a three-year agreement with Lake Placid under which the ECAC would crown its champions for the 2014, 2015, and 2016 seasons in Herb Brooks Arena. ECAC Commmissioner Steve Hagwell sung the praises of the bond between the ECAC and Lake Placid, and stated that "Lake Placid has a special bond with ECAC Hockey."

Considering the news, I thought that it was befitting to take a more extended look at where the ECAC will host its championships and where Cornell will seek additional ECAC Championships in the near future. I feel that the pros and cons, and hopes and fears have been discussed extensively. If you missed WAFT's take, it's here. Thank You Terry, a blog that focuses upon Penn State hockey and one of the best blogs dedicated to college hockey (TYT is a blog that college hockey fans should read if they are not already), mentioned and complimented WAFT's analysis in a much-appreciated shoutout to this new blog in his Three Stars. Adam Wodon offered similarly extensive analysis back in April. Needless to say, Wodon and WAFT are solidly in the pro-Lake Placid camp. That is firmly established. So, this post continues with the different angle of looking at what members of the Faithful can look forward to when Cornell seeks its fourteenth ECAC title in 2014 (wishful thinking, I know).

The most striking element in the above pictures is the intimacy of the Arena. I'm very much of the opinion that what distinguishes college hockey from professional-level hockey is the physical and personal connection between the fans, teams, and the players. That is why even sold-out college hockey events at NHL arenas strike me as somewhat off. They do not feel like college hockey events. Red Hot Hockey is a superb event that I hope continues into the future and I plan to attend the clash between the Wolverines and Big Red in November, but the ill-defined sterility of pro arenas remove certain elements of the college hockey experience. I leave each of those great events lacking the sense of belonging that games at college hockey barns provide even though ~14,000 Cornell fans reliably make The Garden much louder than any Rangers game. Admittedly, the connection to the building between fans is lost at any neutral site, but the aesthetic feel and the size of Herb Brooks Arena makes the viewing experience more akin to the experience offered at other college hockey rinks and Lynah than the experience afforded fans if the event were held in an NHL arena. I think this is an often overlooked aspect of college hockey that the Herb Brooks Arena does not sacrifice while TD Garden, Joe Louis Arena, and Xcel Energy Center do.

An odd fixation of some is the desire that the host of their league championship repaints the ice to commemorate the championship series. Albany did no such thing in 2010. Atlantic City, in its characteristic and respectable devotion to promoting the ECAC Championships in AC, did. The primary issue with AC was not what laid beneath the ice, but the ice itself. The scheduling of events at Boardwalk Hall forced AC to produce and maintain ice at the beautiful facility far too late to have hockey-worthy ice. Lake Placid will present no such challenges with a figure skating- and hockey-devoted arena. The benefit with Lake Placid and Herb Brooks Arena is that I think that if the above insignia appears instead of the ECAC logo, few fans would be irked because Lake Placid is as much of or, perhaps, more of a marketable brand than what the ECAC is currently.

The ECAC appeared not to make any revelatory statements about the main concerns of many fans including television coverage or hotel policies in Lake Placid according to early reports from the conference. WAFT will keep you appraised of any information as it arises. Adam Wodon asked the questions that matter most to fans. In summary, his article has Commissioner Hagwell stating that "more and more networks say, '[y]ou produce the games and we'll air it.' So I don't see any obstacles in terms of production, because we can hire a crew." Director of Events at the Olympic Center Jim Goff added that several production companies are based in Lake Placid and have experience producing broadcasts that are syndicated internationally.

The league made it clear that the 2013 ECAC Championships is the last that will be held in Atlantic City in the near future and that 2014 will mark the return of the ECAC Championships to Lake Placid. WAFT is excited about this announcement, its potential to help the league, and looks forward to joining members of the Lynah Faithful in the most historic arena in United States hockey history. Let's hope that Lake Placid has a few miracles in store for the ECAC and Cornell this time around.

The ECAC community was intrigued yesterday with the early announcement from Ken Schott that the ECAC had decided that its league championships would be held in Lake Placid, NY once again. The reports were echoed in releases from College Hockey News and USCHO.com. The consensus appears from most college hockey media that the ECAC entertained bids from Providence, Albany, and Lake Placid, but concluded that a return to the North Country for its weekend league championships series had more to offer. Reactions have been mixed. Here's what WAFT thinks the Cornell perspective should be.

The Venue
Herb Brooks Arena would host the ECAC Semifinals and Finals for the 2013-14, 2014-15, and 2015-16 seasons. The capacity of the Arena is 7,700. The capacity pales in comparison to the capacities of Boardwalk Hall (10,500) and the Times Union Center (14,236) where the championship tournament has been held since it left Lake Placid in 2002. This is where perspective is important. The 2012 ECAC Championship game between Harvard and Union drew at most 4,131 in Atlantic City. The 2010 ECAC Championship game between Union and Cornell drew 6,505 in Albany. Both attendance values fit comfortably within the capacity that Herb Brooks Arena provides. The draw of the ECAC is not one that can presently demand that its league championship game be held in a venue like Madison Square Garden, especially when attendance values tend to plummet when Cornell and the Lynah Faithful are not involved. That is a reality. The ECAC may have begun in March 2012 to dispel rumors that it represents a sub-par brand of hockey with Union's Frozen Four appearance and Cornell's upset of Michigan, but it has not overcome its established history as a small draw. Concerns about the arena size are unfounded because the ECAC has not proven that it can fill an arena the size of Herb Brooks Arena. Furthermore, even if the ECAC begins to fill Herb Brooks Arena in the near future, a full medium-sized arena presents a better and more marketable image than the same volume crowd in a larger venue like Boardwalk Hall or the Times Union Center. The attendance capacity should be of little concern to ECAC fans generally and the Lynah Faithful in particular.

The recurring issue that has emerged and one that has been rumored to be an issue of contention among the few ECAC programs that did not approve of the move to Lake Placid is the fact that Herb Brooks Arena has an Olympic-sized ice sheet. Historically, the ECAC justified that playing on an Olympic-sized sheet was advantageous to the league members going on in the season because under previous iterations of the NCAA tournament venues with Olympic-sized sheets were included or even preferred for selection for NCAA tournament game sites. The change of the NCAA tournament structure to its current form eliminated this advantage. The NCAA selection committee now chooses venues that have NHL-sized ice sheets exclusively. The fact that the surface at Herb Brooks Arena is one different than those played on earlier in the season causes each program to adapt its game to a larger ice surface without any identifiable benefit in return.

Some who are more familiar with Herb Brooks Arena than I have stated that the locker room facilities are below the current standard level of facilities at the NCAA Division I level. I cannot speak to the accuracy of these statements, but the negatives with the venue seem to be limited to the ice surface and possibly the locker rooms. However, it must be noted that the Team USA U20 Development Program has been using the facility during the week before and weekend of this leak, and there have been no discernible complaints about the facilities even during the summer months. It appears that any shortcomings in locker room facilities in any respect during the ECAC's previous tenancy in Lake Placid have been addressed. The lingering issue is the ice surface size.

The Host
Some fans familiar with the ECAC's previous era in Lake Placid from 1994 to 2002 remember that the resort community was one that clung to its arcane hotel cancellation policies that made it difficult for fans who booked hotels before their teams advanced out of the first-round or quarterfinals of the ECAC Tournament to cancel their reservations at all or without severe penalty if the fans's team did not survive to the ECAC Championships. I was neither a Cornell hockey fan nor an alumnus during this era, so I cannot speak to how the hotel industry in Lake Placid functioned before the ECAC played its last tournament game in the resort town in 2002. However, a cursory inspection of most hotel sites with cancellation guidelines and policies indicates that hotels in Lake Placid, like many in the industry, have abandoned these practices and do not cling to the criticized practices any longer. The practices, platforms, and presence of hotels on online fora have changed markedly with the development of Web 2.0, an advent that has occurred since 2002, and it seems unreasonable to conclude that Lake Placid is behind the times until proven otherwise. It appears that the hotels in Lake Placid will not present such challenges to traveling members of the Lynah Faithful.

The relation between setting and television coverage has been discussed. The 2011 ECAC Championship Final between Cornell and Yale was broadcast on the hard-to-find CBS Sports Network. The 2012 ECAC Championship Final was covered on no major television-based platform. RPI TV did an amazing job with its coverage. It was higher quality than most college hockey games broadcast all season from any network. However, the ECAC needs national television coverage to build upon its recent national successes. While the Michigans and Notre Dames of the college hockey world can point to their coverage on the Big Ten Network and NBC Sports, the ECAC and Cornell cannot boast of any similar deals. Even for their championship series. Last season's coverage from RPI TV if syndicated to a national or regional network would have been an ideal situation. It would have demonstrated the accomplishments of a member school while celebrating the athletic programs of those competing. No matter the means, the ECAC must use the brand that is Lake Placid and Herb Brooks Arena to gain coverage of the ECAC Championship Final, if not the entire Championships series.

The now-defunct Empire Sports Network broadcasted the ECAC Championships when they were hosted in Lake Placid. Geographic seclusion would seem precluded as an argument against broadcasting from Lake Placid considering the success of doing such for the same tournament a decade ago. The MSG Network acquired the regional presence of the Empire Sports Network. MSG has high viewership in Upstate New York and broadcasts regionally specific programming through the year (Sabres coverage in Upstate New York, Rangers and Islanders coverage in Downstate New York). Its geographic footprint could broadcast it to the former market of the Empire Sports Network or decide to include the Downstate New York region as well where many alumni of ECAC institutions live and work. MSG claims that it enjoys covering college hockey and has respectable viewership numbers when it broadcasts the biannual BU-Cornell Red Hot Hockey games. This could be another event that it carries, even if it chooses to syndicate RPI TV's spectacular coverage or places it on a peripheral MSG Network station. The history of the Empire Sports Network in broadcasting the ECACs from Lake Placid, the greatest density of ECAC fans, the MSG Network market, and the branding of Herb Brooks Arena seems to support the conclusion that Lake Placid and Herb Brooks Arena should increase the likelihood that the finest teams of the ECAC face off against one another in the ECAC Championship Final in prime time.

The natural splendor of the host of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Games scarcely can be overstated. The resort town sits in the shadow of Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondack Mountain Range. Many who can remember the ECAC Championships in Lake Placid remark about how the community focuses upon hosting an event of the caliber of the ECAC Championships. It is unfair to claim that Atlantic City neither focused upon nor catered to the ECAC Championships. The City was very welcoming and promotions were distributed widely within and without AC. However, there is an air about the ECAC Championships playing in New York State (the home of half of the ECAC member schools) and the winter feel of the Adirondacks in mid-March that makes Lake Placid feel more the appropriate setting for the ECAC Championships than Atlantic City. What sets Lake Placid and Herb Brooks Arena above the other interested communities and venues is history.

The Aura
No American hockey fan needs explanation as to the significance of 1980, Lake Placid, and Herb Brooks. The players, including Cornell sophomore forward Cole Bardreau, at the Team USA U20 Development Camp during this leaked announcement, remark how amazing it feels to play on such a historic stage with such rich history. It was the ice on which an image was taken that inspired the only cover of Sports Illustrated that ran without caption. It is where a player from BU began the unthinkable and put the United States ahead of the Soviet Union, and endeared himself to many of the Lynah Faithful as shown with their thunderous applause at each Red Hot Hockey that Mike Eruzione attends.

Many worry that the appeal and emotion of the 1980 Olympic game between the Soviet Union and the United States is lost on the current generation of players and fans who were born well after the miracle. I am such a fan and I can attest that it is not. There is palpable excitement about watching a game in Herb Brooks Arena. Most of the 2010 Team USA hockey roster could not remember the 1980 miracle, but it rang no less significantly for them. Ours is the generation of Miracle, the film, not the event, but the ethos, legend, and investment is not lost on us. Herb Brooks and the 1980 team are more legend than men, and for this, perhaps we venerate Lake Placid, the coach, and the team more than even the generation who witnessed it because they have become truly larger than life.

It is for these reasons that Lake Placid will help recruiting, especially in the United States. It is a historic site. It is hallowed ground for American hockey. American athletes will thirst for the opportunity to hoist an earned and respected championship cup above their heads in the same arena where Jim Craig draped an American flag around his shoulders. Cornell's roster has become noticeably more American in recent years and this will help maintain Cornell's recruitment of American players to play on East Hill.

Some worry that the effect upon recruitment is overwrought for a league that recruits heavily in Canada. This oversimplifies realities. Objectively, Canadian hockey players know that a defeat of the Goliath that was Soviet hockey is significant and respectable. They need look only to their own defeat of the Soviet Union in the Summit Series to realize the importance for Canadian hockey culture. This misses noticeably the personal connection that many American players feel with the history at Herb Brooks Arena. Cornell stands advantaged in this respect.

Lake Placid hosted the ECAC Championships nine times. Cornell was 6-4-0 at Lake Placid over that span including winning the ECAC Championship twice under Schafer. However, those statistics are not the most salient point for a program that values its history so highly. It was in Lake Placid that John Hughes, Brian Cropper, and Ned Harkness completed the unprecedented and still unequaled feat of completing an NCAA Division I season undefeated and untied with a 6-4 win over Clarkson in 1970. Cornell players and Cornell recruited players of all national origins should feel a connection to the achievement of that goal in Lake Placid. Lake Placid is where the greatest miracle in United States hockey occurred and where Cornell hockey achieved a level of play to a level that no other program has attained.

The ECAC will make Lake Placid its home while Cornell will be home in Lake Placid already.