I think baseball and softball stick to one pair of opponents over a long weekend too, 3-4 games Fri-Sun.

I really just think the term applies to basketball and maybe a couple other sports like vball and soccer? Where a team will fly into town, have a game, then bus to another team and have another game before returning home.

And the usage of such a tactic for conference scheduled varies across the DI confs.

I think people here and in other threads are generally conflating the concept/ideology of "travel partner" with "regional rival".

Rivalries can help boost attendance and viewership.

(08-25-2016 09:52 AM)LastMinuteman Wrote:  There are no travel partners in Hockey East, unless you're using that term differently than I understand it. Even Notre Dame plays 1 conference opponent and then goes straight back to Indiana, rather than walk across the street and get another Boston opponent out of the way while they're there.

In the CCHA, Bowling Green used to play home-and-homes in a single weekend with nearby schools. Bowling Green would travel to Columbus or Ann Arbor or East Lansing on a Friday, for example, then host the same school at the BGSU Ice Arena on Saturday.

Perhaps that's what some are thinking of when they think of travel partners. But it's not quite the same thing. As others have said, the idea of a travel partner is that you make games with two different opponents in a single trip. Since two-game weekend series are such a fundamental part of college hockey, the traditional idea of a travel partner is not really applicable. Every trip gets you two games. Given that, no need for partners.

(Even the Alaska schools don't seem to be working two different opponents into the trips they make to the Lower 48. Doing so would require a 10-day trip, given college hockey's emphasis on weekend games.)

Minnesota still does that (home/home in a weekend) with Dukuth, St Cloud, and Mankato in non-conf.

West coast schools better hurry up to decide to add hockey. There is a news report out yesterday that both Alaska schools could drop the hockey programs instead of combining. It would hurt D1 hockey if they start losing schools.

(08-25-2016 12:11 PM)DavidSt Wrote:  West coast schools better hurry up to decide to add hockey. There is a news report out yesterday that both Alaska schools could drop the hockey programs instead of combining. It would hurt D1 hockey if they start losing schools.

The WCHA prefers only one school, as traveling to Alaska is a major cost and hassle for EDT and CDT schools. With one, they get a reward of another series based on the Alaska/Hawaii exemption. With two schools, the other schools budgets are badly burned. That said, Simon Fraser might not get a WCHA offer now.

My mistake. NCHC doesn't have them. UNLV makes a little less sense then, but I still think the NCHC would rather have them for the sake of name recognition than MSU-M.

I doubt UNLV's ambition is, at least short-term, to be a PAC-12 school. They have to know that the academics and results on the field and court just aren't there. They're probably just trying to make a name for themselves in something.

It's terrible to think we might lose an Alaska program or two, though. The D2 programs playing up are part of what makes college hockey special. Hopefully they get that straightened out.

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New $1.3 Billion dollar stadium to be built in Las Vegas.