Boston College Hockey Scheduling Wish List

Surprise! It's not the fourth straight day with an article about UConn! (Though that may come later.) With all the focus on football scheduling this week, I thought it would be fun to shift gears and discuss my wish list for nonconference hockey games in the years to come.

Obviously, scheduling is a lot less of a big deal in hockey than it is in football. The meat, potatoes and veggies of every year's hockey schedule are the conference games. Additionally, teams have about 12 non conference games to play with, and there are only 61 D1 teams to begin with. So you're bound to get to just about everyone of interest sooner or later.

That said, there are some matchups that I feel are long overdue. I put this out to some other BCI folks as well, and will share their thoughts.

First, my wish list:

1. North Dakota (Home) - Can you believe BC hasn't played North Dakota at home since the 2007 blackout/fogout game? This is ridiculous and needs to be rectified. I know we have the MSG game coming up, which is cool, but let's get these guys to Conte. Unless they refuse to come after what happened in 2007... in which case I can't really blame them.

2. Union (Home and Away) - Union has established themselves as a player on the national stage, and it's been a long time since they've appeared on BC's regular season schedule. The back to back tournament losses to Union in 2013 and 2014 would give this matchup a bit of an edge. Schenectady would also be random fun away trip to a classic old ECAC barn, always a good time.

3. Quinnipiac (Home and Away) - Quinnipiac is another new hockey power that is probably here to stay and that inexplicably has not found itself on to BC's schedule in recent memory. QU plays in an awesome, brand new facility that would be a fun and easy trip for a lot of the BC fanbase, and would be a new/interesting home opponent as well.

4. Penn State (Home) - BC has played at the Pegula arena; let's get them in to Conte now. If Penn State ever becomes really good at hockey, this has the potential to be a decent little rivalry (and maybe we can throw in a football game ... ? Which reminds me, we need more football/hockey doubleheader weekends. I don't care with who. UMass. UConn. Notre Dame. Minnesota. Whatever. Get it done,),

5. Michigan Tech or Lake Superior State (home) - Variety is the spice of life but the nature of college hockey is that big time generally teams only travel across the country to play other big time teams. You don't usually see low/mid-level Western teams making the trip east. However, I'd like to see it happen just to add a new team to the home slate. I'd take Minnesota-Duluth or Minnesota State too, but I like the idea of playing one of these 80s/90s powers.

Others' thoughts:

Laura:

I'd also like to see a home and home with Michigan.

Grant:

Absolutely love Yale. The Whale is awesome.

Quinnipiac is a must, I want to see BC play there so bad. I also love the arena.

NoDak is the big one out west.

Coach:

I was at the fogout game in 2007..was nuts..now it's 40 below in Conte all year long!

my three

- Michigan - home
- North Dakota - home
- Cornell - home and away

Lynah Rink is one of the great places in college hockey and long before there was a Hockey East, there were some historic battles between BC and ECAC teams. Cornell still has a chant that includes references BC and BU despite never playing them.