Q: Favorite rink in the league?
A: Can I answer that question? Hmmm. Not to put any others in a negative light but Lynah Rink (Cornell) is electric. There are some special barns in our league. They all have something.
The main purpose of the interview was to find out more details about the ECAC's decision to relocate the championship weekend from Albany to Atlantic City beginning in 2011. See my earlier post on this topic here.
I don't know too much about Hagwell (other than his great email address: shagwell@ecachockey.com), but he comes across as a pretty reasonable guy. He has nothing against Albany and the Times-Union Center, but admits that they haven't been selling enough tickets. He speaks honestly about the fact that attendance has been hurt by local team RPI's failure to make it to Albany in any of the seven years the tournament has been held there. He also gives a nod to Cornell's fan base for boosting ticket sales.
One interesting point that Hagwell raises is the possible effect of the Albany NCAA Regional on attendance for the ECAC tournament. He implies that casual fans who are unaffiliated with any team might decide to buy tickets for the NCAA tournament, and not the ECAC tournament, during years the regional is held in Albany. Presumably, the lack of a NCAA regional near Atlantic City will eliminate this effect on ticket sales.
I hate to use this terrible quip, but it really applies here: moving to Atlantic City is a huge gamble for the ECAC. As far as I can tell, there is only one legitimate reason why ticket sales might go up: Atlantic City is closer than Albany to NYC (if only slightly). Hagwell seems to be throwing himself at a poorly defined, yet certainly large, group of ECAC alumni who live in the NYC area. He probably hopes a lot of the 12,000 Cornell fans who went to MSG for the BU game will be willing to go to Atlantic City for the ECAC tournament. And he's really hoping that this attendance boost will make up for the number of people from Canton, Potsdam, and even Ithaca who will refuse to make the longer drive. The ECAC had better sell a lot more tickets in Atlantic City to justify moving the tournament from a relatively central location to a seedy gambling town 8 hours away from two of its schools.
Most troubling was Hagwell's answer as to why hosting the ECAC tournament in Albany has not worked out:
Q: Why hasn't it worked here?
A: In all honesty, I don't know. We have adjusted our ticket prices. I don't have an answer. I am frustrated in myself in not being able to figure out the answer.
He doesn't know why Albany hasn't worked, but maybe Atlantic City will work... Not exactly a vote of confidence.
Regardless, we'll have to wait until next year to see what the attendance figures will be. Of course, a Cornell-Yale-Princeton-Harvard weekend in Atlantic City would deliver a flood of cash for the ECAC, while a Clarkson-St. Lawrence-Brown-Dartmouth weekend would deliver dismal numbers. Who knows what the future will bring.
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