CHL/NCAA

[OMG67]

All true. But you can do road trips where you visit clusters of teams where the clusters include teams from different divisions. Your Windsor, Sarnia, London trip, teams in two different divisions, could just as well be Windsor, Sarnia, Guelph, which would mean teams in two different conferences. I remember seeing the 67’s on a trip down our way where they stayed in Cambridge as a home base for the weekend and played Kitchener, Guelph, Owen Sound or Kitchener and Owen Sound, returned back to the hotel in Cambridge between games and played Oshawa on the way home. I’ve seen Belleville do the same thing using the same hotel in Cambridge as a home base. Using your format of visiting clusters, as long as that home base hotel can be centrally located between the three, all is good.

My reasoning for having an outpost team or teams in each of the four divisions is in fairness. I suppose you could do a division of the three northern teams plus Barrie and Owen Sound, call it the northern division, and then creat a division between London, Kitchener, Guelph, Brantford, and Brampton. Which division’s travel would you rather have?

Also, doing it the way I’ve done it, you have teams from all four divisions, who at some point play teams within their division along the 401 corridor. That matters when it comes to scouts wanting to get out to see your team play. Sure, scouts make it to all the buildings, but games more centrally, located get way more eyes than games in some of these outposts.

Rivalry games are a way to ensure reasonable travel for most teams that are subject to being outpost teams. That component will always be there.

The one area we hadn’t discussed about a 24 team league is schedule. If there are 12 teams per conference and 6 teams per division, if we keep it relatively balanced, we’d have 24 out of conference games (home and home), 24 opposing division games in conference (home and home x2) for a total of 48 games. That leaves only 4 games per team inter-division to get to 68 games. I don’t think there is an appetite to get to 78 games allowing each team to play 6 games against opponents int heir own division. IMO, since this conversation is a lot about travel and the league is all about lessening travel for the players to be able to concentrate on school, there needs to be some sort of unbalanced schedule.

Maybe opposing Conference games are alternating Home and Home over a two year period similar to how the WHL approaches their schedule. That gets us to 12 games vs opposing conference and 24 vs opposing division inter-conference for a total of 36 games outside division. 32 games remain in division. That is 6x vs each team in division plus an extra two against your rival team. That may go a long way towards reducing travel as well but may make out of division rivalry games more difficult.

 

[Corso]

What i wonder is do these two USHL teams have the money to pay for their players scholarship packages. The last stat information I could find was that the league pays out 3.5 million in scholarships for graduated players. On average that would 175000 per team. And I don’t think that takes into account current players who might be completing courses while playing that teams pay for. Plus if these teams think there going to mainly get American players, there education cost will be higher.

Plus their travel cost would be higher and scouting cost (both for the draft and scouting other teams current roster and prospects) would also be higher as the geographical region would be much higher.

So it’s easy to see how the operating cost would be much higher for what it would be if they went into the OHL compared to the USHL

Travel costs would probably be a bit lower, but you are absolutely correct in everything else you wrote. There is no way the ownership of either franchise with the current revenue coming in could afford the costs associated with playing in the OHL. Now some might say that a move to the OHL would in and of itself grow the fan base in their respective markets, but I have serious doubts that would be so. Perhaps Muskegon would fare a bit better as they would have two in state rivals and Michigan has some familiarity with the OHL but Youngstown Ohio? Just don't see it.

 

[frontsfan67]

The Soo in a Northern division has been bantered about quite a bit and it's been stated that it just wouldn't work. Especially when the ferry from Manitoulin Island stops running.. it would be a 7.5 hour trip to Owen Sound. Right now their longest trip is 5 hours .. the Northern division would see every trip being 5 hours except 1

It’s a 9 hour drive from kingston to SSM

 

[ScoutLife4]

Some Ohl and USHL teams already doing 8-9 bus rides.
I don't really see the issue if they are asking to join the league and apparently neither do they.
Chances are you just wouldn't see them play the eastern ontario teams until a championship series.