I wasn’t surprised to see that the WCHA voted Thursday to suspend its moratorium on expansion. I was surprised — and commissioner Bruce McLeod said he was, too — that the vote was unanimous.<\/p>\n
You may ask: What’s the harm in lifting the moratorium? It doesn’t put the league on the hook to approve anyone.<\/p>\n
That’s true, but the moratorium has in the past been the convenient way of parrying schools’ inquiries about the possibililty of joining. This move, and especially the 10-0 vote, signals that the WCHA schools are at least willing to listen to pitches from schools interested in joining. And in these interesting times for Division I college hockey, that needs to be noted as the right thing to do.<\/p>\n
But a word of caution here: Just because the vote on the moratorium was 10-0 doesn’t mean a vote on admitting Bemidji State, which has already stepped up as the first contender, is a shoo-in. There are a lot of variables in play here, especially on the financial side of things. A question on purely hockey grounds would probably get the Beavers the eight votes they’ll need to become a WCHA member. But there are issues with profits and scheduling that need to be hammered out before any team will be added.<\/p>\n
My thoughts are that Bemidji State’s program — and those from Niagara, Alabama-Huntsville and Robert Morris, as long as they’re committed long-term — can’t be allowed to die, but the WCHA also can’t play as an 11-team league. That means someone else is going to have to go in at the same time as the Beavers. And that just complicates things even more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wasn’t surprised to see that the WCHA voted Thursday to suspend its moratorium on expansion. I was surprised — and commissioner Bruce McLeod said he was, too — that the vote was unanimous. You may ask: What’s the harm in lifting the moratorium? It doesn’t put the league on the hook to approve anyone. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1425],"tags":[1444],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n