2007/08 Schedule

Here is this season's schedule once again to keep you fresh and ready to go for the opener October 6th (home games at Colorado Springs World Arena in yellow)

Oct. 6 University of Calgary W 4-3
Oct. 12 Under-18 US National Team W 6-3.
Oct. 19 University of Minnesota 7:37 p.m.
Oct. 20 University of Minnesota 7:07 p.m.
Oct. 26 @University of New Hampshire 5 p.m.
Oct. 27 @University of New Hampshire 5 p.m.
Nov. 2 @University of North Dakota 6:37 p.m.
Nov. 3 @University of North Dakota 6:07 p.m.
Nov. 9 University of Minnesota Duluth 7:37 p.m.
Nov. 10 University of Minnesota Duluth 7:07 p.m.
Nov. 16 University of Wisconsin 7:37 p.m.
Nov. 17 University of Wisconsin 7:07 p.m.
Nov. 23 University of Denver 7:37 p.m.
Nov. 24 @University of Denver Away 7:07 p.m.
Nov. 30 @University of Alaska Anchorage 9:07 p.m.
Dec. 1 @University of Alaska Anchorage 9:07 p.m.
Dec. 14 @St. Cloud State University 6:07 p.m.
Dec. 15 @St. Cloud State University 6:07 p.m.
Lightning College Hockey Classic (Tampa, FL)
Dec. 29 ~ Colorado College vs. RPI, 6 p.m.
Dec. 30 ~ Colorado College vs. UMass or Notre Dame, 3 or 6 pm
Jan. 4 @University of Wisconsin 6:07 p.m.
Jan. 5 @University of Wisconsin 6:07 p.m.
Jan. 11 University of Alaska Anchorage 7:37 p.m.
Jan. 12 University of Alaska Anchorage 7:07 p.m.
Jan. 18 Bemidji State University 7:37 p.m.
Jan. 19 Air Force Academy 7:07 p.m.
Jan. 25 @Michigan Tech University 5:07 p.m.
Jan. 26 @Michigan Tech University 5:07 p.m.
Feb. 1 Clarkson University 7:37 p.m.
Feb. 2 Clarkson University 7:07 p.m.
Feb. 8 St. Cloud State University 7:37 p.m.
Feb. 9 St. Cloud State University 7:07 p.m.
Feb. 22 @University of Minnesota Duluth 6:07 p.m.
Feb. 23 @University of Minnesota Duluth 6:07 p.m.
Feb. 29 Minnesota State University-Mankato 7:37 p.m.
March 1 Minnesota State University-Mankato 7:37 p.m.
March 7 @University of Denver Away 7:37 p.m.
March 8 University of Denver 7:07 p.m.

March 14-16 WCHA Playoffs (First Round-top 5 teams host)
TBA TBA
March 20-22 WCHA Final Five (St. Paul, MN)
TBA TBA

March 28-29 NCAA West Regional COLORADO SPRINGS

April 5-7 NCAA Frozen Four DENVER, CO

Blog Alert!

My Google Alerts pointed me toward a WCHA blog that's pretty good. The article I read was about ranking the WCHA arenas and about the World Arena at 7. It's a well written article and a well organized site, so check it out!

It will be added to the links section shortly, as well as the Gazette blog that seems to have died.

Get Ready to SEE Again!!

One of my biggest pet peeves EVER about the World Arena is finally being fixed!! The Arena installed nets inside the offensive zones a few seasons ago which is great for line-drives, except for one thing: They were thick and white and horribly blocked visibility. This coming season, we will get thinner and less obtrusive nets! Check out The Gazette article for the specifics. Thank you season ticket holders!!!


Also in case you missed it, Tom Preissing joined the LA Kings on July 3rd after leaving the SJ Sharks, his first team after leaving CC.

Gotta love rivalries

As most of you know, I'm trying to get a consistent sellout crowd to the World Arena to watch CC's games. Having a huge rival from up the road always helps with attendance figures. The World Arena lists it's actual capacity at 7,343 for college hockey games. Knowing that, it makes it really sweet to see that last night there were 7,820 fans watching the wild 5-5 tie. If I could pick one time to go to a game, this would have been it. I'll have to check into it, but this may have been the largest crowd of the season, 7809 watched the last home game vrs. Minnesota. I was unable to watch the game but I know the schedule called for the fans to wear gold. If anyone has pics of the crowd and the game please share them!!

World Arena Followup

Last week I wrote a little bit about the old Broadmoor World Arena. This week I found out just a little bit about the current World Arena. Most of us will remember the bumper stickers that were prevalent in the area in the years leading up to construction. They had the artist rendition of the structure and read "Just Build it". Finally all the plans went through and in 1997 the arena was completed. The Tigers played host to the Wisconsin Badgers for the first game. For the actual arena and the ajacent to the Ice Hall, it cost $58.8 million. For the Tigers' home games, the capacity is 7,343 fans. One thing that is somewhat unique for this arena and the Tigers is that the ice sheet is Olympic size. This means the playing surface measures 200x100ft, compare this with the "regular" NHL size ice sheet that measures 200ft long but only 85 feet wide. AFA and DU use the NHL size ice.




Special thanks to this World Arena Page for the pic of the ticket

Wednesday update

Hey I just wanted to say thanks to all who have written comments and posted links, I'm glad I can finally get this thing going and we can make a difference. My goal this week is to write a bit about the games coming up this weekend, hopefully I can get some time tomorrow afternoon. It's pretty exciting to see that people are actually reading this and I hope you all can start giving me input and we can start a local "grassroots" style campaign to help out CC. (nothing like the Boston/cartoon network fiasco though, haha). I was not aware of the season ticket total so that is good to know, but I'm not sure it's good or bad . It's good because the Arena holds 7532 so 6000 is pretty darn close but it's bad because, well, there were not anywhere close to 6000 at the two games I went to (the ND fans were louder than us!!...and notice the purple in the darkness). Maybe an online ticket exchange would make things easier for people to get their tickets used and not have the hassle of trying to sell them out front before the games. Also, I am really, really interested in the podcast/vodcast idea for the games, especially now that I see at least one other commenting fan is away from the Springs. Anyone with connections let me know, I would love to be able to watch this weekend's games at St. Cloud (I had a professor that was from there).
On a random note, here in Lincoln they have a team called the Stars which plays in the USHL. I never really knew much about it or the team but it's a big deal here. Turns out they are younger players (16-20 years old) who then get recruited out of these teams for college. I have always known that hockey has some "non traditional" means of development but I confess I never knew about a local team full of hs kids. Anyway, the cool thing about this was that two of the players are slated to play for CC and one for DU (yea boo but "it's" our conference...). I read the article in the paper and saw it mentioned the powerhouse teams with CC right in the mix!

SWEEP

Well I was happy to see that the Tigers swept the defending national champions this past weekend. Right there is a good marketing plan for this coming week "Fresh off sweeping the defending National Champion Wisconsin Badgers, watch the Tigers take on 2002 and 2003 national champion Minnesota feb 16th and 17th". I was also very happy to see that the official records showed that the World Arena was a sellout last night! It's nice to see that all the tickets were sold, but I was not at the game so I couldn't tell if everyone that had a ticket actually went to the game, can anyone help out with that? I've seen sellouts where it was obvious not everyone showed up (the purple seats show it off too well). Speaking of that, why the heck did the arena use purple???! I understand that the Tigers aren't the only organization to use the facility but c'mon. Personally I would have chosen black because a) the Tigers have black in their uniforms and b) black goes well with any event (as opposed to yellow). Oh and one more thing, The Gazette didn't even have pics online from the game. A sellout, a win and a sweep of the defending champs and NO PICS!!!

extra local team?

One big problem that I have seen with CC Tiger hockey is that of the fan base. It seems like most of the fans are from the South West part of the city, which is great, but where is the rest of the city? By playing their games at the old Broadmoor World Arena, the neighborhood following began but I can't figure out why the rest of our city (read: mostly transplants) won't jump on and at least take a look. Sure AF is up north but what about the middle and the east? I am at a loss as to how we should market the team across the city. Praco Limited does their advertising (which will be the subject of a later blog) and they do a decent job, but it just isn't working. I would really like to get in touch with people in Falcon, downtown and along N. Nevada, Stetson Hills and the surrounding areas. I want to see if they even know about CC and how we can reach them better, despite the long drive to the World Arena.

Crowd Unity

Have you ever noticed the people at the games wearing completey non-hockey attire? For example, when I was at the Saturday Bimidji game I was fortunate enough to notice a woman in her designer western gear knitting (I have a picture and would post it but unfortunately my memory card is corrupt and the pic is stuck on the camera). I go to school here at NU and, as most people know, Husker football games are full of 80,000 people wearing red. Why not start a tradition of wearing black or gold for home games? We could wear gold against the WCHA and black against all others, or even all white. I just think it would be sweet to get the crowd to be an even bigger part of the game. Remember the opening game at the World Arena with everyone wearing black and waving black pom poms?!!!

Let's get the word out

Hey CC fans, I'm working on a class project in which we need to use new technology to get the word out about a cause we believe in. After going to two of the Tigers' games over my Christmas break I quickly figured out what I needed to work on. I noticed that purple dominated the stands more that yellow and gold. I just can't understand this, we have an amazing program that has numerous NCAA tournament appearances and is always very competitive in their conference not matter how much "rebuilding" is going on. Tickets are cheap, the facilities are great (except maybe the white color of the netting) and the team is amazing. I wanted to create a blog where we can come together and discuss, not so much the team and games, but more how to get more people aware of the team, the games and the sport of college hockey. We can suggest things to the athletic department, the advertising agency (Praco Limited) , the World Arena or simply do things ourselves. Let's try to get the games sold out for next season and make a run at the Broadmoor Trophy and National Championship!