Hockey fans have questions about my hockey column, and sometimes I have answers:
Why is Arizona State’s hockey team so pumped up about this year’s 10-19-3 record?
A: The Sun Devils just finished their first full NCAA Division I hockey schedule. In promo materials they tout the results, even though to the outside world their 10-19-3 record look like a glass just one-third-full.
The highlights: wins over No. 17 Quinnipiac and 18th-ranked Air Force, and ties with No. 9 Western Michigan and No. 10 Ohio State. ASU coach Greg Powers described them to me as “feeling like wins.”
I guess you can’t blame a hockey team for feeling good about ties against ranked opponents when they only won 10 games over an entire season. ASU is perhaps several years away from competing at an elite NCAA level, but their relative success in the second half of this first full NCAA season does show them trending upward.
The lowlights: 19 losses and a decidedly non-Division-I home ice rink.
Arizona State faces the same question as the NHL’s Arizona’s Coyotes do in Glendale aand the ACHA’s Arizona Wildcats club team does in Tucson: Will there ever be a quality arena suited especially for them?
The Sun Devils remain mired in Tempe’s Oceanside Arena, an archaic 1974 barn with bleachers that might hold 750 fans bundled in coats. A proposed new arena development for both ASU and the Coyotes fell through this winter. Both teams are scrambling for new home-ice ideas.
ASU is hoping for a 4,000-5,000-seat arena that could open in time for the 2019-20 season. It also needs to find a conference to join before it can continue its path upward. The Devils will play one more season as an independent before joining an established league for 2018-19.
Are Tucson Roadrunners fans truly as fickle as they seem on social media?
A: I pity the fool who takes social media content as an accurate snapshot of the actual world. Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest are like a megaphone for the disenchanted. If someone feels rotten, they sure wish to spread that rotten around to the rest of us.
Our insult-loving, fact-challenged society seems to revel in the social media negativity, too.
Earlier this this season it was all flowers and perfume on social media for the AHL Roadrunners. “They’re in first place! They made another comeback! The coaching staff are geniuses!”
Then reality set in, and the ’Runners started to lose games, more recently a lot more than they were winning. The (mostly) anonymous keyboards have gone haywire. “Have these guys ever played hockey before? Roadrunners look clueless! This coaching staff has no idea what they are doing!”
It takes effort and talent to dedicate an entire career to hockey. It takes just seconds, and no ability at all, to dismiss the hard work of an entire team with a Twitter blurt.
Will the Tucson Roadrunners make the playoffs, and why is a team’s winning percentage used to determine the AHL standings?
A: Most AHL teams play a 76-game schedule, but six teams in the Pacific Division only play 68 games. The AHL’s westernmost teams — Tucson, Stockton, San Jose, San Diego, Ontario, and Bakersfield — play fewer games to save on travel and time.
Roadrunners fans need to watch the winning percentage for Pacific Division teams, not the wins-losses statistic or the points-earned total. Tucson currently sits in sixth place with a 24-24-6 record (and a .500 winning percentage). The top four teams in the division will make the playoffs; Tucson is just mere percentage points behind Stockton and Bakersfield for the final spot.
Fourteen games remain, and I’ll put my money on the Roadrunners to somehow squeak in. They’ve shown too much resiliency in this inaugural season, many times when least expected, to fail now in their playoff bid.
