Outside of the pockets of Clarkson and St. Lawrence alums in the Burlington area who would show up for those conference games (and still do when they play one another in the non-conference regularly), there is no point in moving into ECAC, certainly not from a cost standpoint; the HEA affiliation is financially much better for UVM. UVM is exactly where it needs to be institutionally and competitively; it just has to start acting like it again, which is to say, just show some baseline competency in the running of the sport, please. It "isn't working" because of self-inflicted errors by an athletic administration that allowed things to get as bad as they possibly could get on the coaching front, and then hired someone without doing their homework on the type of person they were off the ice and who in all honesty was a bad fit for college with hindsight being 20/20 (he had no sense of building a roster/team identity, did a poor job recruiting and couldn't even bring in good international guys which was his calling card). All this has led to a decade-plus of disarray, and we're left hoping that the current coach, who by no means was prepared to be a Hockey East-level head coach and thrust into a challenging situation, is able to find his way.
That's not even mentioning how tolerating a bad product led to the complete collapse of demand for tickets, which now do not offer much value for their sticker price, along with the bungling of the entire facilities project, leaving Gutterson quite unpleasant to navigate. Nearly all of this could have been avoided with bolder, better decision-makers. The league is not the issue here. In fact, it's in UVM's strength. All you have to do in Hockey East now is finish in 6th, and you can make the tourney. Is UVM really not capable of doing that every 3-4 years on average while not completely bottoming out the rest of the time? If in a 4-year cycle we saw 8th, 5th, 9th, 7th with 1 NCAA bid, sign me up. I'd tolerate an 11th place finish right after that if there was belief that 11th turned into 8-9th, then 6th and the team generally followed that trend.
That standard, which is an acceptable one for a vast majority of the fan base, absolutely can work and is not asking for much from an expectations standpoint and historical standpoint, given where the program's history has been. Anyway, that's an earnest response. Take from it what you want. I think regardless of your level of caring for the hockey program, everyone should be onboard with expecting more from what we're getting and not chalk it up to "go to a different league" or be completely indifferent. Indifference to any program not being at least competitive is a good way for this leadership to manufacture all kinds of excuses for when the programs you like and support with more vigor start to take a downturn.
