Commentary: Hockey East Can Get It Right On Its Own

by Jashvina Shah/Staff Writer (@icehockeystick)

When it recently came to light that some Hockey East schools were investigating the idea of being absorbed by a multi-sport conference (like America East), some people were shocked, some were upset and others dismissed it.

The idea is highly unlikely, and was never going to go anywhere, especially to join a conference like America East. But why not?

Even though four Hockey East schools are America East members in all sports, that conference is smaller, and without dedicated resources. America East isn’t the Big Ten. It’s a small conference and the hockey responsibilities — like communications — would be dumped on someone who’s already handling communications for eight other sports. Yes, America East as a whole has more resources than Hockey East. But America East — and other similarly-sized conferences — are splitting those resources between many Division I sports, leaving fewer pieces of the pie for everyone involved. So it wouldn’t better the situation for Hockey East.

But that’s all irrelevant since this is less about Hockey East disbanding or not disbanding, and more about confronting a reality all conferences face: staying relevant and keeping fan interest.

It’s very similar to the attendance story we recently published, which looks at engagement issues on a school level. That certainly feeds into interest on a conference level, as former longtime Boston University coach Jack Parker had mentioned. If BU students don’t show up to BU games at home, it’s not very likely they’ll show up to the midseason Beanpot tournament at TD Garden.

But conferences have their own responsibilities, and that differs vastly from the school’s responsibilities. There’s running the conference tournaments, dealing with disciplinary decisions and, of course, communications and marketing.

That last part is key because that matters as much — if not more — than anything else, including the on-ice success of teams in the conference.

It’s simple. If you want to keep someone’s attention span nowadays, you have to work at it. You can’t simply present a good on-ice product (and especially not a poor one) and expect them to show up. And expect them to keep showing up.

You have to work at it.

You need to engage them. You need to give them a community. You need to make them feel seen and heard. You need to make their experience entertaining.

And there’s one conference that’s done it better than anyone else — the NCHC.

Yes, the NCHC contains a slew of recent national championship teams. That makes it easier, certainly. But this has less to do with the on-ice product and more with the off-ice product.

As a brand-new conference, the NCHC had the difficulty of starting from scratch. But that was also a benefit. There was no blueprint, no one saying, “Well, our conference did it this way in the past so we should keep doing that.” There was no former identity. The NCHC needed to be innovative to make itself, the new kid on the block, relevant and meaningful.

So from the start, the NCHC elected to make fans a focus. It sent out surveys to fans for feedback after the first NCHC tournament. It listened to the fans and permanently moved the tournament to St. Paul, Minn. It put together a comprehensive streaming package long before Hockey East did. There's have a newsletter. It selects fans of the week. And on social media the conference has its own personality, joking around and acting warmer than most conferences.

Now let’s circle back to the Big Ten. It’s not my intention to put the conference on the spot since what applies to it applies to the rest of the conferences as well. But the Big Ten happens to be the only multi-sport, non-hockey-specific conference, which is what would happen to Hockey East if it disbanded. The Big Ten has struggled. And it’s not because the teams haven’t fared well or because fans are upset about losing their old rivals.

It’s because the Big Ten, while a powerhouse conference, was new to college hockey. And instead of using that opportunity to create a specific identity and to engage with fans — fans who really needed to be engaged with — the Big Ten simply relied on the fact that it was the Big Ten. No extra effort was made. And it comes from the top. How many Big Ten schools care about hockey more than, say, football or basketball? Because now hockey is no longer just hockey — it’s just one other sport competing with the powerhouse ones.

College hockey is a small sport. It needs to be treated as such.

So Hockey East’s success and its quest to remain relevant and keep ties with fans has nothing to do with whether it belongs to a one-sport or a multi-sport conference (although I will argue disbanding and losing the Hockey East brand would do irreparable damage).

Its success lies with the athletic directors understanding that things need to change, and just because something has been done since dinosaurs walked the earth does not mean it should still be happening. They need to curate and encourage a staff that will focus on fan engagement in innovative and non-traditional ways — and they absolutely must support their employees.

It’s very simple. But it’s not so easy to change, because there needs to be an understanding of this and a buy-in from the top. Conferences that are hockey-specific have few resources (but so do multi-sport conferences, where their resources are stretched thin). Employees focus on what their bosses tell them. So the bosses of Hockey East (the athletic directors) need to allow employees to focus on fan engagement.

On one hand, I do understand where ADs are coming from. It’s a hard thing to measure, how your dedicated social media efforts create new fans. How much is the cost of acquisition per new customer? At times it can seem like you’re just throwing all your resources at something and you have no clue what the outcome will be. And that’s scary.

But on the other hand, there’s nowhere else to go. There’s nothing else to try. It’s all been done before and just because it worked in the past doesn’t mean it will work in the present. Especially when there’s already evidence that it isn’t working.

So if Hockey East wants to return to its former glory, the answer is right there. It just remains to be seen if it’ll follow it or not.