Big Ten Hockey Q&A

Interesting and delusional Q&A with the Big Ten's Brad Traviolia. He oversees hockey for the league. He's been with the Big Ten for 19 years which means he has pretty much zero hockey experience.

“Coming from a non-hockey background, it’s kind of hard for me to imagine a fan in the state of Minnesota who wouldn’t be excited to see a Michigan or a Michigan State come in to play,” he said. “I recognize and acknowledge that significant rivalries developed over the years in the previous leagues, and that’s fine.

“Many of our schools have scheduling opportunities to honor those rivalries and to continue them the best they can. So it’s a matter of getting familiar with your new league opponents and as those meaningful series come down the stretch and the winners are advancing and the losers are going home, I think the new rivalries within the conference will develop over time.”

http://www.uscho.com/2016/02/10/big-tens-traviolia-weighs-in-on-fan-frustrations-attendance-leagues-future-plans/

tone deaf.

The ghost of John Mariucci-just seems a little silly to me.

• On the age proposal submitted by the Big Ten

...“I think that a lot of the angst regarding the proposal is regarding how it came to be, the fact that the Big Ten entered it into the NCAA system directly instead of going through the traditional coaches’ convention system that has historically taken place. I think there’s a lot of adverse reaction to that, but I do think that just looking at the legislation, that’s kind of the focus of what our comments are and what we are encouraging people to do is to really look and see how it will impact various programs.

“We’re not trying to do away with delayed enrolment. We’re recognizing that junior hockey is still and should still play a role in the development of players. All we’re saying is that instead of delaying enrolment by three years and then coming back to play four years of college hockey, just delay it by two years and then have four years to play college hockey.”

The Daily Gopher has a good summary of the interview.

The B1G's Deputy Commissioner Brad Traviolia was recently interviewed by Drew Claussen of USCHO. It was an enlightening article in that it made me want to hit him with florescent bulbs repeatedly. If you'd like to be infuriated by reading the whole thing, do feel free to go ahead and click here. But for now, let's get to the good stuff.

Traviolia said that the conference has a "two-fold goal." One is to help and assist its six schools — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State — toward being successful.

Thank you, savior. How ever would Minnesota hockey survive without the guidance and leadership of you wonderful people at the B1G showing us the way. If not for the help of the B1G leadership, I'm certain that Minnesota hockey would have withered and died by now.

Click to expand...

http://www.thedailygopher.com/2016/2/10/10961370/b1g-idiot