College Hockey bummer

I’m not sure why I looked this up yesterday, but it turns out that my family is mostly doing very poorly in the Hockey East standings.  I haven’t followed college hockey since the UMass Lowell athletic department fucked the UMass Lowell radio station, WUML.  I don’t think there is anything the university can do to win me back.  It’s been 15-16 years and I am still furious.

Having said that, I really miss having a minor league hockey team to root for.  There are still teams around, but the AHL teams are too far away, and the lower tier teams are too low to grab my interest.  There is still AHL in Providence, RI and Portland, ME, and I think in Springfield, MA.  I think there are ECHL teams in Worcester, MA and… Manchester, NH?  I’m not sure.

College hockey has always been an option to fill that hockey fan gap for me, I just haven’t taken the leap yet.  Hockey East is a phenomenal US college hockey conference and all 11 teams are in New England.  There are lots of family ties too.  My wife and I both went to UMass Lowell, but fuck them, my wife also went to UNH, my brother went to Merrimack, and now my step daughter goes to Vermont.

Unfortunately it’s a bad year to be following those teams.  My old school is doing okay.  They are in 4th place with an in-conference record of 5-2-3 and overall they are 10-4-4.  Unfortunately after that it’s crap.  Out of 11 teams, UNH is in 9th at 4-5-0, Merrimack is in 10th at 2-5-2, and poor poor pitiful Vermont is in dead last at 0-8-1.  Yikes.

If only Lowell’s athletic director hadn’t told the radio station’s student managers that he would not make any changes without consulting them and then sold us to the shitty local newspaper while we were all on summer break, and too bad he did this even though I was giving the hockey team 30 minutes of my two hour show, and the men’s basketball team an additional 30 minutes, meaning that the athletic director didn’t just fuck the radio station, he fucked me personally.  If only.

Addendum 1: There was an ECHL team in Manchester but they folded after the 2018-19 season.  Oh well.  They would have been the closest minor league team to us, and Merrimack is still the closest Hockey East team.  Maybe I’ll try and go to a game some day.  I went to their rink for a UMass Lowell game before the fucking happened.

Addendum 2: I said fuck a lot in this post.  I usually don’t like to say fuck in posts.  I am so filled with hate for my old school that fuck is the only appropriate word.  Fuck.