Hating thy Neighbor

When it comes to measuring the intensity of a college hockey rivalry, a good place to start is geography. If you live in the midwest, you might bring up Michigan-Michigan State. They are an hour drive from each other, they share lots of national titles and a vast cultural divide.  New Englanders have Boston College and Boston University, perhaps the ultimate college hockey rivalry, with a mere 3.6 miles between Agganis and and Kelly rinks.  They divided 3 consecutive NCAA titles between them from 2008 to 2010.  Boston's Comm. Ave rivalry might be the poster child for NCAA border wars.

Does the St. Lawrence River ever thaw?

But how many conferences can boast three different pairs of rivals all within 15 minutes of each other? That title belongs to ECAC hockey, a conference that contains a trio of border skirmishers each with its own history and nuance.  First there is the North Country rivalry, Clarkson and St. Lawrence. They share a classic Route 11 commute between the two campuses, 10 frozen miles along the St. Lawrence River.  They've been hacking and whacking since 1925, creating a rich history whose halcyon days were in the early 1990's when they were both national contenders. Huddling inside 60 year old Appleton Arena with sub-0 temps outside is an annual rite in North Country, comparable to any scenes of pure winter depicted in Ken Dryden's masterpiece, The Game.

Yale hockey rivals? New Cat in Town

A fresher pair of rivals is Yale and Quinnipiac, blue collar Hamden versus the snooty academics from New Haven.  The Yale Bulldogs played in America's first intercollegiate hockey game vs Johns Hopkins in 1896, and have century-old rivalries with Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Princeton and Cornell, yet it is the upstarts from Quinnipiac that has Keith Allain spitting mad. The Yale skip bolted the ECAC Hockey press conference in Atlantic City last year after being shut out by Q'piac in the tourney consolation game.  These are the greatest years in Yale hockey history, and despite their 2013 NCAA title win over the Bobcats, they have been getting repeatedly whipped by their neighbors, 11 miles down Whitney Avenue.  Yale-Quinnipiac is the ECAC version of BC-BU, and is certainly comparable in terms of entertainment.  The Bobcats ended the Bulldogs NCAA title defense last month in a nasty game that started off chippy and ended in violence. Forget the Ancient 8, when it comes to Yale hockey rivals, it's now Quinnipiac that has the attention of the Bulldogs. Yeah, they fight like Cats and Dogs.

But it's the third of the ECAC Hockey neighborhood rivals that is the talk of the Frozen Four in Philly. Union College is 14 miles from their Capital District rivals at RPI.  Despite its Division II and III history, Union has long since shed the label of little brother to RPI, racking up a recent 10-game win streak over the school with 2 NCAA Championship banners. Not only do they play each other home and home, but they clash annually in a high-profile Mayor's Cup game in Albany, one of the most popular events in a great hockey city.  The Capital of New York is a minor league hockey town, one in which the smell of beer and sight of blood is a frequent occurrence. As any college hockey fan with a YouTube account knows, the 2014 Mayor's Cup battle ended in a lusty brawl in which the coaches were the main event. It was as intense as anything from the days of the AHL River Rats, and as seen below, caused Union coach Rick Bennett to flash back to his 1991 season in AHL Binghampton. That year he earned plenty of his 200 plus PIMs banging guys in red uniforms in this very building.

The Cap district main urban centers of Schenectady, Rensselaer and Albany formed a Devil's triangle that weekend, as the two school converged on Albany, the home of the league offices and commissioner Steve Hagwell.  The Commish worked overtime that weekend in the Capital, handing out supplemental discipline to players and coaches on both side of the Mighty Hudson River. Face-to-face meetings with each perpetrator required less than a 15-minute drive for all parties involved.  The fact that Albany is a newspaper town, with two dailies competing for college hockey scoops, kept this "Capital Calamity" in the news cycle for days on end in January. College hockey rules in the Cap District.

6 teams, 3 passionate regional hockey rivalries, 1 very fortunate conference.  Here in Philadelphia, ECAC Hockey is looking to crown a second consecutive national champion from one of their passionate border rivalries. Familiarity breeds more than just contempt.