The idea is nothing new. Penn State has had successful men's and woman's club hockey team for a good number of years. Currently the two club teams play in the small 1,350 seat, Penn State Ice Rink."We're close," a source close to the situation told the Mirror on Thursday. "It won't be long before we'll be able to potentially make some kind of announcement. But it's not a done deal yet."-Altoona Mirror.com
Along with the idea of adding a D1 ice hockey program, the school is also looking into building a new rink. The school says they have a private funds donor to build a 6-8,000 seat stadium. The estimated cost of the rink is some where between 60 and 80 million.
The funds for the rink will likely come from Penn State alum Terry Pegula, the founder of East Resources, a natural gas operator. Pegula sold his company to shell in May for 4.7 billion.
The next question is what league to put them in? Hockey East? No. Way to much travel. Any ways I don't think Hockey East wants to have a western Pennsylvania school seeing how the longest road trip in the league is Amherst (Umass) to Ornio (Maine). The ECAC could work but still there is a lot of travel and having a 13 team league really would not work. The most sensible idea would be to join the CCHA. It would give the league 12 teams and the travel would not be that bad (all though Alaska to Pennsylvania would not be too fun).
Here is an other article on the Penn State hockey idea. It comes form the Western College Hockey Blog: The Penn State Issue
In Other News
THe exhibition game against Sweden has been canceled.
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