2023 Schedule - yes, rushing the season

We're in the PL for keeps in football and that's how it should be.

I couldn't agree more.  After a home-and-home, why in God's name are we playing these guys again.  The game does absolutely nothing for us and would be a major black eye in the event of  a loss.

I could give a rat's ass for playing at Polar Park.  What's wrong with Fitton?

Good for them.  So let's stop playing them.  

It was my first trip to Polar Park, and it was really awesome to be able to lean over the endline during play. The view from both end zones were top-notch. Views from everywhere else in the stadium not so much.

Yup, the Big South and OVC merged their football conferences.

They have no reputation for SOS

If we remain in the PL we need to have a top 20 SOS for the playoffs, as not every regular season will we be 11-0

Future schedules have Dartmouth playing New Hampshire, Lehigh and Colgate in 2023 and Fordham, Army and Central Connecticut in the OOC in 2024.

Seems as if the Pandemic has caused Dartmouth to rethink traveling to Florida, California and the Mid West. If they don’t want to play HC on an home and home basis, that’s ok. Hard to believe there is still bad blood from the game in 2006 with the fight back after the overtime victory when Dartmouth players got peeved when they claimed HC deliberately danced on their emblem at mid field.

Gets kind of boring seeing the same OOC teams each year. I agree it is a nice trip up to Hanover in the fall. A quick three hour trip for me. HC and Dartmouth has played 80 times with the series standing in Dartmouth’s favor - 40-37 with 3 ties.

Lindenwood has played D-1 Women's hockey since 2014 and just moved up to D-1 in all sports for the 2022-2023 school year as a member of the Ohio Valley Conference. 

Reputation means very, very little for SOS except for a place like a message board. Many on this board (myself included) looked at the schedule at the start of the season and figured beating Harvard and Yale would be helpful for our SOS. That was an assertion based on reputation and how those teams had fared the last few years. 

As luck would have it, while beating Harvard and Yale was certainly something that pumped up the alumni, it really didn't matter much for SOS. Yale wound up having a very good season, won the Ivy League and finished 8-2. Harvard was down, finished 4-3 in the Ivy and 6-4 overall. The win didn't look as impressive as the season went on, even though to us as alums it meant a lot more. 

Meanwhile, for those of you clamoring to see Dartmouth on the schedule, they finished 3-7 overall, 2-5 in the Ivy. Merrimack went 8-3 and 6-1 in the NEC. 

The challenge with building an effective non-con schedule is it's all an attempt at being predictive. A slate that looks really good in August in terms of quality might look completely different by the time NCAA selections come. 

There's also an art to non-con scheduling that I think many of you are missing. There's benefits to playing teams like Bryant or Merrimack or whomever for a variety of reasons. It could be the opponent's style of play, their packages, their athleticism, their combinations, their play calling, etc. etc. that can give HC different looks during the season and better prepare them for those types of opponents in the postseason. 

In short, while you might have some issues with the construction of the non-con schedule, it's done with a level of thought and discernment by Coach and the administration for reasons that you probably aren't recognizing. The schedule they put together on a year-to-year basis is a reflection of the competition they want (hope) to get that will make the team better as the year goes on. Simple as that. 

The thinking behind schedule creation in the 2020s has to go beyond "We played a team a lot 60 years ago and because of that we should play them again." Would it be nice to see Dartmouth on the schedule again? Sure, why not. But does playing them when they're 2-5 in the Ivy help Holy Cross? Well, would it have helped them more than playing a good Merrimack team that lost to Harvard by a TD (Harvard beat Dartmouth by 2 scores)? Would it have been better than Bryant? Buffalo? 

I like to have a historic rivalry and/or a regional team that will bring fans to Fitton. I do not see the need to play two Ivies or two Ivies plus an NEC or Big South. To me, our SoS will only be helped next year by BC and Army being FBS teams. Yale should be good and help SoS a bit. Some could make an argument that Colgate and Lafayette are on the upswing and Lehigh is bound to improve a tad with a new coaching staff, but none of those games help our SoS. Yes everyone wants winnable games that count (that's why most FBS teams schedule an OOC or FCS cupcake here and there) but we also need to think about SoS. HC is in a unique position perhaps alongside the Ivy champ or runner-up (if they went to the playoffs) in being a current FCS football power from the Northeast. 

We can speculate about what CAA teams would bring fans, etc, but we really don't know outside of UNH. I would like to see that game be a regular/biennial match-up.

I still feel like something is incomplete. If 'Gate is Sept. 23 and Laffy is Oct. 21, that's 3 weeks. Even with the Harvard game and a bye in there, we are still missing one game in that stretch.