Issues of the day and a Wildcat connection

The UMass-Lowell hockey program in serious danger and may be extinct before the month is out. A USCHO feature article references a Lowell Sun report that “ the city of Lowell and the University have until June 21 to restructure the lease deal at the Tsongas Arena or the UMass Board of Trustees will vote to terminate the hockey program which has been a member of Hockey East since the league's inception in 1985.” If this worst case scenario pans out, each of the other nine Hockey East teams will find itself with three holes in its 2007-8 schedule and more than two dozen players will be scrambling to find a school that will accept them for next season.

Chris Heisenberg’s recruiting blog takes a look at the manipulation games being played by some of the players chosen in the recent QMJHL draft. Names included are Steve Anthony and Louis Leblanc whom USHR reported recently had attracted the interest of BU and many other Eastern schools. Now, USHR has added its voice to the issue, declaring “The Q draft has turned into a trading frenzy, with agents/advisers working all the angles, the most powerful one being the NCAA card, in order to get their clients selected by a team they would actually consider going to (i.e., a team with boatloads of money and/or a team located in an English-speaking city). It also involves lying. Kids lying. Parents lying. Teams lying. Agents lying. It’s all become standard operating procedure.”

Commenting on reports the second round Q draft choice Devon MacAusland, a high-scoring Nathan Gerbe clone has verballed to BC, USHR reports “there is no commitment whatsoever on the part of the Eagles to MacAusland. The center may be playing the NCAA card a little more specifically then is really necessary.”

The Northwestern women’s lacrosse team’s march to a third consecutive NCAA championship this year included a win over BU’s standout squad. There’s also a connection between the Wildcats and BU hockey. Coach Kelly Amonte Hiller is the younger sister of Tony Amonte, a scoring star for two Frozen Four Terrier squads. Amonte Hiller, a two-time D-1 Lacrosse Player of the Year at Maryland, resurrected a Northwestern program that was disbanded in 1993 and recalled to life in 2000.