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ALBANY, N.Y. – University of Maine athletic director Patrick Nero would like to see the institution host an NCAA regional hockey tournament within the next five years.
Regional sites are currently locked in through 2007.
Portland’s Cumberland County Civic Center put in a bid last year but it lost out to Worcester’s (Mass.) Centrum and UMass’ Mullins Center for 2005; the Worcester Centrum and Pepsi Arena in Albany for 2006 and the Blue Cross Arena in Rochester, N.Y., and the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, N.H., in 2007.
“We’d like to host it in Portland or, hopefully, if ever there is a new Bangor Auditorium that would hold enough for hockey,” said Nero.
Nero said UMaine learned a lot from the last bidding process about what the NCAA’s hockey committee is looking for in a host “especially from a revenue-generating standpoint along with expenses. We probably bid our expenses too high the last time around. I think we can do a better job putting in a competitive bid.
“They’re really looking at your net [revenue]. We used maybe Providence [Civic Center] as a guide and Providence obviously has a much larger facility. And so Providence’s expenses would warrant more revenue,” said Nero. “We’d need to do a better job keeping our expenses low and maximizing our revenue at the Cumberland County Civic Center.”
He said the Alfond Arena’s capacity of 5,641 is “probably at least 1,500” below the minimum capacity to host.
“They really don’t want to see a facility less than 7,000,” said Nero.
He said CCCC administrator Steve Crane has been “great” to deal with in trying to secure a Portland regional.
“He said he’ll cooperate in any way he needs to try to help us put in a competitive bid next time around,” said Nero.
Nero said UMaine also hopes to put in a bid to host an NCAA women’s basketball regional.
“We think Portland or a future Bangor Auditorium could both host. The facility at Montana was great but they didn’t do anything we couldn’t do in Portland at this point in time. Even in the Alfond. The tough thing there is closing the Alfond.
“The NCAA requires you to close your facilities for a certain amount of time and obviously we can’t close Alfond for five days during hockey postseason,” said Nero referring to the regional in Missoula, Mont., where the University of Maine women played last weekend.
“I hope we can get a facility in Bangor sometime soon,” added Nero.
Off-ice advantage
At a Thursday press conference, Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni was asked what advantage his team had over Maine in Friday’s NCAA Eastern Regional game.
“A higher GPA [grade point average] and higher board [entry] scores,” quipped the Harvard coach, whose team is in the midst of midterms this week.
Black Bears recover
Maine senior left wing and captain Todd Jackson said there aren’t any lingering affects from the record-setting triple overtime 2-1 win over Massachusetts in the Hockey East championship game last Saturday.
“We had some days off. We’ve had time to recover,” said Jackson.
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