College Hockey 1980-81 Preview

The old order is passing away in college hockey, so traditionalists ought to savor the 1980-81 season’s every moment. Things will never be the same again for the sport of scholastic shinny. Following the upcoming campaign, four teams from the Western Collegiate Hockey Association — Notre Dame, Michigan, Michigan State, and Michigan Tech will leave the WCHA and join the Central Collegiate Hockey Association. The move, intended primarily to cut travel costs of the transferring institutions, will drastically change the face of college hockey in the Midwest. The CCHA, formed because the WCHA members weren’t open to wholesale expansion a decade ago, will balloon to an 11-team lineup from the current year’s roster of seven. The WCHA will shrink from 10 members to six, and as of this writing the remaining schools…

Minnesota North Stars

Hockey Fever is back in the North Country of the Central United States with the meteoric rise of the Minne-sota North Stars from last place in the National Hockey league two years ago to the giddy heights of semifinal competition in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Season tickets were up by more than 1,500 by mid-summer and the North Stars, who missed the playoffs for five out of six seasons prior to last year, were talking in terms of selling out as many as half their games for the 1980-81 campaign. Turning around a franchise as quickly as Lou Nanne, the Stars’ general manager and coach Glen Sonmor have done, was clearly the answer. From the bottom of the league to 1978, through the merger with the Cleveland Barons the following year and…

Calgary Flames

That team wearing the Flames on their jerseys in Calgary this year may not be more successful than the one which skated in Atlanta, but one thing is certain — they won’t run out of fans at the 6,495-seat Calgary Corral. Canada’s seventh National Hockey League franchise had more than 10,000 requests for season’s tickets at $21 per game and while the NHL’s smallest arena won’t be able to satisfy all of their customers for a couple of years, it’s quite certain that the interest will last until the scheduled 18,000 seat arena is completed. At this stage of the game, Calgary appears to have the inside track on the bid to host the 1988 Winter Olympics, a bid contingent upon having a sufficiently large arena. The new Flames’ owner Nelson Skalbania…

NHL Goaltenders’ Fielding Averages