With only 36 teams partcipating in four established Division I hockey leagues (the ECAC, Hockey East, CCHA and WCHA) and 17 independents that now compete for one bid to the NCAA Tournament, college hockey is far from becoming a national sport.

St. Lawrence Coach Joe Marsh, who took his team to this year's NCAA Championship game against eventual champion Lake Superior State and plays all the Ivy teams in ECAC competition, recalls his team's Final Four game with Minnesota this year. Marsh calls the Saints' 3-2 overtime victory "the best college hockey game I ever saw," but ESPN, the cable sports network that had the rights to televise the game, decided instead to telecast the NCAA women's basketball semifinals.

"Hockey is played in localized pockets," Marsh says. "I think hockey should reach a national level, but I don't think that will ever happen."

"I don't see college hockey expanding," Hammond says. "The major problem is ice rinks. I'd be surprised if a North Carolina or a UCLA invests a couple of million dollars on a rink."

Because the talent pool of hockey players is more concentrated in certain regions of North America (New England and Canada, in particular), schools such as the Ivies have a better chance of continuing to attract quality hockey players and maintaining their national reputations.

"There are many sports that are not national sports," Orleans says. "Because we compete in all sports, we have more of a chance to win a national championship."

"The Ivy League is still able to be successful in sports that a lot of people don't play in," Executive Director of ECAC Hockey Joe Bertagna says.

But problems still exist for Ivy schools. Problems such as competing with scholarship schools like Minnesota and Wisconsin, two major college hockey breeding grounds.

"Myself and other coaches are concerned with the other non-Ivy schools," Mason says. "The pool of players is getting smaller."

The decrease in the number of quality players affected Ivy teams this year. Brown, Dartmouth and Yale all failed to make the eight-team ECAC Tournament. Twelve years ago, Brown made the Final Four. In 1979 and 1980, Dartmouth made consecutive appearances in the Final Four. Just two years ago, Yale, along with Harvard, was one of the top two teams in the ECAC.

"You have to do your homework," says Tomassoni, who handles recruiting for Harvard. "We're competing against other Ivies and scholarships schools."

Harvard has done its homework during the 1980s. Unlike other Ivies, Harvard has the extra advantage of its proximity to Boston. Add a tradition of academic and athletic excellence to a city that houses three other Division I hockey teams and hosts the Beanpot--the most well-attended annual college tournament in the nation--and you get a school with serious hockey clout.

"Boston creates a college center for sports," Tomassoni says. "You tell me that a kid wouldn't like the chance to play in front of 16,000 screaming fans at the Garden?"

"Harvard's got a nice backyard," Yale's Taylor says enviously.

Cornell is also in a unique situation. Since Ithaca is not a major professional sports town, Cornell hockey is the main attraction-Ithaca's version of the Greatest Show on Earth. Lynah Rink is consistently and boisterously sold out.