Pieri studying viability of adding D1 hockey programs

by Ryan Fay

When it came time for Union College goaltender Dillon Pieri to write his senior thesis, he decided to study the sport he plays.

The economics major is studying the viability of schools adding Division I men's hockey programs. He drew the idea from a teammate who was considering researching a similar topic.

Pieri mans the crease for Union College.
photo courtesy of Union College Sports Information

"A fellow teammate of mine thought about doing National Hockey League expansion," Pieri said. "Then I thought 'Penn State just introduced a new [Division I] team.' Maybe there was some research to be done to figure out if a school was able to support a Division I hockey program."

Pieri has examined several factors during his study. He's looking at endowments, the number of students a school has, tuition rates, the number of sports at a campus, if a school has other Division I teams, and the number of registered USA Hockey members in each state.

He's also taking into account the number of professional teams in each state, the number of rinks in each state, as well as the number of Stanley Cups won in each state.

"With whatever data I've been able to get my hands on, I want to see if a team is able to establish an attendance base," Pieri said.

Though Pieri's work is still ongoing, it has yielded some findings so far.

"From what I've seen, California schools like USC, Stanford and Berkeley [could] have a substantial amount of attendance. That's based off some of the regressions that I've run," he said. "There has been three Stanley Cups won in California, and there are a substantial amount of USA Hockey members in [the state]."

Pieri also sees potential for the University of Rhode Island going up to Division I status.

"They have a solid club team, and Rhode Island is the only state in New England that doesn't have a [state] school playing Division I hockey," he said.

After Pieri started his study, Arizona State announced that it was elevating its club hockey team to Division I status beginning next season. He thinks it will be a good move.

"It can push some other schools to make the same transition because they are in the Pac-12... it's going to push other schools to increase their budgets and make their schools more appealing to recruits," Pieri said. "I just want to see more hockey teams, and then maybe we can make the NCAA Tournament 32 teams instead of 16."

As far as schoolwork goes, Pieri said the project has been fun, but time consuming. When all is said and done, he will have spent 20 weeks on it.

"It's been a lot [of work]," he said. "There's a lot that goes into the thesis aside from gathering data and running regressions. There's a lot of research to be done on previous studies and to see how other people in the past have predicted where something could be viable."

Pieri's research has been pretty comprehensive, but there's still other types of data he wishes he had access to.

"I wish I knew budgets for schools, coaches' salaries, revenues, and ticket sales. Those really dictate whether a school is willing to support a team," he said. "All my data has nothing to do with that. If I had that data available, it would be a much different outcome and a lot more interesting. But I don't think many schools would be willing to tell me what their budget is, what their coaches' salary is, or what they spend on tape and sticks each year.

"It's been interesting and it's been challenging. There's been some ups and downs throughout the study, and I'm looking forward to completing it."

Follow @UnionHockeyBlog