Dear Incoming Recruits

You're about to make a pretty big change in your life. You've chosen to advance your hockey career and get an education at the same time. And you're going to a fairly unique place that's a helluva long way from the rest of the world. There are some things it'll be useful for you to know that might help make it a success.

The Sullivan Arena won't be full. There are lots of reasons for it. The only thing you really need to know though, is that if you help the team win more games it will fill up during the season. And the folks that are there are as passionate as any group of fans you've ever played for. As fans we don't expect you to light up the league your first season. If you do, its a bonus. But we'll appreciate your play whatever the case.

There are 15 forwards on the team meaning 3 guys aren't dressing for each game. There's 9 defensemen. Oops ... 4 players ain't dressing. That doesn't necessarily mean that only freshmen will be sitting. But it's best to be prepared for that possibility, no doubt sitting in the stands will be a new experience for some of you. Coach Shyiak's first two years taught me that he is a coach who gives everyone more than a couple of chances to play throughout the season. This means sitting in the stands is something that has been (more or less) distributed evenly over those two seasons. As with any coach if you show it during practice you'll earn chances to play. And if you produce during those chances you'll stay out of the stands.

Deep in the winter it gets dark here early. Not 5pm dark. Not even 4pm dark. It's like 3:42pm dark at it's worst. It's different but it's not as big a negative as you might expect. The period of those dark days only last about six weeks. The daylight is longer here from March through October in the lower 48. And in the middle of summer it is exactly opposite from the depths of a dark winter. It's a bit of a tradeoff that most people who live here learn to appreciate. Golfing in June and July at 10 or 11 at night with discount twilight greens fees? If you like camping, hiking, hunting, fishing or otherwise recreating in an outdoorsy way then you're coming to probably the best place on the planet to do those things. My advice is for you to take advantage of every opportunity you get to do those things during your Seawolf career. You won't regret it. Fish that other WCHA players are catching near their schools are called bait up here.

Pretty much every other weekend you're going to have a long plane trip. 5 or 6 hours on a plane and probably some bus time as well. No doubt you've been on lots of road trips. You'll go on a couple that have 4 hour time differences. A couple have 3 hour time differences and the others are 2 hours. None of which will be a disadvantage. You'll see some rinks with impressive student support and fanbases that mostly fill their arenas. There's a bit of a "wow factor" visiting a couple of those joints so just try your best to get that out of your system before gametime. Here's a brief rundown:

At the Kohl Center in Madison the large student section dances and sings and chants. Mariucci Arena is so corpie tight-assed and revered spiritually by the fanbase that taking a crap in the public restrooms is frowned upon. The Ralph is glitz, tech and rabid ... that's what happens when a giant ego from a small prairie town builds a marble edifice as his legacy. I hear the fans are "biters". Be glad the glass is between you and them. In Colorado both the rinks present the same challenge. They're more than a mile high and you live at sea level. Best case for your body to completely acclimatize to a big altitude change is 3-4 days. So ... You're gonna be huffing and puffing. Some trips will be more interesting than others. Denver and Minneapolis are big cities with lots of sights and sounds, Denver and CC have mountain vistas, Grand Forks has the whole spectacularly flat thing going for it and Madison has hippies ... then there's the other end of the roadtrip excitement spectrum ... St. Cloud. Hey ... Deal with the little bit of bad in mostly otherwise interesting destinations. It's a relatively small burden.

We hate Fairbanks ergo you hate Fairbanks. OK? Seriously, we never want to lose to them again. You don't either. On board with that? The "Governors Cup" is a big deal to UAF fans and denying them it, is why you're here. Following the the general trend now? Seawolf > Nanook. It's just that simple. Ingrain it on your psyche. Burn it in your memory. Never forget. They hate freedom. We love freedom. Fairbanks bad. UAA good. The ticket is free to get on the "Hate-FBX" bus, so jump on it and stay on it. Comprende? Ok then ... the less said about Fairbanks the better.

We UAA fans look forward to seeing you on the ice. We look forward to the moments when you'll have a chance to be a hero for a night. We look forward to seeing you paste someone to the wall. We'll cheer our asses off when you kill off a penalty in the opponents zone with your forecheck. We'll bow in our unworthiness when you make some magic with the puck. But more than anything else we'll respect your 100% effort in an attempt to entertain us. Thanks in advance for that and for both our sakes ... do all your homework!