Cold Comfort

COLLEGE HOCKEY followers have had to contend with a dilemma of deprivation: Either spend the winter in a region bereft of hockey news or in one lacking double-digit temperatures. Odds were that if you could name more than one Hobey Baker Award finalist, your glove compartment had ah ice-scraper.

"College hockey is a niche sport. Television and print media largely ignore it," says Jayson Moy, the general manager of five-year-old uscho.com (formerly USCollegehockey.com), which allows fans anywhere to follow the sport. While not voluminous, Moy's site covers the men's and women's college games thoroughly. Links to national polls, team pages and statistics are also easily found. The features are invariably upbeat, such as a glowing piece last week on a Hobey Baker Award favorite, Ryan Miller, Michigan State's record-setting sophomore goalie. Moreover, online viewers can participate in the Vote for Hobey poll—and thus provide the site's pick with three points out of the 323 in the official Baker award voting.

Moy—who also does radio play-by-play for his alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in frigid Troy, N.Y.—and his staff of 16 part-timers never take a shift off. Last Saturday night, when Boston College's Brian Gionta (above) scored an astounding five first-period goals in the Eagles' 7-2 thrashing of Maine, uscho.com had a story about the feat posted midway through the second period. "We eventually hope to be able to provide real-time scoring," says Moy, 32, "and a webcast too." Why not? When it comes to college hockey, the puck stops here.