This is purely uninformed speculation, but with this talk of a
fifth Division-I league maybe starting up in 1998-9, and the annual
complaints about the twelve-team format in the NC$$s, it seems natural
to me to connect the two.  If the new league forms, all of its members
will have enough games against D-I opponents to be eligible for the
tournament; assuming for the sake of argument that the league has
thirteen members including Army, that would add 12 teams to the ranks
of the eligible.  That would take us from 43 to 55 teams, not even
including the possibility of Mankato State and UNO joining the WCHA in
the meantime.  At that point, a 16-team tournament would give nearly
the same percentage of teams in the tournament. (12/43=28% while
16/55=29% and 16/57=28%.)  And with four extra teams in the tourney,
no one would have cause to complain about giving the new conference at
least one automatic berth.  (Would they even have a conference
tournament at first?)
        As I said, this is based no more information than has already
been posted, but it seems like a reasonable guess to me.
 
                                        John Whelan, Cornell '91
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        <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/jshock.html>
 
Cornell Men's Ice Hockey: Back-to-back ECAC and Ivy League Champions
 
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