The Hockey East Tournament hasn't always been so well attended.  And even
this year, by son got a ticket on the day of the finals.  The finals set an
attendance record, but it was less than the hockey capacity of the Fleet
Center.
 
Is it possible that part of the WCHA attendance problem was that there
really wasn't much at stake?  One of the features (some might say
disadvantages) of a numbers based objective system that the NCAA uses for
determining the tournament participants is that league tournaments can be
rendered pretty much irrelvant.  North Dakota, CC, and Denver were pretty
much in the NCAA tournament before the WCHA semis, weren't they?
 
The same applied to HE, so I was a little worried that there might be some
"going through the motions"  UNH, Maine, and BC had pretty much locked up
their slots.  But according to my son, there were no signs of "going through
the motions" on the part of the fans, and it was apparent to me from
watching the games on TV that there were none on the part of the teams
either.  If you're going through the motions, you don't come back from 4-1,
and you don't look like the UNH guys did when they lost.
 
I would dearly love to see UNH, Maine, and BC in Anaheim (I'd call the first
two likely, the last possible).  BC has been sort of inconsistent vs.
mediocre teams, but against the other two, BC is 4-3-1, UNH is 3-4-1, and
Maine is 4-4.  Three Hobey finalist, two of them among the front-runners.
Doesn't get much more competitive than that.
 
Clay
 
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