Jack Parker's comment
 
''All the committee had to do was to seed BC third in the East and
move Maine to four,''
 
in the Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/087/sports/Choice_of_name_was_a_moment_frozen_
in_time+.shtml
brings up an interesting issue.  He's referring to the
fact that Boston College was sent to the West regional to avoid
rematches of the Hockey East and WCHA title games.
 
If the committee had done as Parker suggests, #1 seed UNH would have
been in the same bracket as Maine, whom they did not face in the
playoffs, rather than BC, whom they played in the Hockey East title
game.  Similarly, if Denver were made the #3 seed in the West and
Colorado College the #4, the possible WCHA intraconference game would
have been North Dakota and CC, who didn't meet in the WCHA postseason
rather than NoDak-DU, who played for the WCHA championship.
 
The past two years the committee has cited whether or not two teams
met in the conference playoffs as an additional factor in whether to
switch teams between regions to avoid intraconference games (both in
not avoiding BU-UNH last year and in avoiding BC-UNH and DU-NoDak this
year).  Once the regions are set, they will change seeds within a
region to replace a possible intraconference game with an
interconference game, but not to replace a conference tournament
rematch with a less "undesirable" intraconference game.  These two
facts seem a little incongruous, and mean that a team in the same
regional with two of their conference-mates will be less likely to be
shipped out if they're fortunate enough to have the intraconference
game dictated by the natural seeds not be a playoff rematch.
 
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                  [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
 
Play along at home at http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?brack
 
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