For those of you wondering, here's one guy's calculation of where things
stand as of Thursday AM.
 
If I make a mistake, please correct me. The volume of information here is
staggering, and I've probably made a few.
 
As you know, four automatic bids have gone to Boston University, St.
Lawrence, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Four more automatic bids will go to
tournament winners, if different from the above. This leaves anywhere from
four to eight at-large bids.
 
The following analysis assumes that each team still playing loses at least
one game; if they go undefeated, they get an automatic bid. The exception is
Niagara, which is finished as CHA champions.
 
North Dakota, Maine, and New Hampshire will get a bid under any
circumstances.
Notre Dame and Nebraska-Omaha will not be at .500 and therefore must get an
automatic bid to qualify.
This leaves, in current pairwise order, Colgate, Niagara, Boston College,
Quinnipiac, Michigan State, St. Cloud, MSU-Mankato, Rensselaer, Minnesota,
Clarkson, and Cornell. No one whose season is over has any hope (except
Niagara).
 
I have eliminated Quinnipiac for the same reasons that they were eliminated
last year.
 
If there are no upset winners in conference tournaments, four bids will go
to Colgate, Niagara, Boston College, and Michigan State. The fifth bid will
go to St. Cloud, if they win at least one game in the WCHA tournament. if
St. Cloud loses the consolation game, the bid will go to the winner of
tonight's Minnesota-Mankato game.
 
If there is one upset winner, St. Cloud loses out, and the four bids go to
the four schools listed above, unless the upset winner is one of them, in
which case we're back to the previous scenario.
 
Things get hairier with two upsets. For one, Michigan State can still catch
BC with a better record in the post-season. So a third place finish for both
teams would put MSU in over BC.
 
There's a lot of seeding issues of course.
 
Have fun with this.
 
Patrick
 
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