>with all the talk of so many teams from Hockey East making the NCAA tourney
>this year, does anyone know how the other bids work. For example, the winner
>of the hockey east tourney at the end of the season has traditonally always
>been given a bid, what are the other tournaments or conferences that will
>have automatic bids available to them this year?
 
For a good description of much of the (past-used) process, see
 
   http://uscollegehockey.com/rankings/19992000/selectionfaq.html
 
Basically, each of HEA, CCHA, WCHA and ECAC regular season and
tournament champions get selected for the 12-team field.  (This year CHA
and MAAC do not get an automatic bid).  The rest of the 4-8 teams are
selected according to a computed ranking (USCHO's PWR has exactly
predicted this selection in the past few years).  There's lots of fine
print, some of which is covered in the above-referenced article.
 
Major changes might be expected next year, and again the year after, but
for this year that's the way selection is expected to be done.
 
Seedings are more complex, but basically there are 2 regional NCAA
tournaments where top 2 teams (East and West) get a 1st round bye,
playing the winners of a qualifying round game.  (Each six-team regional
has 2 qualifying games matching the bottom 4 seeds, with TWO champions
moving on from the next game to the Frozen Four.  This year the
regionals are in Albany and Minneapolis with the Frozen Four in
Providence.
 
Should Maine be selected to the NCAA tournament (a good possibility), it
cannot now be predicted which regional they would play in.
 
As you can see, the number of teams from any conference is not
predetermined.  Right now, UNH is #2 in PWR, with Maine #5, BU #6 and BC
#7.  NU is an outside possibility at #17.  Note that all games right
through the conference tournaments count toward the NCAA selection
criteria, so NU can get in by winning the HEA tournament or doing very
well from here on in wrt the other contenders.
 
Again, there's lots of fine print, including possible monkeying this
year because highly ranking Niagara and Quinnipiac are probably there
due to more to deficiences in the ranking system than their schedule and
performance would seem to warrant (and other ranking systems would
suggest).
 
So, yes, 4 HEA teams in the NCAAs seems a good possibility this season
with 5 HEA teams maybe a possibility.  The more the other conferences
have the same regular season and tournament champion, the better the
chances for more HEA teams gaining a bid via the NCAAs PWR-like
selection.
 
Hope this helps,
 
Wayne T. Smith
[log in to unmask]                          Old Town Landing
Co-owner of the College Hockey lists - Hockey-L and Hockey3