ECAC Hockey Commissioner Jeff Fantner was interviewed on TV
Saturday during the Cornell-Clarkson game, and said how great it was
that every team in the league was fighting for something on the last
weekend of the season, whether it be first place, home ice, or a
playoff berth (or in the case of RPI, third place).  While that's
certain true when compared to a league that lets all of its teams in
the playoffs, the new ECAC playoff format makes for less competition
than in years past.  Back in the days of the preliminary game (like
last year), every even-numbered place in the standings meant
something: tenth place was the cutoff for the playoffs, eighth place
got home ice in the preliminary round, sixth place got you out of the
preliminary round, fourth place was home ice in the quarterfinals, and
second place meant your quarterfinal opponent was tired from a
preliminary round game.  Not to mention the automatic NCAA bid for
finishing first.  With the current system, five weekend series and a
Final Five tournament, there are similar incentives to finish tenth (a
playoff berth), fifth (home ice), third (no play-in game if you make
in to Lake Placid) and first (a tired semifinal opponent if you make
it that far).  But aside from seeding there's really not much
difference between sixth place and tenth.  Yeah, a six seed could get
out of the play-in, but only if there are two other upsets in the
"quintafinals".  The competition this season was a bit deceptive due
to the closeness of the middle of the pack.  With only four points
separating fourth and tenth place entering the final weekend (and
eleventh place just three points behind eighth), everyone in there was
fighting for home ice or the playoffs or both.  In a general year,
there will be a few dead spots in the 6-10 range, and that won't be
the case.
 
        So I was thinking this morning, if the big reason for the
change in playoff format was to get rid of the Tuesday night
preliminary games, which basically blew the whole week for any ninth
or tenth place team that wanted to get to the quarterfinals, what if
we instead held the one-game prelims Thursday night at the site of the
top two seeds.  So teams 8 and 9 would play Thursday at the rink of
the 1 seed, while teams 7 and 10 faced off on #2's home ice.  (This
would of course mean no re-seeding if the tenth-place team beat the
seventh.  Oh well.) The winner would go on to the quarterfinals at the
same school, so there would be only one trip for each team, located
around the weekend.  In order to make up for the loss of home ice on
the part of the 7 and 8 teams, the preliminary games would be
regulation games with up to five minutes of overtime and the
possibility of a tie (just like the first two games each the
quarterfinal series).  In the event of a preliminary game tie, the
higher seed would advance.  This would also lessen the drawback of the
low seeds playing three or four games in a weekend.  The ECAC's
three-point series format already makes it less likely that a
quarterfinal series will go three games, but the only ways to ensure
that, like mini-games, total goals series and shootouts, are fairly
abhorrent.  I also don't see a return to one-game quarterfinals, so
this plan would inevitably result in the occasional four games in four
days (as opposed to four games in six days with the Tuesday night
prelims).  But at least they'd all be at the same site.
 
        There are also the problems of attendance for neutral site
games (this year's would be Vermont vs Cornell at Yale and
St. Lawrence vs Princeton at Clarkson--lucky break there); Tuesday
night prelims were poorly attended in the past anyway.  You could work
out some deal where ticket holders for the weekend series could get
free or cheap admission at the door Thursday night.  True too, you
would be making teams travel to Thursday night games knowing they
might be eliminated and not get two more games over the weekend.  Gee,
does that sound familiar...?  The difference is that in this case it's
the seventh through tenth place teams in the league that would face
this indignity, not a team seeded as high as fourth.
 
        I dunno, it seemed like a good idea when I was asleep.  The
best plan is probably to go back to eight teams, although there's less
to jockey for in the standings.
                                         John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                     Official Scorer/PA Announcer
                                        U of Utah Ice Hockey Club
                                               <[log in to unmask]>
                      <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/joe.html>
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.