Charlie wrote:
>
>if one goes strictly by the numbers
>Ft Wayne
>	miami/huntsville
>	bemidji/yale
>St Paul
>	Denver/rit
>	cornell/ northern michigan
>albany
>	Wisconsin/vermont
>	St cloud/new hampshire
>worcester
>	BC/alaska
>	nodak/michigan

In the bar after the Final Five, I came up with the same thing College Hockey News did:
Assume that "a flight is a flight" when assigning the #1 seeds:

Ft Wayne
	Miami/Huntsville
	Bemidji/Yale
Albany
	Denver/RIT
	Cornell/ Northern Michigan
St Paul
	Wisconsin/Vermont
	St Cloud/New Hampshire
Worcester
	BC/Alaska
	Nodak/Michigan

This gives a much better attendance picture.  It also assumes the committee will continue its recent practices of breaking ties by RPI and not concerning itself with second-round intraconference match-ups (as Charlie did later in his post).

Theoretically there are 4!=24 ways the committee might decide to break the 4-way tie between Vt/UNH/Alaska/Michigan, 12 of them that don't put BC against another HE team in the first round.  So it's possible the committee could use one of these as a convenient rationale for swapping Mich into St. Paul and one of Vermont/UNH to Worcester.

-Pam