Greg Berge writes:
>The ECAC had a 3 division format for many
>years.  The three divisions were East (basically,
>the core of what is now Hockey East), the Ivies,
>and the Empire (the NY non-Ivies: SLU,
>Clarkson, etc...).
 
Greg is of course correct...I'm not sure why but the 1989-90 College Hockey
Record Manual has the divisions listed as East Region-West Region-Ivy
Region, not East-Empire-Ivy.  Maybe it was known as the Empire Division
in NY?  It was before my time, so I don't know.
 
The ECAC existed in this form for five seasons, 1979-80 through 1983-84.
After that, 5 of the 6 East Region teams bolted to form Hockey East.
They were quickly followed by the other East team, Maine, and ECAC
affiliate/DivI Indep Lowell.  That left the ECAC with 11 teams, and
Army was taken in as a member the next season - the ECAC's own "Great
Compromise"?  (How many history/polysci majors out there... :-))
 
The regions were as follows:
EAST: Boston College, Boston University, Maine, New Hampshire,
 Northeastern, Providence.
WEST: Clarkson, Colgate, RPI, St Lawrence, Vermont.
IVY: Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale.
 
Region standings were determined by winning percentage; not all teams
played the same number of games.  This would make sense since playing
each team in your region twice plus one game vs each opp in the other
two regions, means the East and Ivy teams would each have played
(5opp x2) + (11opp x1) = 21 games, and West teams would have played
(4opp x2) + (12opp x1) = 20 games.  Yet, it appears that not until the
4th and 5th years of the setup was there a schedule in place that had
all members of the same *division* play the same number of games.  For
example, in 1981-82 in the West, Clarkson, Colgate and RPI each played
20, while SLU played 21 and Vermont 22.
 
Since I don't know exactly how the playoffs were structured (8 of 17
teams made it), I have to guess.  In the first season, 1979-80, the
order of the seeds 1-8 was the same as their ECAC win %.
 
In 1980-81, the top three seeds are the same.  But Cornell, which won
the Ivy Region with a lower win % than three East teams that would
have been seeded 4-6, got the 4th seed instead of the 7th seed and the
three East teams (Maine/NU/PC) got bumped to 5-7.  This makes me think
that there was a provision that all region winners had to receive home
ice bids.
 
It was pretty tough to make the ECAC playoffs in those days.  Yale
finished half a game behind Cornell in 1980-81 but only 9th overall;
Cornell got that 4th seed and home ice and Yale stayed home.
 
The funny thing about that 1980-81 season (opening the door for
Cornell folk to reminisce, I bet) is that 7th-ranked Cornell rode that
4th seed all the way to the ECAC championship game and a berth in the
NC$$s.  Cornell lost the ECAC final to actual 7th-seed Providence
(irony, no?), but back then the conference finalists both pretty much
always received bids (maybe always).
 
In two of the last three years of the setup, seeds were adjusted to
move up a region winner with a low win %.  In 1981-82, Harvard moved
up from #8 to #4 and also made it to the ECAC Championship and was
awarded a berth.  All three region winners finished in the top four in
1982-83, but in 1983-84, Harvard won the Ivy and moved from #8 to #4.
However, Clarkson, which was bumped out of a home ice slot, gained
revenge by nipping the Crimson on the road in the quarterfinals.
 
The relevance of this to the WCHA discussion is that it has been done
before and could be done again.  WCHA divisions could exist without a
need for some games to be worth more points than others, as was
suggested.  Just seed the teams based on overall win % but require
that each division winner gets home ice and adjust the seeds to
account for this.  I'm not sure I would support this, but it could be
done.  I think that with the expansion we've seen in the WCHA and CCHA
(it wasn't long ago that the WCHA and CCHA each had only six teams)
and the desire that Hockey East has expressed to expand even beyond
UMass next year, the day isn't far off when conferences will have to
realign into divisions for various reasons.
 
Great trivia question: name the only current DivIII team to ever play
(and win a game) in the ECAC tournament, which has existed since
1961-62.  ANSWER: Colby, which was seeded third (but finished first at
17-1-1, 19-6-2 overall) in the ECAC in 1962, when 28 teams comprised
the ECAC in its pre-DivII days.  Colby won its quarterfinal over RPI,
7-6, but lost the semi and consolation respectively to Clarkson 4-1
and Harvard 2-0.  14 schools including Colby (and current DivI
conference teams Merrimack and Vermont, plus UMass) left the ECAC
after the 1963-64 season when the realignment of ECAC hockey into
large and small schools occurred.
 
This concludes today's lesson in CH101, History of College Hockey.
Please pick up your exams on the way out and remember your paper on
"Why Hockey East Teams Left The ECAC" is due next Friday.
---                                                                 ---
Mike Machnik                                          [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                  *HMM* 11/13/93
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