mike, dave and some others have all made some excellent observations about the
tournament format, and before anyone can go around deciding how to improve
upon it, I think that it is time that the NC$$ and College Hockey take a
serious look at the tournament itself and decide what they want out of it.
Some agreement has to be made by all parties involved.  Without and underlying
philosophy as to what is important all that will happen is a series of
differently flawed attempts to choose the National Champions.
 
IMO, Things I would like to see
(1) Stay with the automatic bids for winning your conference tourney, it allows
    More teams a shot to play for the National title, even if you had a bad
    first half of the season.
(2) Go back to home sites for the initial rounds, make the 34 game schedule mean
    something.
(3) I like 2 out of 3, 3-5 is too much, 1 game is doesn't accurately show the
    better team.
(4) By the time the Final Four rolls around I think the best 4 teams should have
    EARNED their way there (by winning 2 of 3 etc.), then go to 1 game and see
    who is the best.
(5) Finally, find a nice power of 2 teams and there would be no problems with
    byes, etc.
 
Just some thoughts.
 
-Ryan Stone
 Lawrence University (Appleton, WI) '93
 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute '93
 
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