Lt Rico Vitale writes:
>1. Who came up with the two game, total goals concept for a play-off
>series? This has always struck me as possibly the most poorly devised of
>all the alternatives. Either make it a best of three or a single game.
>The ECAC play-off system (two games with a ten-minute mini-game if it's a
>split) seems a somewhat happy compromise.
I don't know who came up with it, but it was first used in the 1960
NCAAs, then it disappeared from the NCAAs until 1981, and it lasted
through 1988.
Here are the years each of the four conferences have used the
total-goals format:
WCHA: 1961, 1963-65, 1968, 1972-88
CCHA: 1976-85
Hockey East: 1986, 1988
ECAC: never used total goals format; used two-game with mini-game
format since 1983
The total goals format is not being used at all any more in Division I,
either in the NCAAs or in the conference playoffs. These are the
formats now being used:
WCHA & CCHA: quarterfinals are best-of-3, semifinals and championship
are single-game elimination
ECAC: quarterfinals are best-of-2 with 10-minute minigame if tied
after second game (no ot in first two games); semifinals and
championship are single-game elimination
Hockey East: quarterfinals, semifinals and championship are all
single-game elimination (Hockey East is in its 7th
season, and it has changed its playoff format seven
times)
NCAA: first round and quarterfinals are best-of-3; semifinals and
championship are single-game elimination
>2. I can understand how each conference could have different systems,
>coming to different solutions to the same problem, but why, once the NCAA
>tournament has begun, do they change the format?
The conference playoffs and the NCAA tournament are two distinct
entities. Each conference is free to decide in its own way how it will
determine a champion, and nothing says that the NCAA must determine its
champion in the same way as any of the conferences. In fact, before
1988, nothing even said that the conference playoff champion would go
to the NCAA tournament - and now winning the conference tourney only
entitles a team to an automatic bid; it does not earn a team one of the
four byes. Those are determined by the committee, and for all intents
and purposes, when it comes to selection and seeding for the NCAAs,
conference playoff games are no more or less important than regular
season games because of the very fact that the NCAA is completely
apart from the conferences. That is why, for example, Michigan was
upset that Bowling Green received a bid last year and Michigan did not;
Michigan thought it deserved a bid because it defeated BG, 5-4, in the
CCHA consolation game, but overall, including that game, BG had won
3 of the 5 games played between the teams, so BG barely got the bid.
- mike
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