John Whelan writes:
>Combined with the automatic bid, it gives everyone something to
>play for this weekend, from the NC$$ standpoint.  Clarkson was already
>assured of a bid; without the "Clarkson rule", they would have no
>particular incentive to win the ECACs from the point of view of the
>NC$$ tournament.
 
But it isn't up to the NC$$ selection committee to give Clarkson
incentive to win the ECAC.  Their job is the NC$$ tournament alone.
They don't have any connection with the conference tournaments, nor
should they.
 
The conferences don't have to award their automatic bids to the tourney
winners.  That was their decision.  They could have decided to award
them to the regular season champs.  The fact that they chose to award
the bids to the tourney champs doesn't obligate the NC$$ to join in
and try to give those teams incentive to win the tourney.
 
And before the "CC rule" this year, no team was guaranteed admission
to the NC$$ tourney until after the conference tourney as it was.
 
>On the
>Hockey East end of things, before the "Clarkson rule" was announced,
>Maine and BU were both assured of an NC$$ bye, regardless of how they
>did this weekend.  Now, though, only the HE tournament winner can be
>confident of a bye independent of what Clarkson and CC do.
 
According to the msg Rick Sayles posted on Shawn Walsh's comments, it
does sound as if Maine and BU can again be expected to receive byes
whether or not Clarkson wins the ECAC.  That is indeed fortunate.  To
penalize one of the best teams in the game just because it happens to
play in the same conference as one of the other best teams in the game
would be a true injustice and wouldn't make sense.
 
>   On the other extreme, the CCHA is the most absurd example of
>what I think is wrong with the NBA and NHL playoffs.  If you send
>every team in the league (and one that's not!) to the tournament,
>there's much more opportunity to coast, as no one is playing for their
>lives.
 
Yet, I believe that if you ask anyone who watched most of the HE
tourney to this point, they would certainly not claim that any of the
teams did not belong, that no one was playing for their lives, and
that the games were not exciting.  All were true.  And HE sent
everyone to the playoffs.
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                                            [log in to unmask]
Cabletron Systems, Inc.                                    *HMM* 11/13/93