On Jul 30, 18:01, John Whelan wrote:
>Keith K writes:
>> So with twelve teams now in the CCHA, what is the schedule format?
>> How do you come up with 28 games? Is it the WCHA strategy of an
>> unbalanced schedule? Divisions? Can someone provide the details?
>
>The details are in <http://www.ccha.com/news/>; it sounds like an
>unbalanced schedule based on three de facto four-team divisions
>(called "clusters") which will changed around each season, and which
>won't effect playoff seeding. I'm a little unclear on the
>implications of "extreme" teams, which seem to imply that not everyone
>plays 14 games at home and 14 away, and am not inclined to scrutinize
>the team-by-team schedules at USCHO.
My understanding is that the two "extreme" teams in each cluster are the ones
that are the farthest away geographically from everybody else. The idea behind
this designation is to make sure no team gets stuck with two obnoxiously long
road trips when they play their one weekend pair of games per year against
teams in the other two clusters. For example, with the "extreme" teams in the
first cluster being Alaska-Fairbanks and UNO, if Bowling Green (third cluster)
is scheduled to play at Alaska-Fairbanks, then they are guaranteed to host,
rather than travel to, UNO.
The "extreme" teams in the second cluster are the two UP teams, Northern
Michigan and Lake Superior, which makes sense. It looks like they had to
designate two "extreme" teams in the third cluster to make the scheduling work
out, and they picked Miami and Ohio State -- not exactly rough trips when
compared to the other "extremes".
>> > tournament play-in game between the fourth and fifth seeds taking place on
>> > March 14 at the site of the No. 4 seed. The top three quarterfinal series
>> > winners plus the play-in winner advance to the CCHA Championships at Joe
>> > Louis Arena in Detroit on Friday and Saturday, March 17-18.
>
>> Stop the madness! What is the deal with all of this Final Five foolishness.
>> What is so wrong with an eight team tournament? (I know, I know, money...)
The last time the CCHA had twelve teams (Remember Kent State and
Illinois-Chicago? Of course you do...) they had a Final Six. That's right,
six first-round best-of-three's, followed by two play-in games the next
Thursday, semis on Friday, and the championship on Saturday. A couple years
ago, when the ECAC first went to its own Final Five format, one of the
announcers was interviewing ECAC commish Jeff Fanter during the first-ever
play-in game (I think the announcer was Bob Norton), and he (Norton) suggested
that this would be a good format for the ECAC to adopt, so they could have two
Thursday night games in Lake Placid instead of just one. Fortunately, the only
object within reach for throwing at the TV set was a pillow...
And then, when Kent State dropped out of the league and left them with eleven
teams, the CCHA had an even more wonderful format. Get this: a mid-week
preliminary game between the #10 and #11 seeds, five best-of-three series that
weekend, a Wednesday night play-in game between the #4 and #5 seeds the
following week, and then the semis and finals that weekend. The only thing
they missed was a mini-game. This experiment lasted only one year, not
surprisingly.
So maybe a Final Five doesn't look so bad... though an eight-team tournament is
certainly preferable (except by the ninth- and tenth-place teams!)
>Even better, it's a F*n*l F*v* with a Tuesday night play-in game! So
>everyone must hate it!
I know everybody despises those Tuesday-night playoff games, but I sort of like
this idea. The play-in game is pretty much guaranteed to have dreary
attendance anyway, so why not have the #4 seed host it, rather than make both
teams travel to Detroit? The drawback would be that the winner of that game
and their fans don't have a lot of time to find places to stay in Detroit
(though the league would presumably reserve a block of rooms in advance for the
four -- instead of five -- teams making the trip).
Now watch Alaska-Fairbanks be the play-in host... *groan*
On Jul 30, 9:36, Tony Buffa wrote:
>At the risk of beating a dead horse, the ECAC with 12 teams plays 22
>games, as we all know 11x2 = 22, and thatleaves up to 12 games for
>interleague play.
Well, given the ECAC's self-imposed limit of 32 regular-season games (and 29
for the Ivies), not quite... but you have a good point.
> If the CCHA and WCHA both went to that format, they
>could play a lot more between their leagues (I know, travel distance is a
>costly consideration) . . . at least up to the level of the ECAC and HE.
Also true, but the CCHA and WCHA have fairly long histories of trying to
schedule as many league games as they can. For years, league members always
played four regular-season games against each other. I'm guessing there would
be a tremendous amount of resistance to going to a schedule which has each team
facing everybody else in the league only twice, and the argument that such a
schedule would allow more games against non-league opponents would be met with
a hearty "Who cares?" by the fans.
It wasn't such a big deal for the ECAC to set up such a schedule, since they
were coming from the pre-Hockey-East situation of having 18 teams in the league
and having only 20-some league games anyway.
--
Disclaimer -- Unless otherwise noted, all opinions expressed above are
strictly those of:
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86 and '95 DJF 5/27/94
LET'S GO RED!! JCF 12/2/97
"2.9 million households watched the U.S. beat Brazil on July 4, giving it
a higher TV rating than game 7 of the NHL's Stanley Cup finals."
--_Newsweek_ on the popularity of the Women's World Cup (this is somewhat
faint praise, as there was no game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals)
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