I wasn't going to bother contributing to this discussion this
week, since it was pretty much the same as last week.  But Wednesday
night's Maine-UNH did two things that made it a lot more interesting.
First, it dropped UNH below Clarkson for the second seed in the East,
and second, it moved Maine into the top 12.  In fact, counting Maine
as a TUC is what ranks CC above MSU (PWR from
<http://uscollegehockey.com/pwr/pwr.cgi>):
 
11 Colorado College    32 18-12- 2 0.5938 16 | 0.5487 11 | 10
12 Maine               29 18-10- 1 0.6379 12 | 0.5455 12 | 10
13 Michigan State      30 17-10- 3 0.6167 15 | 0.5370 14 | 10
 
Looking at the individual comparisons
<http://uscollegehockey.com/pwr/comparisons.txt>, CC beats Maine,
Maine beats MSU and MSU beats CC.  So take Maine out of the mix, and
MSU wins 10 comparisons to CC's 10.  As I understand it, Maine's
status as a "Team Under Consideration" is an open question and at the
moment the answer to that question affects the seeding of MSU and CC.
 
Dan Olsen says (PWR added by me)
 
>Initial setup:
 
>East              West
>UVM [2]           Michigan [1]
>Clarkson [4]      North Dakota [3]
>UNH [5]           Miami [6]
>Cornell [8]       Minnesota [7]
>BU [9]            SCSU [10]
>Michigan St [13]  Colorado College (leaving CC in west due to better PWR) [12]
 
>It seems obvious that Cornell is packing its bags with 2 ECAC teams as second
>round opponents,
 
        And of course the fact that BU gets to stay as the host team.
Now, if Cornell and UNH were switched in the rankings, it'd be an
interesting call.  Then rankings would say send UNH, but second-round
matchup considerations would say send Cornell.
 
>switch them with Minnesota.
 
        This makes no sense to me, as there are two lower-ranked WCHA
teams in the West.  Just because Cornell is the fourth-highest ranked
team in the East, there's no reason to swap them with the
fourth-ranked team in the West.  (Lowell was third in the East last
year, and they and Providence [sixth in the east] were swapped with
LSSU and WMU [third and fifth in the west, but there were lots of
irregularities last year].)  The most reasonable thing to me is to
swap Cornell with CC.  (Thus sending the two lowest rank teams East.)
 
Dan's seeding is
 
>East   West
>Vermont 2  Michigan 1
>Clarkson 4  ND 3
>UNH 5   Miami 6
>Minnesota 7  Cornell 8
>Boston U 9  SCSU 10
>Michigan St. 13 CC 12 [actually 11]
 
I'd say
 
West             East
 1 Mich (C)       2 UVM (E)
 3 NoDak (W)      4 Clark (E)
 6 Miami (C)      5 UNH (H)
 7 Minn (W)       9 BU (H)
 8 Cornell (E)   11 CC (W)
10 SCSU (W)      13 MSU (C)
 
Still only the one inevitable 2nd-round WCHA matchup (NoDak/SCSU); no
shuffling necessary.
 
>The other option based on $$ could be to put MSU in the West, but that would
>also require switching Miami and UNH.  This leads to no second round matchups,
>but the east regional is left with only 3 eastern teams.
 
        If they decided to keep MSU in the West (presumably sending
St. Cloud east instead), they'd need to shuffle to avoid the Miami-MSU
matchup, but rather than send a third western team east and a second
eastern team west (and pretty highly-ranked ones at that), they would
presumably just swap Cornell and MSU.  The net effect would be to
replace a possible SCSU-North Dakota second-round matchup with a
possible Michigan-MSU second round matchup.  And #8 Cornell would have
to play #6 Miami while #13 MSU played #7 Minnesota.
 
        That's my take on the situation.
 
                                        John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                        <[log in to unmask]>
        <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/jshock.html>
 
Cornell Men's Ice Hockey: 1996-7 Ivy League Champions
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