Blowing up the existing eastern conferences, stealing
the northeastern pieces of the CHA, and reassembling
according to geography and school demographics and
philosophies, I come up with

Union           Clarkson        Holy Cross      BC
Colgate         SLU             Bentley         BU
Harvard         Rensellaer      Iona            Maine
Cornell         Vermont         Q               UMA
Dartmouth       Canisius        UConn           UML
Princeton       Mercyhrst       Scrd Hrt        NU
Yale            Merrimack       Army            Prov
Brown           Niagara         Fairfield       UNH
                                AIC

Makes a lot of sense to me.  They semiIvy conference
could develop an athletic/hockey/academic philosophy
that makes sense for all of them, and which wouldn't
be a particular advantage or disadvantage for any one
of
them, because they all perceive themselves as
academically strong "name value" schools.

The second conference could have a bit more aggressive
athletic policy, but wouldn't have to compete against
much bigger schools that have more resources and/or
stronger brand names.  Merrimack would still be
competing against some traditional hockey powers, but
they would be more like  those traditional powers
resource-wise, so they'd be more consititently
competitive.

What's left of the MAAC would be more compact
geographically, and Hockey East would remain the power
conference, and would probably be even more
competitive than it is now.

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