On Sat, 21 Mar 1998, Mark Lewin wrote:
> But let's see what happened in Lake Placid this weekend. Yale enters the
> tournament as the RS champion and number one seed. If the win the league
> championship, they go to Albany with a 1st round bye.
Yes, but only because of the "Clarkson Rule". Yale was the 5th-ranked East
team entering this weekend. If that were not in effect, Yale would have
had little (if any) chance at the bye.
> semifinals and Clarkson wins the title, Clarkson probably wins the bye in
> Albany but at least Yale gets to stay east. By playing and losing in the
> consolation game, it looks almost certain that Yale will get sent west
I'm not so convinced of this. Let's look at what we know in the East:
1. BU
2. BC
3. Clarkson
4. UNH
5. Yale
6. Princeton
I still think UNH is a good bet to get sent west, with Yale staying east.
The Committee showed last year that they want to avoid intra-conference
matchups as much as possible. Keeping UNH in the East Regional sets up a
potential second-round matchup between UNH and BU. I expect Ohio State,
the likely 4th-ranked west team, to get sent east for the same sort of
reason.
That being said, I can't say that I'll be able to work up too much
sympathy for Yale if they do get sent west. Their ECAC tournament games
were against the 6th, 7th and 10th place teams in the conference and they
went 1-2-2.
An advantage to consolation games is that they can give a bubble team a
chance to win their way into the Tournament. St. Cloud had that chance
this year, and unfortunately (from my point of view, at least) wasn't
able to get it done.
See you later,
John
--
John Edwards - Carleton (ON) '96, Manitoba '00 - [log in to unmask]
Behold the power of cheese.
The opinions expressed are mine alone, because everybody else says I'm weird.
NOTE: I reserve the right to forward any obnoxious and/or stupid mail.
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.
|
