Doug writes:
>Pardon the seeming prematureness (is that a word?) of this question,
>but will they be taking 12 or 16 to the tournament this year?  I'm
>wondering how important it is to be getting a lock on one of the top
>4 places (like, do we have to really *kill* BC this weekend).
 
    The NCAA tourney has not yet been expanded to 16 teams, so there will
    be 12 this year.  Four automatic bids go to the four conference tourney
    champions, and one additional bid must go to an Independent team.
    The remaining seven bids are "at-large" bids.
 
    From past experience, the committee is not interested in how many
    goals teams win by.  The fact that Maine wins the season series against
    BC (if they do) would most likely be enough to have Maine be ranked ahead
    of BC, IF there are no anomalies such as BC having a much better record
    against top 8, etc. teams.  This Sunday's game may not be the end of the
    season series, either - a playoff game would also be taken into account.
    And playoff games are not considered to be any more important than a
    regular season game, except for the fact that the championship game will
    determine the team getting the conference's automatic bid (which also
    does not earn the team an automatic bye - it just means they will go
    to the national tourney).
 
    Hockey East people have liked to talk all year about the possibility of
    getting four teams into the NCAAs, but when you look around the rest of
    Division I, it is clear there are just too many good teams.  Since the
    Independent bid still exists this year, chances of four HE teams making
    the NCAAs are slim and none.  Therefore, Hockey East's top 3, BC, BU,
    and Maine, look to have the best chances right now, but if another team
    were to pull an upset and win the conference championship, chances are
    good one of those three would be left home.  So this weekend's Maine-BC
    game is important to both teams as far as giving the winner a better
    chance to go to the NCAAs, but margin of victory isn't a concern.
 
>-Doug
>M-A-I-N-E....(you know the rest...)
 
    Could you repeat it another couple of hundred times? :-)
 
 
    - mike