Edward N. Moller writes:
 
> Consider also what may happen if a dark horse wins its conference tournament.
> Suppose that BU wins the Hockey East tournament (hey I can dream).  That puts
> four teams from that conference in the mix -- UNH, Maine, BC, and BU.
Clarkson
> is a lock, and St. Lawrence is on the bubble unless they win the ECAC tourney.
> If the Saints go as far as the final they should get a bid.  Based on this
> premise, and you can make several different scenarios from it, you got your
six
> eastern teams.  And this doesn't even include a MAAC representative.
 
There is no rule that says there have to be exactly six teams from
each region in the tournament; if the regions are unbalanced (as they
were in 1997) the extra team(s) are kicked over into the other region.
 
If Quinnipiac is excluded from a tournament seeded with the current
numbers and without extra auto-bids, the field contains seven Western
and five Eastern teams; if we assume BU, RPI, MSU and NoDak win the
conference tournaments, the at-large bids go to Maine, CC, DU, BC,
SLU, and either Quinnipiac or Michigan, depending on whether the MAAC
is excluded.  (So the question there is whether the East has seven or
eight teams.)
 
This was determined (naturally) using my "You Are The Committee" script
http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?tourney
 
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                  [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
 
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