Mark Lewin wrote:
>The point that took me by surprise was that once all 4 teams
>get to St. Paul, they switched the 1W-2E,1E-2W brackets
>to 1E-2E and 1W-2W.
>What purpose does that serve? All 4 teams are in the same building
>regardless of who plays who.  And the tournament
>has been a sellout for 9 months; they aren't going to squeak
>out extra ticket sales.  What they did was reduce east vs. west
>matchups from 2 (possibly 3) down to 1. This change certainly wasn't
>pre-announced. And it doesn't serve any useful purpose.

I think it comes from the section of the Championship handbook that John
Whalen was quoting last week.

      The top four-seeded teams will be placed in the bracket so
      that if all four teams advance to the Men's Frozen Four, the
      No. 1 seed will play the No. 4 seed and the No. 2 seed will
      play the No. 3 seed in the semifinals.

UNH is 1, Minnesota is 2, Denver is 3 and BU is 4. The way that gets that
result, this year, is to have the East winners play each other, and the West
winners play each other.

With the West having the #2 and #3 overall teams coming in, the crossover
couldn't happen, if the 1-4, 2-3 setup was to be followed.

FWIW, had Michigan State won the CCHA it wouldn't have changed things, since
MSU would have been shipped East and become E2.

Had BU been the #3 seed and Denver 4th, I assume the setup would have had
UNH (E1) playing Denver (W2) in one semi, with Minnesota (W1) and BU (E2)
in the other.

What confuses me about the whole process is that the 1-4, 2-3 concept for
the semi-finals (which is a fine idea) runs completely counter to the
regionalization concept, which seems to be the rage this year in all sports.

To take the 1-4, 2-3 concept to its natural conclusion, it would stand to
reason that the #1 seed overall should get the #8 and #9 teams in its
bracket, while #2 has #7 and 10, #3 has #6 and 11 and the 4th seed
has #5 and #12.
(Bearing in mind, of course, the usual shifting that would take place to
ensure that host teams stay at home, and that conference matchups are avoided).

If one is going to regionalize completely, then it seems to me that you
should cross over, to make it more likely that the top two teams will be in
the National Championship.

Or maybe the Committee just didn't want to see another all-Hockey East final.
:-)

John
--
   John Edwards - Professional Stats Geek - [log in to unmask]
                Carleton Football - Undefeated since 1998
The opinions expressed are mine alone, because everybody else says I'm weird.