I've posted another "If The Season Ended Today" analysis on The Big
Red What?, indexed under http://slack.net/hockey/ (direct link
http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?pairwise.020212 ).  To cut to
the punchline, here were the brackets I came up with:

           5W Mass-Lowell (H)                 6E Cornell (E)
           4W Michigan (C)                    3E Boston Univ (H)
                1W Denver U (W)     --+--2E Minnesota (W)
                                      |
                2W St Cloud (W)     --+--1E New Hampshire (H)
           3W Mich State (C)                  4E CO College (W)
           6W Mercyhurst (M)                  5E Maine (H)

Minnesota goes East so they'll be bracketed to play Denver in the
national semifinal.  Lowell goes West to avoid a first-round game with
Maine or BU.  Mercyhurst and CC also get switched because Eire to Ann
Arbor is a shorter drive than Eire to Worcester, and CC would have to
fly to either site.  So I think the brackets look the same whether or
not the NCAA tries to reduce travel.
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                 [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/

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