Well, it did, sort of, but of course the "second season" also
counts towards the NC$$ selection.  We now know four things for
certain about the national tournament: North Dakota, Michigan,
Clarkson and Boston University will be in it, having won their
respective conferences' regular seasons.  Looking at the top twelve
non-Maine teams in the PWR:
  _West_                _East_
 1 Michigan (C*)       2 Clarkson (E*)
 4 Minnesota (W)       3 Vermont (E)
 5 NoDak (W*)          6 New Hampshire (H)
 8 Miami (C)          10 BU (H*)
 9 Denver (W)         11 Cornell (E)
12 St. Cloud (W)
13 Michigan State (C)
 
        In passing, note that BU's pulling out the Hockey East title
is bad news for Cornell, since their best chance of staying East was
probably to have the Terriers, hosts of the East Regional, drop out of
the tournament and be replaced by another Eastern team.  Now that
can't happen.
 
        To seed the teams without regard to conference, swap Cornell
with St. Cloud and Michigan State to get
 
  _West_                _East_
 1 Michigan (C*)       2 Clarkson (E*)
 4 Minnesota (W)       3 Vermont (E)
 5 NoDak (W*)          6 New Hampshire (H)
 8 Miami (C)          10 BU (H*)
 9 Denver (W)         12 St. Cloud (W)
11 Cornell (E)        13 Michigan State (C)
 
In the past, this would have been okay, but given what the NC$$ did
last year, they're likely to use the possibility of two
intra-conference matchups in the West Regional (Michigan-Miami and
Minnesota-North Dakota) to send Miami East instead of MSU to give
 
  _West_                _East_
 1 Michigan (C*)       2 Clarkson (E*)
 4 Minnesota (W)       3 Vermont (E)
 5 NoDak (W*)          6 New Hampshire (H)
 9 Denver (W)          8 Miami (C)
11 Cornell (E)        10 BU (H*)
13 Michigan State (C) 12 St. Cloud (W)
 
The Minnesota-North Dakota matchup remains, but with the current
choice of teams, there's no way to avoid one potential interconference
game.  And of course, this setup once again would allow the NC$$ to
keep MSU in the West, a bonus attendance-wise.  (Personally, I think
it would be fairer to have NoDak/Miami and Cornell/DU trade seeds
within the West regional, but the NC$$ passed up a similar opportunity
last year to keep teams in the same regions and seed them out of
order, opting instead to send higher-ranked teams [Lowell and LSSU]
out of their regions.)
                                        John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                        <[log in to unmask]>
        <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/jshock.html>
 
Cornell Men's Ice Hockey: 1996-7 Ivy League Champions,
ECAC regular season runners-up.  WE WANT MORE!  WE WANT THE ECACs!
 
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