> While I agree it was MOST unfortunate that the pairings were announced
> before the WCHA championship game was played, I must disagree slightly
> with Erik saying these tournaments have no bearing on seedings. With a
> loss to Maine on Sunday, I am pretty sure BU would have been placed 3rd or
> 4th and BC would have received a bye. That win had to figure
> significantly in the decision process and proved perhaps to be the
> difference between 2nd and 3rd position. However, the choice of Cornell over
> St. Lawrence would tend to support the opinion that the tourneys are
> relatively unimportant.
The WCHA Tournament would have been meaningful this year if North
Dakota had won it... and thus gotten an automatic bid. If they had
beaten Northern Michigan in the semifinal and lost to Minnesota in the
final, would they have gotten a bid? Would they have deserved it?
(More on that later) Would Wisconsin have still gotten a bid?
It also would have been more meaningful for NCAA purposes if the gaps
between Northern & Minnesota and Minnesota & Wisconsin (and possibly
Wisconsin & North Dakota) hadn't been so big:
[TCHCR] Division I Schedule Schedule
Rank NCAA Team Record Rating Strength Rank
1 2W Northern Michigan 33 5 4 100.00 60.99 14
3 4W Minnesota 27 7 5 88.56 61.40 11
(If I recall, 5 pts separated Northern and Minnesota in WCHA play, and
Northen was 4-0 vs Minnesota)
8 5W Wisconsin 26 13 3 77.73 62.17 8
11 -- North Dakota 24 17 2 72.43 63.68 5
(North Dakota was only 2 pts behind Wisconsin in WCHA standings, but had
5 more losses overall, before the consolation game)
In fact, except for North Dakota beating Wisconsin in a totally
meaningless consolation game (which doesn't excuse Wisconsin's loss nor
take away from North Dakota's win -- the two teams finish 3-3 for the
season), this year's WCHA tournament went as predicted.
> While WCHA fans must have been somewhat disconcerted, I must ask why
> the WCHA played its games on Sunday/Monday as opposed to earlier
> in the weekend? Was there some scheduling difficulty at the Civic
> Center or was this by choice of the league? It is a shame, but it
> would probably also be inconvenient for Alaska-Anchorage to find out
> Tuesday that they had a game in Boston on Friday.
The WCHA final four have been at the St. Paul Civic Center for all four
years of the one-site format. The St. Paul Civic Center hosts the
Minnesota High School Hockey Tournament the same weekend (which draws
more fans, and was there first). This has been a problem for the league
every year.
The contract with the Civic Center ends this year. The Target Center
(Minneapolis) and the Bradley Center (Milwaukee) are expected to bid
for next year's tournament (as is the Civic Center). Both the Target
Center and Bradley Center has said (unofficially, so far) that they
will propose friday-saturday or saturday-sunday formats, which is what
the league wants. However, the HS tournament format changes next year
(the Minnesota gang will have to fill in the details), so what the
Civic Center can offer is unclear, and the Civic Center must be given
credit for creating the tournament 4 years ago.
I personally want to see the WCHA final four in Milwaukee next
year, for several reasons:
1) The Bradley Center is a great place to play or watch hockey.
2) They have experience organizing the Badger Hockey Showdown for
the past two years (Wisconsin's Christmas tournament), which
Gino Gasparini was quoted this year as calling "the best run
tournament" (If Gino says something nice about Wisconsin, it
must have been really good!). The tournament drew more fans
than the WCHA final four (but it was during Christmas)
3) The tournament been in St. Paul for 4 years, give another
city a turn.
That's it for now,
--david
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