I've been holding on to this idea since last year's Phinal Phour, and
now it seems as good of time as ever to post it, with the resurfacing
of the "how to rank teams" thread.
Before I set forth the idea, a very Utopian idea, I would like to set
forth some background.
First, I want to give credit where it is due, and note that this idea
was constucted by David Parter and I as we drove to St. Paul last
year. Some of us discussed it at St. Paul, and I will mention some of
the comments that I remember. Please, any one who was in on this
correct any thing I have remembered incorrectly.
Basically, what seems to be apparent from discussions such as "did CC
get the shaft", and has been mentioned recently on the list, is that
part of why it is so hard to select the tournament teams is that there
is not enough interconference play. Furthermore, some of the
interconference play that does exist pairs teams of unequal caliber,
and thus does not shed any light on relative strengths of the
conferences.
Given that it seems as if more interconference play would be helpful
in determining which teams belong in the tournament. However, given
the game limits and the need to play enough conference games to make
the conference records have meaning, this is tricky to schedule.
What David and I came up with is the following.
At two points during the course of the season (perhaps New Years
and mid-February) hold mini interconference showcases for all NC$$
division I hockey teams.
One showcase would have teams from Hockey East meeting teams from
the WCHA and teams from the ECAC meeting teams from the CCHA.
The other showcase would have teams from Hockey East meeting teams
from the CCHA and teams from the ECAC meeting teams from the WCHA.
One showcase would have the CCHA and WCHA teams hosting, the other
would have Hockey East and ECAC hosts.
Now for the tricky part - deciding the opponents. The idea behind
this is to get equal teams playing each other. So, a week or two
before each showcase pairings would be decided by looking at the
current standings. For a given conference mathchup (using
conferences A and B with B as the host conference for an example)
the following games would be played.
First Night Second Night
----------- ------------
A1 at B1 A1 at B2
A2 at B2 A2 at B1
A3 at B3 A3 at B4
A4 at B4 A4 at B3
And so on.
Here are some comments on the plan.
One of the tough parts of this is the travel involved in getting to
the Alaska schools. This is one of the reasons for having the CCHA
and WCHA host over the winter break time, to allow for this extra
travel. Of course this takes away those precious scheduling times
for conferences games to be played in Alaska, but remember this is a
Utopian idea.
When David and I figured this out we may have been thinking about
Thanksgiving and New Years, but when I think about it more, there
haven't been enough games played by Thanksgiving to have any hope of
having equal match ups.
One thing that I remember Mike Machnik pointing out when we talked
about this was the cost to the smaller schools being prohibitive.
That is definitely a problem, but if only something like that could be
worked out.
Another issue is that not all of the conferences have the same
number of teams. I think this could be worked in, but I haven't
thought it through. Basically it would involve playing cross
conference matches as above for the top teams in each confernece, and
fudging things somewhat at the lower spots in the standings. This
doesn't seem to be that bad since the idea is to shed light on
relative conference strengths especially with respect to the teams
that are tourney bound.
Of course this would also mean that teams would have to give up some
of their other tournaments, unless the schedule was increased by four
games. While it would be hard to imagine not having the Badger
Showdown anymore, I think that this would be a worthwhile sacrifice
for better college hockey overall.
Wendy Istvanick
University of Wisconsin - 1988 and 1993
UW Women's Hockey - 1991-1993
Chicago Ice - 1994
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