Carol writes:
>David Parter writes:
>>Playoffs:
>>
>>stuff deleted...
>>For the second round, the teams a (sic) re-seeded, and 1 plays 5 (on either
>>wednesday or thursday, I don't remember, then the usual 1-4 and 2-3
>matchups..
>
>I don't believe that this is what Erik posted a week or two ago. Unfortunately
>I have deleted that item. From my memory though...it was a Thursday playoff
>between the 4 and 5 teams and then the usual 1-4 and 2-3 match-ups. And I
>think that this makes more sense...and gives a middle-of-the-pack team a shot
>at making the WCHA final four!
 
I dug up Erik's old post and Carol's playoff description is correct, with
the added note that "provisional" (?) league member Alaska-Anchorage,
apparently joining the WCHA at the start of the playoffs, will automatically
be the 10th-seeded team.
 
(Oops, just noticed that David also mentioned that in his post.  Never
mind.)
 
I meant to say something about this "Final Five" idea when it first came
up -- the whole thing seems a bit bizarre to me.  When I first looked at
this, it seemed like the #1 seed was going to have an easy route to the
finals, playing the tenth seed, then the fourth or fifth seed, who would be
tired from playing an extra game the night before.  Alaska-Anchorage has a
good team, and it will probably end up that the Seawolves will be a tougher
foe than most of the lower WCHA seeds in the first round, so the top seed
won't have a walkover -- but still, it seems strange to have an odd number
of teams left after the first round.  Most playoffs that I'm aware of cut
the number of teams down to a power of two as soon as they can.  The NCAA
hockey tournament, for example, cuts the teams from 12 to 8 in the first
round, which makes the bracketing easier than if they had everybody play in
the first round and had six survivors.  (Bleah, rotten sentence structure)
This extra game before the semifinals reminds me of a conversation Jim Love
and I had about the AHL playoff structure -- which starts with 12 teams,
whittles them down to three, then calls a halt to the playoffs right before
the Calder Cup finals while the second and third seeds battle for the right
to advance (there's a Final Three to go along with the WCHA's Final Five).
 
I'm wondering if there's any reason why the WCHA didn't decide on a playoff
system similar to the 10-team structure the ECAC is using (God forbid, Yet
Another Reference to Eastern teams!).  In the ECAC, #7 hosts #10 and #8
hosts #9 in a mid-week preliminary round contest, and then the surviving two
join the other six playoff teams in the quarterfinal round.
 
One other question:  Is Mankato really going to make the jump to Division I
next season?  I haven't heard anything about that over the past several
months.
--
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86 and probably '94
LET'S GO RED!!
"My wife the bargain hunter -- she buys anything that's marked down.  Today
 she came home with an escalator."
-- Henny Youngman