Hi Laura and a late welcome to the list!
As you will soon find out, I am an avid (rabid?) Wisconsin fan, and do
my best to report everything I hear about the WCHA, and provide lengthy
(perhaps too lengthy) reports on the Wisconsin games.
There really hasn't been much to report this summer. Here is what I
remember (relying on my memory is not always the best thing to do...)
of the late spring/summer WCHA league news. News (gossip?) from each
school I don't have...
Refs: The WCHA will have 2 refs and one linesman for all league
games this year. Ron Foyt was retained as WCHA Supervisor of
Officials.
Schedule:
For this season, the schedule more or less stays the same: two
two-game (Friday-Saturday except for special cases) series'
with each team, one series at home, one away.
Alaska-Anchorage:
Alaska-Anchorage joins the league as an affiliate (or some such
status) this season. WCHA teams are encouraged to schedule
them, but the games do not count in the league standings this
year. UAA will get the 10th seed in the league playoffs. UAA
is scheduled to become a full member next season. Details of
how the schedule will work starting next season have not been
announced.
Playoffs:
As recently reported, the playoffs will have 10 teams this
season. In the first round, 1 plays 10, 2 plays 9, etc, in a
best-of-three series at the higher ranked team. For the second
round, the teams a re-seeded, and 1 plays 5 (on either
wednesday or thursday, I don't remember), then the usual 1-4
and 2-3 matchups in single-elimination games at the St. Paul
Civic Center. I hope I got this right (and I'm sure someone
will correct me if i have it wrong).
Basically, the league wanted to let UAA into the playoffs, but
since they won't be playing a full WCHA schedule, have no 100%
objective way to seed them. So, instead of letting UAA bump #8,
they added #9 to the playoffs, put UAA #10, and then added the
extra 1-5 game to get back to 4 teams for the semi-finals.
--david
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david parter university of wisconsin -- madison
[log in to unmask] computer sciences department
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