-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph LaCour <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, February 14, 2000 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: Unbalanced Schedules
 
 
>A long time ago didn't the WCHA have 2 divisions?  Why can't they do that
>and have a cross over playoff?
>
>You'd end up with a 26 game league schedule (16 in your division, 10 out)
>and everybody would be happy.  The UAA situation would be resolved that in
>Year 1 you'd play 2 in AK, and in Year 2, UAA would play 2 in your barn.
>Everyone else would be home & home.
>
>The more I look at it, the ECAC concept of travel partners does make sense.
>Only you have to have multiples of 4, not 2 to make it work..
 
This is exactly the same thing the WCHA has now, only the schedule is
divided on a rotating basis rather than having set divisions each year.
Well, not quite; in this division set up, you play four teams four times
each and five teams two times each, but other than that, it's exactly the
same.  Actually, it might be worse, since if the two divisions are
unbalanced, your playoff seedings might be even more screwed up than they
are now.
 
Further, the presence of Anchorage makes things more complicated than you
imply.  If UAA doesn't have a travel partner, it also means that some other
team doesn't have one.  Geographically speaking, I'd be tempted to make this
team North Dakota.  That would leave the travel partners as:
Wisconsin-Minnesota, Minn-Duluth-Michigan Tech, St Cloud State-MSU Mankato
and Colrado College-Denver.  To get this to balance, you'd have to make the
SCSU-MSU pair part of the western division and North Dakota part of the
eastern.  However, in addition to the travel problems, you would also have
an imbalance of traditional powers in the east.
 
You could make Michigan Tech the solo team, but this leaves a long travel
distance for whoever is North Dakota's travel partner.  It might work better
if Wisconsin was the solo member, but Tech can be much more difficult to get
in and out of in January.
 
This particular problem would work itself out if North Dakota State and
Bemidji State join the mix, but by the time you get to 12 teams, you might
be better off switching to two conferences.  On this model, your league
schedule would have grown to 32 games.
 
All in all, I don't see that there is much difference provided by divisions
in terms of balancing the schedule.  Not enough to justify the additional
travel headaches.
 
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