Quoth Tony Buffa: > Exactly. I think league tourneys are just extra games to make more > money. They balloon the season for some teams up to the mid 40s in game > numbers ... something I think should be reigned in. They show nothing to > me about which team in the league should get the bid. I prefer to look at league tournaments on their own merits. Almost every American sport has a playoff following the regular season; many of us would find it rather anticlimactic to have a team have wrapped up the championship before the season is over. The elimination nature of playoffs and tournaments adds to the excitement, and the semifinals and finals at a single site provide a climactic event where fans from different teams can come together in a special atmosphere and enjoy championship hockey. The one drawback to the system in college hockey is that since nearly all the teams in a given league make the playoffs, the importance of the regular season is diminished and a team can still have a chance to get hot and steal the title even if they didn't earn that chance by at least playing respectably throughout the season. But the best-of-three series entirely at the site of the higher seed do provide a strong incentive to finish high enough in the standings to get home ice. John Whelan, Cornell '91 [log in to unmask] http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/