I just read Adam and Mike's bracket guess on collegehockeynews.com, and I don't see how it gets so complicated. Maybe it is, but maybe it isn't. They came very close to what I came up with, but I didn't have to twist and contort as much: First, I just setup the "natural" brackets, without assigning sites: (same as Charlie had, of course): > mich, st cloud, msu, AF > mia, denv, clarkson, niagara > und, bc, minnesota, princeton > unh, cc *, wisc*, notre dame Then, I looked at two factors: where the #1 seeds go and where the host schools have to go. I did these at the same time... the "michigan" bracket goes to Madison the bracket with "cc" in it goes to Colorado Springs swap msu (9) with wisconsin (12) -- same band, but makes changes the "natural" order of the first-round matchups. swap unh(4) and und(3) since und "should" to to Colorado Springs: madison - mich st cloud, wisc, af (1, 8, 12, 16) albany - mia, denver, clark, niagara (2, 7, 19, 15) cc - und, cc, msu, nd (3, 5, 9, 13) worcester - nh, bc, minn, prin (4, 6, 11, 14) first round league matchups? st cloud/wisc is the only one, and the WCHA, as everyone has noted, has to have at least one. potential second round matchups? und/cc and nh/bc. if you want to avoid them, then you have to ship nh to Colorado, which doesn't seem like a good idea. we'll know in less than 24 hours... --david