Quote from the _Ithaca Journal_: "The changing game of college hockey was changed a little more Wednesday..." What they are referring to is that the NCAA's Championship Committee has made everything official, approving the 12-team single-elimination format for the NCAA hockey tournament. The format calls for six teams at two regional sites, one in the East and one in the West, and is scheduled to go into effect for the 1991-92 season. The whole thing will work pretty much as outlined before right here on Hockey-L (hey, are we on top of things or what? :-) Next year's tournament will begin on Thursday, March 26, with games at the regional sites, and it will work like this: East regional: West Regional: 1. #1 East 1. #1 West 2. #2 East 2. #2 West 3. #3 East 3. #3 West 4. #4 East 4. #4 West 5. #5 West 5. #5 East 6. #6 West 6. #6 East Thursday, 3/26: #1 and #2 in each regional will have the night off, while #3 will play #6 and #4 will play #5. Saturday, 3/28: #1 in each regional will play the lowest remaining seed in that regional, and #2 will play the next-lowest remaining seed (apparently, there isn't going to be any bracketing). Next year's Final Four will take place in Albany, NY, with the semifinals on April 2 and the championship game on April 4. Northern Michigan coach/athletic director Rick Comley, a member of the NCAA Hockey Committee, said the change was made in part to address concerns over the #1 and #2 seeds having too much of an advantage in the second round under the old system, with both a week off and home ice. In the four years that the previous 12-team format existed, only two of the 16 teams that had byes were knocked off in the second round: Michigan State in 1990 and Lake Superior last season. Interestingly enough, both teams were ranked #1 in the country at the time and had been for most of the season. Comley also says he hopes the new tournament format is the first step toward a 16-team single-elimination torunament with four regional sites, something the Hockey Committee has been pushing for years. Some sites listed as possible hosts for the East regional were Boston, Providence, Albany (?!), and Hartford, while sites for the West regional included Detroit, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Madison (WI). If the dates above are accurate, it looks like there's going to be almost two weeks between the end of each league's postseason tournament and the start of the NCAAs, rather than one. I wonder if the leagues are now going to be moving their seasons back a week, what with the new 34-game limit. Bill Fenwick Cornell '86 LET'S GO RED!! "As you know, they've been having a serious drought in California -- all the car washes are using Handi-Wipes. They even tried to seed the clouds, but the clouds were on the Pill." -- Mark Russell