mike, dave and some others have all made some excellent observations about the tournament format, and before anyone can go around deciding how to improve upon it, I think that it is time that the NC$$ and College Hockey take a serious look at the tournament itself and decide what they want out of it. Some agreement has to be made by all parties involved. Without and underlying philosophy as to what is important all that will happen is a series of differently flawed attempts to choose the National Champions. IMO, Things I would like to see (1) Stay with the automatic bids for winning your conference tourney, it allows More teams a shot to play for the National title, even if you had a bad first half of the season. (2) Go back to home sites for the initial rounds, make the 34 game schedule mean something. (3) I like 2 out of 3, 3-5 is too much, 1 game is doesn't accurately show the better team. (4) By the time the Final Four rolls around I think the best 4 teams should have EARNED their way there (by winning 2 of 3 etc.), then go to 1 game and see who is the best. (5) Finally, find a nice power of 2 teams and there would be no problems with byes, etc. Just some thoughts. -Ryan Stone Lawrence University (Appleton, WI) '93 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute '93 ---------------------------------- -------------------------------------- | RYAN G. STONE | | "In the Beginning, there was a Great | | 218 North Hall, R.P.I. | | Void. Then God said 'Let there be | | Troy, NY 12180-3590 | | Light!' There was still a Great | | (518) 276-7230 | | Void, but at least He could see it."| | e-mail: [log in to unmask] | | -Source Unknown | ---------------------------------- --------------------------------------