Thanks to Jeff Schulman from Vermont for bringing this to my attention. It has been said that HE shootouts will not affect NC$$ tourney selection this season because the games will be considered ties by the selection committee. However, Jeff has pointed out to me a situation in which they could have an effect. Jeff raised the issue and the following is my extrapolation from that. 2 of the last 3 years, teams have won a regular season conference title and not received an NC$$ bid (Harvard 1992, Colorado College 1994). As a result, beginning this season, the conf reg season winners will receive automatic bids to the tourney, whether they go on to win the playoffs or not. Picture the following: Some HE team - let's take Merrimack as an example - does well enough to challenge for the HE reg season title but overall would not rank among the top 12 teams as determined by the selection criteria. As a result of a number of shootout wins, Merrimack barely beats out BU (for example) to finish first in HE, but goes on to lose in the first round of the HE tourney. Merrimack finishes 9-9-6 with 30 HE points by virtue of winning all 6 shootouts. BU is 13-9-2 with 29 HE pts by virtue of winning one SO. Merrimack is 12-15-6 overall in DivI games, BU 21-11-2. In the ranking of teams, Merrimack would have come in, say, 17th. Ordinarily they would not have received a bid. And if there were no shootouts, in this example, Merrimack would have finished second or lower in HE. But the extra points gained from SO wins is enough to push them ahead of BU and they receive the auto bid to the NC$$ tourney from HE. As a result, the 12th ranked team, perhaps from another conference, stays home because Merrimack must be one of the 12, having gained the auto bid from finishing first. Before you say it isn't likely, I'll point out again that two teams in the last 3 years have won their conference but did not rank among the top 12 teams by the overall criteria. And there have been 2 shootouts in the 5 HE games played thus far - 40%. It is very possible that a team could play an extraordinary number of shootouts this year and win most if not all of them. That could be enough to earn them the title. Something to ponder...and to remember next time someone insists that shootouts cannot affect tourney selection. --- --- Mike Machnik [log in to unmask] Cabletron Systems, Inc. *HMM* 11/13/93