I've been holding on to this idea since last year's Phinal Phour, and now it seems as good of time as ever to post it, with the resurfacing of the "how to rank teams" thread. Before I set forth the idea, a very Utopian idea, I would like to set forth some background. First, I want to give credit where it is due, and note that this idea was constucted by David Parter and I as we drove to St. Paul last year. Some of us discussed it at St. Paul, and I will mention some of the comments that I remember. Please, any one who was in on this correct any thing I have remembered incorrectly. Basically, what seems to be apparent from discussions such as "did CC get the shaft", and has been mentioned recently on the list, is that part of why it is so hard to select the tournament teams is that there is not enough interconference play. Furthermore, some of the interconference play that does exist pairs teams of unequal caliber, and thus does not shed any light on relative strengths of the conferences. Given that it seems as if more interconference play would be helpful in determining which teams belong in the tournament. However, given the game limits and the need to play enough conference games to make the conference records have meaning, this is tricky to schedule. What David and I came up with is the following. At two points during the course of the season (perhaps New Years and mid-February) hold mini interconference showcases for all NC$$ division I hockey teams. One showcase would have teams from Hockey East meeting teams from the WCHA and teams from the ECAC meeting teams from the CCHA. The other showcase would have teams from Hockey East meeting teams from the CCHA and teams from the ECAC meeting teams from the WCHA. One showcase would have the CCHA and WCHA teams hosting, the other would have Hockey East and ECAC hosts. Now for the tricky part - deciding the opponents. The idea behind this is to get equal teams playing each other. So, a week or two before each showcase pairings would be decided by looking at the current standings. For a given conference mathchup (using conferences A and B with B as the host conference for an example) the following games would be played. First Night Second Night ----------- ------------ A1 at B1 A1 at B2 A2 at B2 A2 at B1 A3 at B3 A3 at B4 A4 at B4 A4 at B3 And so on. Here are some comments on the plan. One of the tough parts of this is the travel involved in getting to the Alaska schools. This is one of the reasons for having the CCHA and WCHA host over the winter break time, to allow for this extra travel. Of course this takes away those precious scheduling times for conferences games to be played in Alaska, but remember this is a Utopian idea. When David and I figured this out we may have been thinking about Thanksgiving and New Years, but when I think about it more, there haven't been enough games played by Thanksgiving to have any hope of having equal match ups. One thing that I remember Mike Machnik pointing out when we talked about this was the cost to the smaller schools being prohibitive. That is definitely a problem, but if only something like that could be worked out. Another issue is that not all of the conferences have the same number of teams. I think this could be worked in, but I haven't thought it through. Basically it would involve playing cross conference matches as above for the top teams in each confernece, and fudging things somewhat at the lower spots in the standings. This doesn't seem to be that bad since the idea is to shed light on relative conference strengths especially with respect to the teams that are tourney bound. Of course this would also mean that teams would have to give up some of their other tournaments, unless the schedule was increased by four games. While it would be hard to imagine not having the Badger Showdown anymore, I think that this would be a worthwhile sacrifice for better college hockey overall. Wendy Istvanick University of Wisconsin - 1988 and 1993 UW Women's Hockey - 1991-1993 Chicago Ice - 1994