I know this is a little later than I had promised to start this, but we had to train a new secretary at Contest Central (don't get your hopes up, guys, she's only 1 month old and her father is really picky about who she goes out with) and expand the office a bit (needed room for her crib) but it is time for the 2nd Annual Hockey-L Regular Season Prediction Contest. For those of you who missed our inaugural season, the purpose of this contest (besides wasting up a lot of computer time) is to predict the order of finish in college hockey's four major DivI conferences: HE, ECAC, CCHA, and the WCHA. Points are "disawarded" (for lack of a better term) by how far off from the teams' actual finish your prediction is. For example, if you pick Michigan to finish first in the CCHA and they finish 11th (a little wishful thinking on my part), you get disawarded 10 points. Add up the total points disawarded for all 42 conference teams and that is the total. (It's sort of like golf, you know, the game with the 18 bases, where low score wins, unless, of course, you're playing the International.) Last year's winner finished somewhere in the low to mid 60's, if I recall (which is what I wish the temperature in East Lansing would stay like for a while). Unlike the predictions you may have seen floating around the list, entrants MUST pick all four conferences for their picks to be eligible for the Grand Prize, which is...........absolutely nothing. (Low budget operation, all of our overhead goes to diapers.) There will be a "winner" for each conference, and in case of ties, we have a tiebreaker for each, as well as an overall Prognostigating Hockey Guru who will receive, of course, absolutely nothing except the adulation of all his (or her, not to be discriminatory) fans (yeah, like any of us have any). Entries will be due by Friday, October 13 at 6:00pm EDT. DO NOT MAIL THEM TO THE LIST, or Wayne and/or Mike will kill me (OK, all those people shouting "Go ahead, go ahead!" are fired! All except for Veronica.). Mail them to me on the entry form at the end of this message. The tiebreaker for each conference will be the total number of ties for conference games only in that conference (or, in the case of Hockey East, the number of shootouts). In case of two people being equidistant from the actuall number, lower beat higher. The national tiebreaker will be the total number of ties (or shootouts) throughout the four conferences during conference games only. Once again, lower beats higher if equidistant. We are now up to 42 teams with conference affiliation, as we welcome the Uni- versity of Alaska-Fairbanks to the ranks of the CCHA and wish them well on all days but January 4, 5, and 6. The teams and their conference affiliations are: Hockey East- Boston College, Boston University, Maine, Mass Amherst, Mass Lowell, Merrimack, New Hampshire, Northeastern, Providence ECAC- Brown, Clarkson, Colgate, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, RPI, St. Lawrence, Union, Vermont, Yale CCHA- Alaska-Fairbanks, Bowling Green, Ferris State, Illinois-Chicago, Lake Superior, Miami, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Western Michigan WCHA- Alaska-Anchorage, Colorado College, Denver, Michigan Tech, Minnesota, Minnesota-Duluth, North Dakota, Northern Michigan, St. Cloud, Wisconsin Remember, entries are due by October 13 at 6:00pm EDT (first conference games of the year in the WCHA). Mail entries to: [log in to unmask] And good luck to all (except Michigan, of course). G. M. Finniss Michigan State University P.S. Abbreviations are acceptable, as long as I can figure them out. ______________________________________________________________________________ REGULAR SEASON PREDICTION CONTEST Hockey East ECAC 1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 5. 6. 6. 7. 7. 8. 8. 9. 9. 10. 11. 12. No. Shootouts in Conference Play = No. Ties in Conference Play = CCHA WCHA 1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3. 4. 4. 5. 5. 6. 6. 7. 7. 8. 8. 9. 9. 10. 10. 11. No. Ties in Conference Play = No. Ties in Conference Play = Name: E-mail address: National tiebreaker: Total no. of ties (or shootouts) among four conferences (Conference Games Only) = _______________________________________________________________________________ HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.