Dan Olsen provides the following starting point (pet peeve: I know we're both Eastern folk, but I like to put the West on the left because that's where it is on a map): >East West >1. Clarkson (2)(E) 1. Michigan (1)(C) >2. New Hampshire (3)(H) 2. North Dakota (4)(W) >3. Vermont (5)(E) 3. Minnesota (6)(W) >4. Cornell (9)(E) 4. Miami (8)(C) >5. Boston (11)(H) 5. Denver (10)(W) >6. Michigan St. (13)(C) 6. St. Cloud St. (12)(W) As an aside, let me point out that all the teams still in the running for RS conference titles are alread on the list: Clarkson and Cornell in the ECAC, UNH and BU in Hockey East, Michigan in the CCHA and North Dakota in the WCHA. Also, the elimination of RPI from the ECAC RS race takes away the slim chance that existed for five ECAC teams to make the tournament (if the RS and tournament championships had gone to teams not in the top twelve). If we simply sent the two lowest West teams East and the lowest non-host East team West, without regard to conference, we'd get W1 Michigan (1)(C) E1 Clarkson (2)(E) W2 North Dakota (4)(W) E2 New Hampshire (3)(H) W3 Minnesota (6)(W) E3 Vermont (5)(E) W4 Miami (8)(C) E4 BU (11)(H) W5 Cornell (9)(E) E5 St. Cloud St. (12)(W) W6 Denver (10)(W) E6 Michigan St. (13)(C) This has an intraconference matchup in the first round and one, maybe two, in the second. Now, as we know, the NC$$ likes to avoid first-round interconference matchups and, where possible, second-round ones as well. There are two ways to do this: shuffle the seeds within a region, and swap teams between regions. I've been using the former method (which seems fairer to me), Dan has tended towards the latter. If we can shuffle the seeds, switching Minnesota and Miami in the above configuration removes all the intraconference matchups but one second round game, which would require Denver to upset Miami. However, looking what the NC$$ did last year, it seems that they are loath to have teams within a region be seeded in an order other than that in which they're ranked. So instead if we want to model the selection committee behavior, we should swap teams between the regionals, keeping the seeding in order of PWR. (The top two seeds in each conference seem to be cast in stone, so it's only the 3-6 teams we're messing with.) As Dan points out, swapping Miami and Michigan State will eliminate all but one second-round matchup. Swapping Minnesota and St. Cloud would also do this. (BTW, swapping Cornell and Vermont would take away the first round matchup, but still leave at least two in the second round, even if another pair of teams were swapped.) So the options for "correctly seeded" brackets with a minimum of intraconference matchups would be: W6 MSU/SCSU E6 SCSU/MSU W3 Minnesota/Miami E3 Vermont W2 NoDak E2 UNH W5 Denver E5 BU W4 Cornell E4 Miami/Minnesota W1 Michigan E1 Clarkson Either plan involves one potential second-round WCHA game, but Plan A (advocated by Dan) has that come about if the higher-seeded Minnesota beats Michigan State, while Plan B requires St. Cloud to upset Miami. However, I think in this scenario, the NC$$ would go with plan A, since a Minnesota/Michigan State game would be a bigger draw in Grand Rapids than Miami and St. Cloud. Three more weeks and we get to do this for real. John Whelan, Cornell '91 <[log in to unmask]> <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/jshock.html> Cornell Men's Ice Hockey: 1996-7 Ivy League Champions WE WANT MORE! WE WANT THE ECAC! HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.