Well, it did, sort of, but of course the "second season" also counts towards the NC$$ selection. We now know four things for certain about the national tournament: North Dakota, Michigan, Clarkson and Boston University will be in it, having won their respective conferences' regular seasons. Looking at the top twelve non-Maine teams in the PWR: _West_ _East_ 1 Michigan (C*) 2 Clarkson (E*) 4 Minnesota (W) 3 Vermont (E) 5 NoDak (W*) 6 New Hampshire (H) 8 Miami (C) 10 BU (H*) 9 Denver (W) 11 Cornell (E) 12 St. Cloud (W) 13 Michigan State (C) In passing, note that BU's pulling out the Hockey East title is bad news for Cornell, since their best chance of staying East was probably to have the Terriers, hosts of the East Regional, drop out of the tournament and be replaced by another Eastern team. Now that can't happen. To seed the teams without regard to conference, swap Cornell with St. Cloud and Michigan State to get _West_ _East_ 1 Michigan (C*) 2 Clarkson (E*) 4 Minnesota (W) 3 Vermont (E) 5 NoDak (W*) 6 New Hampshire (H) 8 Miami (C) 10 BU (H*) 9 Denver (W) 12 St. Cloud (W) 11 Cornell (E) 13 Michigan State (C) In the past, this would have been okay, but given what the NC$$ did last year, they're likely to use the possibility of two intra-conference matchups in the West Regional (Michigan-Miami and Minnesota-North Dakota) to send Miami East instead of MSU to give _West_ _East_ 1 Michigan (C*) 2 Clarkson (E*) 4 Minnesota (W) 3 Vermont (E) 5 NoDak (W*) 6 New Hampshire (H) 9 Denver (W) 8 Miami (C) 11 Cornell (E) 10 BU (H*) 13 Michigan State (C) 12 St. Cloud (W) The Minnesota-North Dakota matchup remains, but with the current choice of teams, there's no way to avoid one potential interconference game. And of course, this setup once again would allow the NC$$ to keep MSU in the West, a bonus attendance-wise. (Personally, I think it would be fairer to have NoDak/Miami and Cornell/DU trade seeds within the West regional, but the NC$$ passed up a similar opportunity last year to keep teams in the same regions and seed them out of order, opting instead to send higher-ranked teams [Lowell and LSSU] out of their regions.) 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, ECAC regular season runners-up. WE WANT MORE! WE WANT THE ECACs! HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.