This is purely uninformed speculation, but with this talk of a fifth Division-I league maybe starting up in 1998-9, and the annual complaints about the twelve-team format in the NC$$s, it seems natural to me to connect the two. If the new league forms, all of its members will have enough games against D-I opponents to be eligible for the tournament; assuming for the sake of argument that the league has thirteen members including Army, that would add 12 teams to the ranks of the eligible. That would take us from 43 to 55 teams, not even including the possibility of Mankato State and UNO joining the WCHA in the meantime. At that point, a 16-team tournament would give nearly the same percentage of teams in the tournament. (12/43=28% while 16/55=29% and 16/57=28%.) And with four extra teams in the tourney, no one would have cause to complain about giving the new conference at least one automatic berth. (Would they even have a conference tournament at first?) As I said, this is based no more information than has already been posted, but it seems like a reasonable guess to me. John Whelan, Cornell '91 <[log in to unmask]> <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/jshock.html> Cornell Men's Ice Hockey: Back-to-back ECAC and Ivy League Champions HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.