The down side to Princeton pulling off five wins in six games in nine days is that ECAC will probably view the Final Five as a success. Which means that we'll probably be stuck with the biggest drawback of this format (aside from the 1,779 attendance for the play-in), which is that one team will be sent home after only one game. (And I say this not just because it was Cornell this year.) This is the same reason I think the ECAC should *not* get rid of the consolation game. If Lake Placid is a magical experience to be shared with more teams, let's give all those teams at least two games to enjoy it, and give their fans something to cheer for. I have an idea, which occurred to me when wondering how the RMCHA could run a five-team tournament and still give each team two or three games. (This was particularly significant, since we were looking at two teams expected to blow everyone else away, and three more who just wanted more competitive games, and didn't look at a championship as a reasonable goal.) The proposal is this: rather than send the loser of the 4/5 playin game home, give them another playin against the 2/3 loser for the right to play in the consolation game. The schedule would thus look something like this: Day One: Game 1 (semi-final play-in): #5 vs #4 Game 2 (semi-final): #3 vs #2 Day Two: Game 3 (consolation play-in): Game 1 loser vs game 2 loser Game 4 (semi-final): Game 1 winner vs #1 Day Three: Game 5 (consolation): Game 4 loser vs game 3 winner Game 6 (championship): Game 2 winner vs game 4 winner The best arrangement would be Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but if the NC$$ insists on holding their selection show Sunday morning, it would have to be Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The advantages of this plan are that there would be two games every day (more reason for the fans to show up early) and that every team would play two or three games. Granted, one team is going to play two of its three games with no chance of willing the tournament, but those two victories might mean the difference between a bubble team making the NCAAs or not. The big drawback is that the two semi-finals would be on different days, withthe 2/3 winner getting an extra day of rest. But then no tournament with an odd number of teams is going to be ideal. John Whelan, Cornell '91 <[log in to unmask]> <http://www.cc.utah.edu/~jtw16960/joe.html> Learn about the NCAA selection process on the web at http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?pairwise HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.