What has to happen for Cornell to end up in Ann Arbor as opposed to Worcester?

[Raine]

?

[Al DeFlorio]

Step 1, of course, is they have to get an invitation.  I wouldn't start countin' that chicken just yet.

[ugarte]

Step 2 is the almost arbitrary decision to send us West. Also a chicken that shouldn't be counted.

[Robb]

You ask this question as if you hope we end up in Ann Arbor.  I'd say we have a better shot being one of the two teams left standing in Worcester than Ann Arbor.  Even if the NCAA decides not to consider travel considerations, UNH will probably be one of the top teams in the East.  I would definitely feel better about facing UNH in Worcester than being in SCSU, Denver, or Michigan's bracket in Ann Arbor...  Just curious what your reasoning is?

[Jordan \'04]

I would hazard a guess that the mi.comcast.net might have something to do with his reasoning.

[Raine]

Yeah, I am in Michigan, and was wondering if there was any forumula that dictated which team played where.

[Greg Berge]

There's an excellent article on USCHO about how the field is selected and seeded, and another off of TBRW? by John Whelan.

I hazard a guess that Cornell probably won't wind up west no matter what.  Either they won't make it, or they'll finish strong and wind up an East #4, or they'll sneak in and get an East #5 or #6 seed.  If anybody goes west it would likely be Mercyhurst or an HE school to avoid a second round all-HE meeting.

But there are hopefully 12 more games to worry about before thinking about seeding.

[Raine]

Any idea where that article is on uscho? I used a few different search strings but couldn't track it down.

[jtwcornell91]

The USCHO article Greg is referring to is probably the tournament selection FAQ,
http://www.uscho.com/FAQs/?data=selection
but this was written before the whole reduced travel issue came up.  You may want to look at
http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2002/pairwise.020129
which includes a dry run with this rule in effect.

If they really are minimizing travel, I can't see how we would get shipped out West, since for anyone to be shipped there would need to be five non-bye Eastern teams, but if three of them are from Hockey East, they would have to ship one of those to avoid a first-round intraconference game.  If it were two HE teams, two ECAC teams, and a MAAC team, you'd have to assume they'd ship the MAAC champion, especially if it's Mercyhurst.

For the sake of completeness, I should mention that if we somehow end up #4 and UNH is #1, then we would end up the two-seed in the West to make the bracketing work out right.  If that happens, I will travel to Ann Arbor on the back of a flying pig.

[Adam]

Just curious:

Does anyone think that Cornell's strong fan following will play into a decision to keep them east?  Obviously we don't have the numbers of say, a Michigan, but we do have a rather large fan base in the east.  Are these economic considerations taken into account?

[Faithful \'01]

Can we just win at Placid first? Stop worrying about all this. It doesn't really matter where we go if we don't win, and I don't think anyone will be complaining if we go either place anyway.

[Raine]

I just wanted to know if it was even a remote possibility that I could see Cornell play in the state I live in.

It would make it alot more fun to follow the games if I knew what had to happen in order for Cornell to play here.

Calm down.

[Greg Berge]

Coach Schafer has ties with a number of CCHA coaches.  In the past he has scheduled games at Michigan, Western Michigan, and Ferris State.  I'm sure you will have several chances to see them play in the area over the next few years.

[Raine]

Yeah, but by then I won't have friends on the team.  :`(

[jtwcornell91]

Attendance is certainly taken into account; it was probably the reason we were kept in the East in 1996 instead of Lowell, and in 1997 Joe Marsh had to lobby for Cornell's drawing power to get them considered on the same footing with UVM and UNH when deciding whom to ship out.  (Cornell went anyway, but not for attendance reasons.)

I did an analysis a few years back on the seedings in 1996-1998, the last years for which we got adequate explanations from the selection committee.  That's on line at
http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw.cgi?seeds

JTW