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The tournament field should be set, how they eventually get divided up...

Puckhead

All-American
Jun 4, 2001
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we will see later today. So here is the Pairwise as of this morning.

1 St. Cloud State
2 Notre Dame
2 Cornell
4 Ohio State
4 Denver
6 Minnesota State
7 Providence
8 Michigan
8 Northeastern
10 Clarkson
11 Penn State
12 Minnesota Duluth
12 Minnesota
14 North Dakota
15 Boston University
16 Boston College

The conference champions are as follows.
Atlantic Hockey - Air Force
Big Ten - Notre Dame
ECAC - Princeton
Hockey East - Boston University
NCHC - Denver
WCHA - Michigan Tech

Three of those teams would not have made the tournament this year without their conference auto-bid; they are: Air Force, Princeton, and Michigan Tech. Boston University was on the bubble, but with the auto-bid they are in. Because there are three teams in who would not otherwise be in the bubble is sort of large this year. Here are the bubble teams that are out.

- Boston College - being the last team in, they are the first team out.
- Boston University - Normally BU would be gone this year, but they have the auto-bid so they stay in.
- North Dakota - With BU staying in the next team out is North Dakota, even though they won the NCHC consolation game which did give them a bit of a boost and in years past it may have been enough to keep them in. The NCHC is the only conference that plays such a game these days and with North Dakota out their string of consecutive years in the tournament ends at 15, 7 short of Michigan's 22.
- Minnesota - Again because of the large number of bubble teams this year and the situation with BU the last team out appears to be Minnesota in the #13 spot. This is always close to the bubble, but I believe it's fairly rare for the bubble to reach this high. Will Lucia remain or will he go, I know there have been some rumblings about a change at Minnesota.

So the field should look like this.
1 St. Cloud State
2 Notre Dame
2 Cornell
4 Ohio State
4 Denver
6 Minnesota State
7 Providence
8 Michigan
8 Northeastern
10 Clarkson
11 Penn State
12 Minnesota Duluth
13 Boston University
14 Princeton
15 Michigan Tech
16 Air Force

Even with Minnesota missing the field, the Big Ten has four teams in.
- Notre Dame (a 1 seed)
- Ohio State (a 1 seed)
- Michigan (a 2 seed)
- Penn State (a 3 seed)

I think the selection is today at noon so we'll see where everyone ends up. There isn't any regional that could be even remotely considered Midwest this year, I would guess Michigan will end up at one of the East coast regionals, but they are the last two seed so they could go West. However, Denver is also a two seed and they should be closer to the West regional so they could go there (no first round match against a conference team to stop that from happening). Anyway, we'll see later today.
 
A bit of an add on. Both Moy (USCHO) and Wodon (CHN) are projecting Michigan to the West Regional being played in Sioux Falls. With North Dakota out St. Cloud should be the one seed in that region. If this holds up Michigan's likely first round opponent would be Northeastern and if they get past that they would take on the winner of St. Cloud/Air Force (probably St. Cloud unless we have what is the equivalent of a 16 defeating a 1 in basketball - although it does happen in hockey).
 
The big change being that the Minnesota match up moved from the east to Sioux Falls- which does make sense- it also moves NE much closer to home, and it's probably closer for us to go to Mass than the middle of nowhere. Either way, we were not going to go to a close place.

Interesting how the weekend played out- the magic that put Minny out happened, and it put us from a 3 to a 2.

BTW, if ESPN has been reporting right, a 4-1 upset has been happening for over a decade.
 
You are right, the move of the two Minnesota teams to this regional makes a lot of sense. Given the teams playing there, this regional should be really well attended. Michigan going to Worcester and the Northeast regional should be a shorter trip that trying to blaze a trail to Sioux Falls.

The 4-1 upset in the hockey tournament does happen fairly regularly, especially when compared to say the 16-1 upset in Basketball which has apparently happened once.
 
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