NCAA Men's Hockey Bracketology, January 21

It's mid-January, which is realistically a little to early to be paying attention to the fluctuations in the PairWise rankings and watching the NCAA bubble. But who cares about being realistic when there's fun to be had playing with matchups?

The NCAA hockey tournament uses a statisical formula to pick which teams earn at-large bids, removing the speculation and argument from that aspect (unless you write for the Lowell Sun). But where the fun comes in is determining matchups and locations. Eastern teams (and some western teams depending on where the regionals are played) are fortunate enough to get the coveted opportunity to drive to their regional rather than fly. You can earn this honor by being a 1 seed, you can buy it by hosting a regional, back in to it based on the way the cookie crumbles. That's life.

Let's take a look at where things stand if the season ended now. With the bulk of nonconference play done for the season, it's not likely that the conference makeup of the final field shakes up much.

STEP ONE - Select the sixteen teams in the tournament field

Six conference champions: We are going to go with the highest ranked team in each conference...

ECAC #1 - Quinnipiac
NCHC #2 - St. Cloud State
HEA #4 - Providence
B1G #7 - Michigan
WCHA #19 - Minnesota State
AHC #21 - Robert Morris

For as much as we rag on the Big Ten, the WCHA and AHC are basically peer conferences at this point. Last year Minnesota State was a very highly ranked team and scored some nonconference wins that allowed them to run roughshod over the WCHA en route to a #1 seed. That's not happening this year. Minnesota State is 11-8-5 and will have to push hard to get on the right side of the bubble given how weak their remaining schedule is. I'm guessing they're going to need to win the conference tournament unless they really go ham the rest of the way.

Who gets in from the AHC is pretty much always a crapshoot.

Ten at large teams

#3 NCHC North Dakota
#5 NCHC Nebraska Omaha
#6 ECAC Harvard
#8 ECAC Cornell
#9 HEA BC
#10 ECAC Yale
#11 HEA ND
#12 HEA BU
#13 HEA UML
#14 NCHC Denver

One of the quirks of the Pairwise since its most recent tweaks a few years ago is that you get a pretty good feel for what the conference makeup of the bracket is going to be pretty early on. he ECAC has a strong likelihood of putting in 4 teams. The NCHC probably will end up putting in 4 as there are a few other NCHC teams just on the wrong side of the bubble. The B1G might get 2 if Minnesota or Penn State stay hot. Hockey East has 5 on the right side of the bubble right now but attrition will probably knock one out unless all 5 just completely feast on the lower 7 (not an unreasonable proposition) and there aren't many conference tournament upsets.

Those tourney upsets can really mess with things given how close the bubble is likely to be. The first teams out are Penn State, Minnesota, UMD, RPI and Dartmouth. All of these teams are within shouting distance of the bubble, though where things are really, really tight is from 9 to 14, meaning any team in that area (including BC) can easily end up in a position where an extra conference tournament upset can knock them out.

Should be exciting, though nervewracking.

STEP TWO: Put host institutions in their respective regionals

The four hosts of the regionals are Miami, Holy Cross, Minnesota, and the ECAC as a whole (special host rules don't apply in that instance). Right now none of the hosts would be in, so no worries.

STEP THREE: Assign the #1 seeds to regions based on geography

The #1 overall seed, Quinnipiac, gets whichever regional is closest to it geographically. That would be the Worcester regional.

#2 St. Cloud State's closest would be St. Paul.

#3 North Dakota is on to Cincinnati.

#4 Providence is assigned to Albany.

There's the potential here that for attendance purposes, and due to the fact that ECAC hosts in Albany, QU gets sent to Albany and PC to Worcester. We'll see what the rest of the brackets look like and make our best guess as to how the committee would play it.

STEP FOUR: Assign the remaining 12 teams to regions based on their seeding bands

The #1 Seeds are Quinnipiac, St Cloud State, North Dakota and PC
The #2 Seeds are Nebraska Omaha, Harvard, Michigan and Cornell
The #3 Seeds are BC, Yale, Notre Dame and BU
The #4 Seeds are Lowell, Denver, Minnesota State and Robert Morris

Straight bracket integrity would give us

WORCESTER

1 Quinnipiac ECAC / 4 Robert Morris AHC
2 Cornell ECAC / 3 BC HEA

ALBANY

1 Providence HEA / 4 Lowell HEA
2 Omaha NCHC / 3 BU HEA

ST PAUL

1 St Cloud NCHC / 4 Minnesota State WCHA
2 Michigan B1G / 3 Yale ECAC

CINCINNATI

1 North Dakota NCHC / 4 Denver NCHC
2 Harvard ECAC / Notre Dame HEA

These brackets are actually remarkably close to being good enough as they are but we have a few in conference matchups to fix. 1 Providence/4 Lowell in Albany and 1 North Dakota/4 Denver in Cincinnati.

There are a couple of ways to solve this problem.

The quickest and most painless way would be to swap Lowell and Denver, two teams only marginally separated in the RPI, bringing Denver to Worcester and sending Lowell out to Cincinnati.

The committee could get cute and move Providence to Worcester for attendance purposes, but then you have to move all sorts of things around to make sure #1 overall QU gets the #16 or at worst the #15 (and even then they only really do that in extreme circumstances where it's unavoidable). Minnesota State, #15 overall, is located perfectly in St. Paul based on straight bracket integrity, so why mess with it?

So you make one swap of Lowell and Denver and you get

WORCESTER

1 Quinnipiac ECAC / 4 Robert Morris AHC
2 Cornell ECAC / 3 BC HEA

ALBANY

1 Providence HEA / 4 Denver NCHC
2 Omaha NCHC / 3 BU HEA

ST PAUL

1 St Cloud NCHC / 4 Minnesota State WCHA
2 Michigan B1G / 3 Yale ECAC

CINCINNATI

1 North Dakota NCHC / 4 Lowell HEA
2 Harvard ECAC / Notre Dame HEA

This is a nice bracket. No more than two teams from a single conference in any of the brackets, no in conference matchups, and extremely close to being perfect in terms of bracket integrity.

The final consideration is attendance. The committee will make swaps within seeding bands to prevent too weak of a draw.

Cincinnati's regional (wherever it happens to be in the Midwest) is always the biggest clusterbeep. I suppose you might want to put Michigan there instead of Harvard but that would create a Harvard/Yale in conference game. If you swap the matchups entirely you get Michigan in Ohio but lose Notre Dame, which is kind of a wash I guess. I think they leave it alone. St. Paul should be fine with two Minnesota teams there.

The Worcester regional we have laid out here will do just fine with BC there. Plus QU and Cornell will be good draws. Albany won't be ideal but BU and Providence would send a decent crowd.

There might be the temptation to flip the ENTIRE Worcester and Albany regionals, so that Cornell plays near home and bangs that place out, while BU and Providence could more than do the job to fill the DCU Center. I'm not sure what they'd decide there. It could go either way.

For now I'm going to assume the BC to Worcester connection remains strong because it seems to work out nicely that way. That would give us where we started:

WORCESTER

1 Quinnipiac ECAC / 4 Robert Morris AHC
2 Cornell ECAC / 3 BC HEA

ALBANY

1 Providence HEA / 4 Denver NCHC
2 Omaha NCHC / 3 BU HEA

ST PAUL

1 St Cloud NCHC / 4 Minnesota State WCHA
2 Michigan B1G / 3 Yale ECAC

CINCINNATI

1 North Dakota NCHC / 4 Lowell HEA
2 Harvard ECAC / Notre Dame HEA

So BC would be in Worcester and would face a pretty difficult path, having to beat two of the top teams in what some might call the best conference right now (who ever would have thought we would have said that 5 or 6 years ago).

Obviously this is just a fun thought exercise and will change zillions of times before selection Sunday, but the stars so often seem to align for BC to end up at the DCU Center.