I'd argue it is the best decision they could have made- for themselves. It isn't necessarily the best for the growth of the sport or the national picture, but it gives the best security to each school. With the larger conference, the individual schools are more insulated from the chance that a school or two (Notre Dame, Western) gets a better offer and leaves, or a school or two loses funding (LSSU, Ferris, BGSU?), etc. Sure, it would be great to have room left to add programs, but if the past 5-10 years are any indication there is more of a risk of teams dropping hockey than adding. Additionally, most of the consistent "adding hockey" rumors are based around schools that would have no interest in the C/WCHA (sure, there's Moorhead, but any Big 10 school, or Navy are going elsewhere), whereas a lot of the "dropping hockey" rumors have come FROM the C/WCHA schools. By aggregating in one conference, these schools won't have to worry about dropping below 6 unless there is some seismic event (in which case we are all f*ed anyways).
The worries about travel seem premature to me, as who knows if there will be divisions (some sort of East/West alignment seems to make sense) which will lighten the load (and likely mean only one Alaska trip per season for most of the eastern schools), plus who knows how many will accept? If Western doesn't join, there's a spot for UAH right there.
