College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

[Shirtless Guy]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Here is what the tournament would look like this year using the hockey selection & seeding rules but the lacrosse tournament format and rules for pairing teams:

FIRST ROUND: Friday, Saturday or Sunday, March 23, 24 or 25
Cornell at #1 Boston College
Air Force at #2 Michigan
Massachusetts-Lowell at #3 Union
Michigan State at #4 North Dakota
Denver at #5 Miami
Maine at #6 Ferris State
Western Michigan at #7 Minnesota-Duluth
Boston University at #8 Minnesota

EAST QUARTERFINALS: Saturday, March 31, at Manchester, NH
#1 Boston College/Cornell winner v #8 Minnesota/Boston University winner
#3 Union/Massachusetts-Lowell winner v #6 Ferris State/Maine winner

WEST QUARTERFINALS: Sunday, April 1, at Milwaukee, WI
#2 Michigan/Air Force winner v #7 Minnesota-Duluth/Western Michigan winner
#4 North Dakota/Michigan State winner v #5 Miami/Denver winner

so close, Michigan State would not be AT North Dakota because North Dakota is not allowed to host NCAA playoff games as long as "SIOUX" is their nickname.

 

[Alton]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

so close, Michigan State would not be AT North Dakota because North Dakota is not allowed to host NCAA playoff games as long as "SIOUX" is their nickname.

Ah, yes...good point. That one would be #4 North Dakota at Michigan State.

 

[HockeyMan2000]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Good breakdown of possible cities. By all means, lets go to New York

Between the Knicks and the Rangers you can forget about MSG ever holding a Frozen Four -- not to mention the city itself could care less with the million other things going on there. As for the expense -- every aspect of fan cost would be exponentially greater from food to lodging, difficulty in getting around, etc. It's never going to happen.

 

[Caustic Undertow]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Ah, yes...good point. That one would be #4 North Dakota at Michigan State.

Hadn't thought of that. Preventing North Dakota from rightfully hosting a hockey tournament game would certainly add weight to the NCAA's argument.

 

[mookie1995]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

put first two rounds back on campus sites and make it two game total goal, or best of three, whatever. that is eight rinks that have a chance to be filled (revenue) and more games to see / be seen.

FIRST ROUND 2 game total goal
afa @ bc (air force can fly themselves )
msu @ michigan (same conf, so what)
lowell @ union
western @ sioux
cornell @ miami (drivable)
denver @ ferris (denver far from everyone)
maine @ duluth (maine travels well! )
bu @ gophs (going anyways - my idea so i can't play favorites)

2ND ROUND Best of 3
gophs at bc
duluth at michigan
ferris @ union
miami @ siou...er, they can't host an ncaa game since they are offensive -- so sioux @ miami.

then the winners go to tampa.

more games. bigger crowds at home on campus (spring break is done now).

i liked the 2 games total goals on campus. college hockey aint big enough for regionals like this. sorry
or have 'east' sites and 'west' sites so it is easier to get to. tough on short notice to get halfway across the country. when we found out bu was going to st paul, flights were $700 since it was under the 7 day dealy.. i have miles so it was easy for me to 'spend' the 25,000 to fly (and the marriott points for free rooms for two nights) - but if i had to pay out that i don't think i would.

 

[billmich88888]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

put first two rounds back on campus sites and make it two game total goal, or best of three, whatever. that is eight rinks that have a chance to be filled (revenue) and more games to see / be seen.

FIRST ROUND 2 game total goal
afa @ bc (air force can fly themselves )
msu @ michigan (same conf, so what)
lowell @ union
western @ sioux
cornell @ miami (drivable)
denver @ ferris (denver far from everyone)
maine @ duluth (maine travels well! )
bu @ gophs (going anyways - my idea so i can't play favorites)

2ND ROUND Best of 3
gophs at bc
duluth at michigan
ferris @ union
miami @ siou...er, they can't host an ncaa game since they are offensive -- so sioux @ miami.

then the winners go to tampa.

more games. bigger crowds at home on campus (spring break is done now).

i liked the 2 games total goals on campus. college hockey aint big enough for regionals like this. sorry
or have 'east' sites and 'west' sites so it is easier to get to. tough on short notice to get halfway across the country. when we found out bu was going to st paul, flights were $700 since it was under the 7 day dealy.. i have miles so it was easy for me to 'spend' the 25,000 to fly (and the marriott points for free rooms for two nights) - but if i had to pay out that i don't think i would.

I'm sorry, I stopped reading immediately after 2 game total goals was proposed as any type of relevant solution...

 

[bronconick]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

The people whipping out the multiple game 1st rounds are going to drive me up a wall. Only in a NCAA sport would you have the early rounds be best of series and then as (presumably) the elite teams advance, you suddenly go to single game elimination to bring as much possible luck and chaos into the formula. Even the NCAA figured this out when they made the final in the CWS a best of 3.

Going back to home ice for the higher seed isn't a panacea either. With the volatility of the Pairwise, there were maybe 4 schools that knew going into the final weekend that they would be top 8 and host a series. So, you're expecting 8-24 sellouts from 4-5 days of selling tickets on short notice at an elevated price ($40-50?) point compared to regular season for every school, grossly so in the case of some schools as the NCAA sucks as much cash as they can out? Good luck with that.

I honestly wonder if they couldn't add ~20% on their current sales right now simply by moving the regionals to the "bye" weekend. The Frozen Four is close to a sellout regardless, giving people 10 days instead of 3 to try to get tickets and accommodations worked out couldn't hurt.

 

[Numbers]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

I shall propose a totally out of the normal idea, one that I don't think has been tried in hockey, ever. First, my reason for this idea:
1) It is obvious the NCAA greatly prefers single elimination tourneys, so I don't think a 2 out of 3 has a chance of getting in.
2) In baseball, the have double elimination.

So, I propose something like this:
2 sites : East, West. 2 Weekends. Double Elimination, with a slight modification, so all games are guaranteed to be played.

First week: Teams 1,8,9,16; 4,5,12,13 or some reasonable facsimile of that (by which I mean cut down travel as much as possible):
Friday Eve: 1/16 (Game 1); 8/9(Game 2) Sat PM : 4/13(Game 3); 5/12(Game 4)
Sat Eve : Winners from Friday(Gm 5), Losers from Friday(Gm 6) Sun PM: Winners from Sat Eve(Gm 7), Losers from Sat Eve(Gm 8).

Second week: Friday Eve: Winner 6 v Loser 7 (Call this Game 9); Winner 8 v Loser 9 (Game 10)
Sat Eve : Winner 5 v Winner 6 (Winner of this game advances to Frozen 4) (This would be Game 11); Winner 9 v Winner 10 (Game 12)
Sun PM : Winner 12 v Loser 11 (Winner of this game advances to Frozen 4)

And, the same at the other site.

Frozen Four would be Fri/Sun, and the Semis would be Winner 11 (undefeated) from one region v Winner 13 (one-loss team) from the other region.

So, this system means that the first week, all teams get 2 games, with only one overnight stay. That's better for fans. It means that one lucky goal or one hot game by a goal tender won't eliminate you. And, the 2nd week, all 5 games have a direct reward or disappointment to their result. That is, if you lose you go home, except one game in which if you win, you go to the Frozen 4.

And, if you want to, you could have week 2 at a different site than week 1. So, this year, the first week plays at Bridgeport, the 2nd at Worcester in the east. In the west, first week at Green Bay, 2nd at St Paul. If you want to.

I know it is out of the ordinary, but what do you think?

 

[Alton]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

I know it is out of the ordinary, but what do you think?

Kudos for thinking outside of the box, but...

(1) a quadruple-header on Saturday the first weekend? What are the game times, noon-3:15-6:30-9:45? 10am-1:15-4:30-7:45? What if there is a double-overtime game?
(2) why would I travel to that first weekend? You're just playing for seeding, and to eliminate 2 of the 8 teams.

 

[Numbers]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Kudos for thinking outside of the box, but...

(1) a quadruple-header on Saturday the first weekend? What are the game times, noon-3:15-6:30-9:45? 10am-1:15-4:30-7:45? What if there is a double-overtime game?
(2) why would I travel to that first weekend? You're just playing for seeding, and to eliminate 2 of the 8 teams.

Alton, these are good questions:
To answer #2 first: Do you ever travel when your team is on the road during the year? If so, why? There is nothing at stake, but your team is playing 2 games. Here at least we have something at stake.

Now, to #1. This the format here in Minnesota for the High School State Tournament every year (Or at least it has been. I haven't watched closely lately. Come to think of it, I think they do it twice every year, once for each class on Wed and Thurs). Only difference between that and this idea is that the high schoolers play 17 minute periods. Double or Triple overtime game? What happened last weekend at the 2 conference tourneys that had them?

I don't know the details, but I would propose 12 and 30 minutes after the first game, and 6:30 and 30 minutes later.

I am not meaning to defend my idea, rather I mean to fill in details. I hadn't thought of the Sat quad as being a problem, because, like I said, I have seen it happen many times.

 

[Alton]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Alton, these are good questions:
To answer #2 first: Do you ever travel when your team is on the road during the year?

Yes, of course. But why am I traveling to these games? Isn't that the problem we are trying to solve--not enough people have a desire to go to the regionals. Making them less relevant seems like it's not much of a solution. If I want to see my team advance to Tampa, I go to the second weekend, but I can skip the first weekend (and if they're in the losers bracket after the first weekend, maybe I'm not as interested in going to the second weekend). People are not interested in attending the regionals now. That's the problem. The solution is to make the regionals something that people will want to attend. More hockey isn't going to do that, except among the hardest core of fandom like you and me.

Double or Triple overtime game? What happened last weekend at the 2 conference tourneys that had them?

What happened, I imagine, is that the session ended over an hour after they thought it would. You can't start a game 30 minutes after the last game ended: this isn't high school. You need to resurface (15 minutes), have practice/warmups (15 minutes, starting with 38 minutes on the countdown clock), resurface (15 minutes, starting with 23 minutes on the clock), have introductions (teams come out with 8 minutes on the clock). Don't suggest that teams warm up on the old ice from the previous game--that's a non-starter for safety reasons. With the extra TV timeouts, regulation games are about 2:25 in the NCAA playoffs, so that's a minimum of 3:18 between start times. Without overtime.

So game 4 will end 12 hours and 19 minutes after game 1 starts. Without overtime. Each overtime session will add between 16 and 55 minutes to the day.

 

[Numbers]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Alton, There is one other option for the Saturday Quad-header. It would be to have the Friday winners play on Sunday, rather than Sautyrday, so you have triple headers on Sat and Sun. But, that's not so nice for the fans of those teams, because they have an extra days' stay, and they don't know that ahead of time.

 

[Alton]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

No matter how you slice it, 8 games in 3 days is a lot of hockey. More hockey than almost anybody would want to attend, especially if there is no winner crowned at the end.

I would enjoy the heck out of it, and so would the other 100 or so people who show up for all 8 games, but I'm not sure it's a solution to our problem.

 

[Numbers]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Yes, of course. But why am I traveling to these games? Isn't that the problem we are trying to solve--not enough people have a desire to go to the regionals. Making them less relevant seems like it's not much of a solution. If I want to see my team advance to Tampa, I go to the second weekend, but I can skip the first weekend (and if they're in the losers bracket after the first weekend, maybe I'm not as interested in going to the second weekend). People are not interested in attending the regionals now. That's the problem. The solution is to make the regionals something that people will want to attend. More hockey isn't going to do that, except among the hardest core of fandom like you and me.

All good points in the above post, Alton. I see where you are coming from. I actually think there are 2 problems here, although one is not a huge practical problem, it is more of a perspective problem.

One problem is that hockey, by it's nature, is a game of good fortune. Crazy puck bounces, hot goaltenders, penalty calls (I am not balming the officials, rather, it's impossible in real time to do their job perfect. That's why we see what we call make-up calls). So, how 'fair' is it to award the most coveted championship to the team who wins 4 one-offs in a row? I think we often see NCAA tourneys in which, if we did it all again, there is a good chance the winner would go out in round one. Don Lucia said tonight on his show, that if we do these regionals over in another week, we likely get 4 different winners. So, that's what the double-elimination is addressing.

Of course, I understand, the more I think of it, that this is a solution in search of a problem. Most people are just fine with the single-elimination tourney, I suppose.

Now, a few more long winded comments. One argument about attendance would go like this: 8 teams at one regional maybe means more attendance. Of course, someone up thread mentioned that the trend seems to be that fewer and fewer attend the games that don't involve 'their' teams. Not much helps that.

And, thanks for filling me in on the between games protocol. I was not aware of it. My pocketbook does not allow me to attend games, you see. I have to be a seat of the pants fan.

Please continue. I enjoy everyone's thoughts.

 

[Caustic Undertow]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Only in a NCAA sport would you have the early rounds be best of series and then as (presumably) the elite teams advance, you suddenly go to single game elimination to bring as much possible luck and chaos into the formula.

Only in NCAA... and in UEFA, whose (world famous, watched by 9 figures) Champions League final is the only single-elimination game of the entire tournament.

The reason people don't go to regionals isn't because of short notice. It's because they aren't close. Selling home games might be tough in a week, but selling distant regionals is even harder. I'm considering driving 5 hours to Green Bay, the closest Michigan plays to me all season, but for even the one day (Friday) I could go it is brutally expensive and my "reward" will be a dull arena atmosphere. The reason I'm even considering it is I have a chance to take my kids to their first Michigan game of any kind. Moving the regional back might make planning a bit easier but it won't change my mind.

Numbers, I appreciate creative and original thinking, but double-elimination is just not going to work. It is brutally complicated, which turns off fans. It is hard on facilities. It's simply not reasonable.

 

[Alton]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Only in NCAA... and in UEFA, whose (world famous, watched by 9 figures) Champions League final is the only single-elimination game of the entire tournament.

Wait a minute...in the UEFA cup, the round of 16, the quarterfinals and the semifinals are also single-elimination. It's just that those single-elimination games in the earlier rounds are 180 minutes long (with a 166-hour halftime break), not 90.

The counter-example I was going to give is much closer to home: the Memorial Cup. The first rounds in each league are best-of-7, but the final is a round robin followed by two or three single-elimination games.

 

[Caustic Undertow]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Good example. The Memorial Cup is weird, in some ways unlike any other sporting event I'm familiar with. You have a home team getting a free berth (the Cup location is only awarded the year before, and both facility quality and team quality are considered in the bid, to avoid having a lemon in the finals), using a round robin to eliminate one team with a potential tie-breaker game, and a play-in. It's almost an exhibition, except that everybody desperately wants to win it.

Three years ago Windsor, one of the streakiest dynasties of all time, lost its first two games, won the tie-breaker and play-in, and then won the whole thing. The next year they scored a zillion goals, got a bye to the final, and crushed the host team (Brandon) that they had already beaten 9-1 earlier in the week. Here's how streaky they were: That season they lost only three games in the postseason--and they were the first three games of their conference final series to Kitchener. They roared back from down 3-0 and never lost again. It's a strange world up there. The typical OHL playoff format is to alternate home games <b>every game</b>, rather than go 2-2-1-1-1 like you'd expect. The travel is brutal. Er, must be hard for those guys to keep up on their academics.

 

[IronRangeHockey]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Thumbing your nose? I'd think Tampa and Anaheim would be enticing locations from a weather standpoint, especially for hockey fans who are generally in cold weather cities. A mini-vacation and a hockey tournament sounds like a good deal, not thumbing their nose.

Trust me, no one wants to go to Detroit. No matter how central it is to the core hockey fan.

The "vacation bit" shouldn't be decided upon by the NCAA. If thats truely the case lets have it in Hawaii or the Carribean.. Otherwise i'd rather it be in a traditional hockey market where the sport is alive and embraced which imo is what its all about. My wife and I travel to our vacation spots every year and have been doing that for 30 years, I can guarantee we wont travel to Florida for a hockey game. And we travel alot for hockey games.

I understand a few would make the trip and enjoy the experience. We wouldn't. Not being a fan of Florida doesn't help.

Thats my big gripe. As far as the length of the season, I like it.

One thing i've always thought odd is how the schedules are created, its very much a free-for all (non con's) decided upon by the programs. There may be no better way of doing it, and im not complaining, I just find it a bit odd.

 

[Fishman'81]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

I disagree with the notion that college hockey can't be "grown". You young bucks should have seen what I had to go through back in The Day, just to dig up the bare scores on an in-season Monday morning...

There was no timely national coverage whatsoever, well into the 90's, and the only game most of us ever got on TV was the NC game on ESPN. (And not the entire FF, mind you.) We've gone from having that one game a season televised, to having several on each and every self-respecting cable package across our fair nation every single weekend. HUGE improvement there.

Does having an NC game in Anaheim or Tampa help with national recognition..? I don't know which is the horse and which is the cart on that one, but the FF sells-out wherever it is, so I don't see the harm in putting it out there in less-than-traditional hockey markets. (Cripe, California, Texas and Arizona are producing NCAA players now, among many other locales that never have natural ice.)

Take it from The Old Dad, our sport has grown by leaps and bounds in the past 20 years or so. I would say that it's easily a distant third to football and hoops in popularity at the college level, and that's progress.

(To any of you: is it now a rule that Regionals may no longer be played on on-campus ice? I must have missed something somewhere along the line. Used to p*ss me off like you wouldn't believe when Mariucci and Yost were regular sites.)

 

[Craig P.]

Re: College Hockey's Playoff Problem.

Here's a box from 2000, with Michigan and Maine playing to a crowd of 9k in Albany. Albany is much further from Maine than Worcester is from UNH. Michigan defeated Colgate in front of a nearly equal crowd the day before . . . so it wasn't just a bunch of Mainers making a 6-7 hour drive for day 2.

Note that Albany goosed attendance at the regional by selling a 2000 regionals / 2001 Frozen Four ticket package.