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NCAA Hockey - 2023/24 **Insert Witty Tagline**

141 guys in the portal so far.

24 of those are AIC which makes sense. 11 more from NMU, which given how they had to piece together a team at the last minute also makes sense. But some schools I wouldn't expect to have as high of numbers, at least this far. Merrimack has 10, Alaska has 9, Omaha has 9.
 
Spartanforlife4 said:
Fantastic atmosphere in Allentown, but after seeing the attendance in Fargo and Toledo after the local schools lost, I am once again asking them to change the format. (that and UConn having to play a road game as the better seed). We went in circles with this last year after the stupidity that was putting MSU, NoDak, UM and WMU in a 2500 seat arena in Missouri, but just change it to playing best 2 of 3 at campus sites. 1-8 host week 1, you get rid of the bye week and the next best four teams host the next week. Then the Frozen Four stays the same. If a school thinks they'll have an issue with availablility they can put in an alternate bid site like baseball and softball
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I get that people hate this, but BC easily had home ice advantage over Denver. Manchester is an hour and a half closer to BC than Allentown is to PSU.

And I very much understand how dumb remote regionals are.

But the home ice advantage thing isn't consistent enough to actually matter.

So....
 
Not sure how many butts in seats there were at the various venues for the regional finals, but the boxscore attendances looked pretty good. A total of just under 51,000 for the 8 sessions, an average of just under 6400. In Toledo the total for two sessions was 13,480. I was at at 2013 regional there and the total boxscore attendance for the two sessions was 5448. For the first round games I actually counted the people in the building (Notre Dame slept through their game and by the time the third period was winding down I had nothing better to do) and it was less than 1000. Miami was also in that regional, so two schools with an extremely easy drive. We stuck around for the first period of the Miami/Minn State game and the crowd was barely better. I doubt 1500 people walked through the turnstiles. This year the crowd at Toledo looked pretty good on TV, at least for the first round games.

Boxscore numbers and actual people in he building are different I know, but it didn't seem like this was anywhere near as bad as some of the disasters at Van Andel or the Big Ten tournament games at Joe Louis. I swear to God one of those games at the Joe had 500 people in a 20,000 seat arena. There were probably 500 people in the Joe at 2:00 in the morning on a day without a game.
 
WeAreNDHockey said:
Not sure how many butts in seats there were at the various venues for the regional finals, but the boxscore attendances looked pretty good. A total of just under 51,000 for the 8 sessions, an average of just under 6400. In Toledo the total for two sessions was 13,480. I was at at 2013 regional there and the total boxscore attendance for the two sessions was 5448. For the first round games I actually counted the people in the building (Notre Dame slept through their game and by the time the third period was winding down I had nothing better to do) and it was less than 1000. Miami was also in that regional, so two schools with an extremely easy drive. We stuck around for the first period of the Miami/Minn State game and the crowd was barely better. I doubt 1500 people walked through the turnstiles. This year the crowd at Toledo looked pretty good on TV, at least for the first round games.

Boxscore numbers and actual people in he building are different I know, but it didn't seem like this was anywhere near as bad as some of the disasters at Van Andel or the Big Ten tournament games at Joe Louis. I swear to God one of those games at the Joe had 500 people in a 20,000 seat arena. There were probably 500 people in the Joe at 2:00 in the morning on a day without a game.
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I suspect this years turnout has probably been helped by the presence of some local teams in both the Ohio and Pa regionals. I prefer the regional setup, but it sucks when no one is present, especially when there are some exciting games. Even though I, unfortunately, don't have a dog in this year's fight, and in spite of some lackluster officiating, this has been a fun tournament to watch.
 
Toledo sold out at least the first day and probably had 90-95% of seats filled for the second game even with OSU losing early. Second day sales were good pre-tournament as well, though I’m not sure if that sold out and it definitely wasn’t going to once MSU and OSU were eliminated. Great arena they have there as well. Minus the horn.

But it still doesn’t make sense to try to put it on the same pedestal as men’s basketball and go neutral sites, especially when the regionals aren’t in population centers that are easy to travel to. Women’s basketball realized this and not only moved the first two rounds back to campus sites, but consolidated to super regionals for the S16 and E8. It’s clear the NCAA knows there’s a popularity/attendance issue when it’s mandatory the host school in hockey must play at the site, while in basketball they’re specifically not allowed to play at a site they host for the early rounds.

And it’s not just the home ice aspect, it’s the overall atmosphere. The basketball conference championship games where the higher seed hosts the final in their small gym with 2000 fans are much better to watch on TV than something like the Horizon League playing in front of 2000 fans in Indianapolis. I suppose this could have been solved in Fargo and Toledo by Minnesota and Michigan State winning their first games, but I bet WMU would’ve rather been playing at Lawson in front of crazed Lunatics than out in Fargo for another game in an empty arena.There’s a reason next year WMU can have a chance to do that in the NCHC instead of playing in front of 1500 North Dakota fans in St Paul against Denver.

Then there’s the fact we take a series-based sport and make it single elimination. Outside of the opening round of AHA and all of Hockey East, the only time hockey is a single elimination sport is in the semifinals and finals of in-season and conference tournaments. But for some reason the NCAA we make it four rounds of single elimination. They don’t do that with baseball and softball. That one is double elimination to the end.

It probably won’t change, and if it does it’s still a few years out unless contracts are easy to break with the regional bids being confirmed four years out, but in the words of Frank Constanza, there must be a better way.
 
Got a question for those who want the first round a best 2 of 3. Or more than one related question...

The goal of that is to replace "randomness" in games, as I understand it.

So that is the goal, why not replace every round like that? Seems odd that you would tolerate it for the 1-4 and 2-3 , matchup, but not the following 1-2 matchups. And I mean that is the actual goal of removing the randomness, right? People get upset when there are upsets by regional host underdogs, and that's what we want to "fix"- but the solution is to give the higher seed a better chance to avoid a single game upset.

I don't understand why eliminating the "randomness" is just applied to the first round- as I see it, it should be replaced all rounds or no rounds. (I personally think the B1G tournament is stupid- especially when the B1G never, ever, ever promoted the tournament anywhere close to what the CCHA did, and I would bet the WCHA did- so that the on campus outcome was decided before the tournament even got going).

Then again, if the goal is to avoid the single game upset, why even have the round? Just go to the frozen four.

This is only brought up when a host low seed wins a regional- it's never when the #1 seed that has the same host benefits looses- people are upset about PSU-UConn but ignore Denver-BC. NoDak has lost their home regional as #1, but people only are upset when Michigan beat NoDak as the host at Yost (going back a really long time). If the regional advantage was that big of a factor, the home #1 seed would not lose as often as they do.
 
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