A lot of schools would love to host, but the NCAA won't host at home sites, only near-home sites, and charges outrageous ticket prices on top of that. There's little question to me that places like UMD, Michigan, Wisconsin, et al could be interested if they were allowed to host at home. Alas, they want neutral sites that also sell well.
Eastern people don't see a problem with this because all of the regionals are two hours or less from a dozen schools including almost the entirety of whole conferences. Things work differently out west, a constituency that consists of half the sport and should be respected. They find a neutral site somewhere that's close to nobody, host games there, and charge outrageous prices for inferior products. And I say that as someone who has actually spent significant money to take my family to a regional hours away from home.
The obvious, logical answer is to host the first two rounds at the home sites of the higher seed, as they do in many NCAA sports. Worried about home crowds? No problem, make them earned. Your boys can host a game or two at Tsongas, a surprise high seed out of the WCHA (like Mankato a couple of years ago) gets to expose its fans to real playoff hockey instead of sending them to Indiana, North Dakota can host at the Ralph instead of dummy not-quite-home locations nearby. More fans come, the product is better, everybody is happy.
But as long as the Boston-area folks are happy, you know, the sport must be ok.
