If someone did want to know whether one conference as a whole was better or worse than another, then they could take a large sample of interconference game results, over a meaningful amount of time. (This isn't all that easy in D1 hockey, by the way, because teams from some conferences play so few non-conference games.) I happen to believe that if you did that, you'd find that the ECAC was right up there at the top in the 80s, then started to drop below the level of the WCHA and Hockey East. I think that for the past ten years, the ECAC has had one or maybe two teams that were competitive with the top teams of other conferences, but pretty consistently a step behind. NCAA results for any given tournament don't say much, but I think there's a reason an ECAC team hasn't played for the title in so long. Over the past year or two, I think the ECAC is closing that gap, and I think this year's overall results bear that out, as Brian Sullivan demonstrated in his column today. I also think that once you get past, say, the 4th-place teams in these conferences, the differences aren't that great. But in the recent past, the best teams in the WCHA, CCHA, and Hockey East have been noticeably better than the best team or two in the ECAC. Those are the teams in the NCAA tournament every year, and that's why the ECAC has done so badly there. They have several good teams every year, but no great ones. That may be changing.
