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Regional Attendance

Re: Regional Attendance

Yeah this 4 games at the same arena is just crazy. No one is going to stay around that long plus the ice is not going to hold up for that long as well. If you can manage 2 games in 2 arenas in an area under 50 miles apart then I could see it but come on where does anyone try to pull off 4 games in one day except in high school. Oh and this Tuesday Wednesday games the PSU writer suggested? Must be nice being in college still and not having a "JOB!" Thrusday is hard to pull of good crowds for games, harder still at neutral sites.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

billmich88888 said:
I have also heard 25% as the ideal NCAA %
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When I said 16 is too much out of 60, I wasn't comparing to professional sports. I was referring to what the NCAA has said (or at least used to) about how many teams should be in a given sport's tournament.
I thought the NCAA used to say that they preferred that sports have between at least 6 and 7 teams per tournament bid. Hockey is an exception to that (1:3.75), but then again so is Basketball (~1:5). So maybe they aren't sticking to that very much.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

Finnedog said:
#8 in the Pairwise would be a number 2 seed, would you really want to leave a team like that out of the tournament, especially if it is your team?
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Your foregeting automatic bids too. What happens when you get 6 non top 8 teams that win tournaments? You get a touranment with only 2 top eight teams and 6 8 and under teams? Makes for a bad tournament and pointless regular season then. 16 works and as much as it pains to say you might as well consider a 12 team first round and 4 top seed byes.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

TigerFan86-87 said:
When I said 16 is too much out of 60, I wasn't comparing to professional sports. I was referring to what the NCAA has said (or at least used to) about how many teams should be in a given sport's tournament.
I thought the NCAA used to say that they preferred that sports have between at least 6 and 7 teams per tournament bid. Hockey is an exception to that (1:3.75), but then again so is Basketball (~1:5). So maybe they aren't sticking to that very much.
Click to expand...
Here are the numbers for 15 team sports the NCAA hosts champions for:
Code: 
Sport                  Teams	Bids      %
Men's Ice Hockey         60     16     26.67%
Women's Water Polo       32      8     25.00%
Men's Soccer            206     50     24.27%
Women's Lacrosse        110     26     23.64%
Men's Lacrosse           69     16     23.19%
Women's Field Hockey     78     18     23.08%
Women's Ice Hockey       36      8     22.22%
Women's Softball        295     64     21.69%
Men's Baseball          300     64     21.33%
Men's Basketball        352     68     19.32%
Women's Soccer          333     64     19.22%
Women's Volleyball      334     64     19.16%
Women's Basketball      349     64     18.34%
Men's Volleyball         22      4     18.18%
Men's Water Polo         23      4     17.39%
[B]Total Teams            2599    538     20.70%[/B]
As can be seen men's ice hockey has the highest percentage of teams and men's water polo has the lowest percentage of teams. Overall just under 21% of all teams participate in the NCAA tournaments. For the 15 sports the median is 21.69% of teams. So it appears the NCAA wants between 20% and 25% of teams to make their tournaments.

Sean
 
billmich88888 said:
Don't forget about a minimum of 3:30 between games

10am
1:30 pm
5 pm
8:30 pm

Try sitting through all of THAT!!!!

You think anyone is ever going to approve of a 10 am start in hockey?
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11 am 1st game at Minnesota HS tournament at the X. The fill the barn for the AA game on Thursday.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

Thx All, Great discussion.

Hope Common Sense prevails. I am old enough to have experience every regional format for NCAA MHOK:
2 out of three (no one wants to go to game 3)
2 game total goals (what a joke!)
6 Teams at one site
4 teams at 4 sites

all good attempts, but none of them work.

Let's please try a high seed host format used by the NHL, NCAA MLAX, NCAA WHOK, NBA, NFL, MLB and many, many others.

The top four seeds have earned:

• The right to host after 35-40 games
• to sell-out their rinks
• to maximize revenue
• to have minimum expenses
• to provide incredible sell-out atmosphere
• to decrease tournament expenses ( only three teams travel)
• to give TV the atmosphere all want

Why is this an option that has never been used?
 
Re: Regional Attendance

Fred.Davenport said:
Let's please try a high seed host format used by the NHL, NCAA MLAX, NCAA WHOK, NBA, NFL, MLB and many, many others.

Why is this an option that has never been used?
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I would think that two things come into play as to why they don't do just this. The first is I think they are just trying to piggyback on the success that march madness has with the bracket fever and the idea of neutral sites working in basketball why wouldn't it work in other sports. Second has to be the fact that when you look at what schools end up hosting normally as the top seeds they tend involve the blue bloods of college hockey being at the top that have great home fan bases. As a lower seed going into a hostile envirnoment like that you have to believe they just don't think its fair at all. Think back if Holy Cross would have played in Mariucci Arena instead of the Ralph. I don't think they would have been even close then. One last thing to consider is the amount of people that would be brought in if you actually did a four team regional at the four top seeds rinks. These rinks this year would have been terrible in my mind to the amount of people there. The Ralph for UND seats 11,640 and the three other schools combined would only seat 11575. I know attendance was bad but 3,000 seat arenas for a 4 team tournament doesn't seem right. I mean what happens when you get a small school east coast team hosting two teams from further out west and they both make it to the finals. You could potentially be looking at maybe 1,000 people at a game or less because there may only have been 500 tickets available for the schools and only half of those were sold to their fans.

The only way that seems to me to get butts in the seats is to allow first round hosting of one game and then a three day event with eight teams where you can possibly have the games either in one day or have the games in one day but have two games initially played in another rink. The worst thing about these regionals is just that once you get West of the Philadelphia area schools that play hockey get to be hundreds of miles apart. So when you look at the East and Northeast regionals they just work perfect. But if you took that idea and placed a Frozen four between two cities for example this year would be Tampa and Miami. You place 4 schools in one city and 4 in the other and then have the championship in one of the cities and then rotate in say 2 or 3 years what ever that rotation is. If you have a championship somewhere that is a destination for fans and have enough festivities around like a superbowl weekend style you will have a full NHL rink for three nights so probably a crowd of 80,000 for the games.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

joecct said:
11 am 1st game at Minnesota HS tournament at the X. The fill the barn for the AA game on Thursday.
Click to expand...

That's a bit different. We have a fierce tradition with HS hockey in this state. The record attendance for a hockey game at the X was for the boys' AA tournament, almost 4,000 over stated capacity for a hockey game.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

We attended our first Regional last weekend, and I have to say it was rather disappointing - and not just because of the game's outcome! Sterile arena, horrible bathroom facilities, terrible concession food, locked into the building for the duration, this was all as expected. No room on the bench for Harvard's 3rd keeper. But all those empty seats! And half the people that were there didn't care a bit about either team on the ice. We had bored BC fans behind us during the Providence-Duluth OT who were chanting "someone score". Every place we have seen the Crimson play, at BC, BU, Lowell, QU, Yale, Dartmouth, was far far better when it came to what is often called "atmosphere" here. Even neutral Lake Placid, much much more fun than Worcester.

With regard to high seed campus sites, and fans that mainly want to see their own team. Why force so many to buy tickets to games they probably wouldn't pay to go see? So then you get empty seats or fans who come late / leave early and don't care much while they are there. Why not sell the prelim round games separately, and then make the finals tickets contingent? So for the East Regional (at Providence) for example, sell the PC-Duluth and Harvard-BC games separately for less than the pair - but sure those really wanting too see both games can do so at a reasonable two-fer price. So you can still get out for dinner between, enjoy the town a little more, etc., or not as you wish. Then make the finals tickets contingent. By this I mean you can opt to buy those final tickets the usual way (whoever ends up playing, I want to go) or as a Harvard fan you can buy it as Harvard only. That same ticket can then be sold again as BC only. If your team isn't in the final, you get a refund, simple. Just like refunds for "if necessary" game 3s. Then you can use the sometimes smaller campus sites and have full, totally involved crowds for every single game. Crazy idea, I'm sure.
 
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Re: Regional Attendance

joecct said:
BINGO!!

Which is why the non power schools want one and done on neutral ice.
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Quite accurate. And a perfectly rational wish list for the "non power schools."

It also suggests a compromise. Keep the tournament one and done in deference to the underdogs. Compromise just enough on neutral ice to stage events with a minimally acceptable fan experience. Give a little, get a little.

Compromise: A Dying Art

Yes, I understand that unwillingness to compromise is a problem that goes way beyond college hockey, and that we're far from the worst offenders. That said, we're behaving like lemmings on this issue. Year after year, we shrug and step off the cliff again.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

pgb-ohio said:
Quite accurate. And a perfectly rational wish list for the "non power schools."

It also suggests a compromise. Keep the tournament one and done in deference to the underdogs. Compromise just enough on neutral ice to stage events with a minimally acceptable fan experience. Give a little, get a little.

Compromise: A Dying Art

Yes, I understand that unwillingness to compromise is a problem that goes way beyond college hockey, and that we're far from the worst offenders. That said, we're behaving like lemmings on this issue. Year after year, we shrug and step off the cliff again.
Click to expand...

Why should the B1G compromise when they can just go straight to the NCAA and get rules changed?
 
Re: Regional Attendance

St. Clown said:
The record attendance for a hockey game at the X was for the boys' AA tournament, almost 4,000 over stated capacity for a hockey game.
Click to expand...

To be fair, that was because as people left the first game, they sold a new ticket for the second game. That is what inflated them to 4,000 over capacity.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

ticapnews said:
Why should the B1G compromise when they can just go straight to the NCAA and get rules changed?
Click to expand...
You already know the answer, but I'll indulge you. Because proceeding in that fashion has a cancerous effect on the college hockey community as a whole.

You're undoubtedly referring to the eligibility proposal spearheaded by Coach Lucia. Moving forward as he did was wrong. The idea itself wasn't the earth shattering change it was made out to be. But the damage to the community caused by Lucia's end run tactic greatly exceeded any good that might come from the proposal.

Here's another thing to consider. This is just one poster's guess; I've never seen this thought published anywhere. But it sure felt like the Lucia proposal was a direct response to the coaches' vote last spring. In other words, a little bit of political revenge.

By behaving like Congress, we're collectively shooting ourselves in the foot. It needs to stop. Oh, most likely it won't. But it should.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

NCAA Home Ice For AH, ECAC & WCHA​

Many oppose campus sites for the first round of the NCAA playoffs. They believe, with some justification, that it would difficult for "smaller schools" to earn home ice. But it's certainly possible to create a format to fix that. At the same time, we could add a good bit spice to the conference tournaments. So in the spirit of compromise, I offer this format:

1. The six auto-bid winners get the top 6 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Don't like it? Win your conference tournament.

2. The existing pairwise numbers rank the autobid teams from 1-6. All get home ice for the Round of 16.

3. At-large tournament bids for the exact same teams as the status quo. Re-rank from #7 through #16 using the existing pairwise numbers. #7 & #8 get home ice for the Round of 16. #9 through #16 travel.


Home Ice For Autobids: Using 2016 Teams as an Example​

Autobid Teams
#1 Quinnipiac
#2 St. Cloud State
#3 Michigan
#4 Northeastern
#5 Ferris State
#6 RIT

At-Large Teams Earning Home Ice
#7 North Dakota
#8 Providence

At-Large Teams Traveling
#9 Boston College
#10 Denver
#11 U-Mass Lowell
#12 Boston University
#13 Yale
#14 Harvard
#15 Notre Dame
#16 UMD


First Round Pairings (Round of 16)
#16 UMD @ #1 Quinnipiac
#9 BC @ #8 Providence

#13 Yale @ #4 Northeastern
#12 Boston University @ #5 Ferris State

#15 Notre Dame @ #2 St. Cloud State
#10 Denver @ #7 North Dakota

#14 Harvard @ #3 Michigan
#11 U-Mass Lowell @ #6 RIT


Discussion Points
1. The Committee is given enough discretion to swap BC & Denver to eliminate the two intra-conference match-ups, if desired. Conversely, I would not allow any swap that would take away a team's home ice assignment.

2. Home Ice teams are free to play at their campus facility, or the neutral facility of their choice. Any seating capacity issues are resolved as the home team deems appropriate. By winning their conference tournaments, (or one of the top 2 at-large bids) they've earned that right. The only restriction is that there must be a Visitor's Allotment of at least 250 tickets.

3. In the 2016 example, the top 4 teams in the original pairwise all got home ice, whether they earned an auto-bid or not. I have to believe that would be a typical result under the proposed system.

4. In this first example, we would up with 4 Western sites and 4 Eastern sites. Not sure if that would be typical. But because there are 3 Western leagues and 3 Eastern leagues, the "worst" result would be a 3/5 split.

5. What's that you say? RIT is an easy out, and is being unjustly enriched? OK River Hawks; it's up to you. Go to Rochester and prove that.

6. No doubt this could be tweaked/improved. But my point is that there are ways to deal with most any objection. The task is to prioritize the various concerns, and find a balance that works for all. Tough task? Absolutely. But not impossible if everyone comes to the table in good faith.
 
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Re: Regional Attendance

Problem with that proposal is the conference tournaments aren't equal. Considerably tougher to slog through multiple rounds of the HE tournament, for instance, than winning two games in the B1G.
 
Re: Regional Attendance

pgb-ohio said:
NCAA Home Ice For AH, ECAC & WCHA​

Many oppose campus sites for the first round of the NCAA playoffs. They believe, with some justification, that it would difficult for "smaller schools" to earn home ice. But it's certainly possible to create a format to fix that. At the same time, we could add a good bit spice to the conference tournaments. So in the spirit of compromise, I offer this format:

1. The six auto-bid winners get the top 6 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Don't like it? Win your conference tournament.
Click to expand...

I... kind of like this, actually.

pgb-ohio said:
Riverhawks
Click to expand...

two words. :mad:
 
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