This is pretty disgusting, and if UAH gets in, it will be downright absurd. Imagine if the equivalent of this cakewalk in the CCHA:
Team goes 10-20 all year long, winning no real meaningful games, among barely winning at all.
Recieves a free ride straight to the conference semi-finals, bypassing the first round seeding of having to play a top ranked team, and bypassing the quarterfinals of having to play another top ranked team.
Then in the semi-final, plays Western Michigan, and in the title game plays Bowling Green.
Absolute absurdity, they knew the conference was folding and that 3 of the teams found homes, yet they still allowed them to keep the autobid. In this case their reasoning of "preserving hockey teams" no longer applies, yet it still happened, and now the nightmare scenario has come to life. What a joke. At large bids reward the teams that are good all year long, and auto bids reward the teams that say despite our record, we can play ball with the good teams, and also rewards teams that are hot at the end of the year. This fails completely here. UAH is none of these. Thankfully, this will all go away after this year, so theres no chance of drama repeating.
After all the rules are the rules, and we can't change them now, so no use complaining further. However, the most alarming thing to me is that one of the #1 seeds is going to get to play a .400 garbage team first round in the NCAA tournament, and another one of those just as deserving #1 seeds is going to have to play someone like UMD. There is no shuffling of locations and seedings that can make up for this complete collapse and failure of fairness. Winning your regular season title? Nope, doesn't guarantee. Winning 3 out of 4 conference tournament games against the top teams? Nope, not that either. Have 3 Hobey finalists on your roster? Not a chance. Being unconcious all year long for 5 months, and showing up at the end to play a single weekend of hockey against two .400 equally unconcious teams? Yup, you're in.
At least if Niagara wins they will have kind of earned it(?)... but not really. I hope the NCAA is ashamed of dropping the ball this round. My deepest empathy to the #17 bubble team.
Making the NCAA is a huge honor and an incredible amount of work and pressure, whichever path they qualify. I hope all 15 teams are proud and play well. What a possibly disgraceful and tarnishing end to UAH's hockey athletic.