NCAA Hockey Tourney Prediction Feb 6

On the day that the most famous in-season tournament gets underway (the Beanpot), my first look at the end of the season tournament in two weeks presents some intriguing tourney match ups and regionals.

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

1 BU 13 Michigan St

8 Merrimack 10 Notre Dame

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

2 Michigan 15 North Dakota

7 Minnesota 9 Maine

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

3 UMass Lowell 14 Northern Michigan

6 BC 11 Union

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

4 Ferris State 16 Air Force

5 UMD 12 Ohio State

Now the explanation for how I came to these regionals:

I began by putting the four one seeds in the regionals, with BU to Worcester, Michigan to St Paul, Lowell to Bridgeport and Ferris to Green Bay. I followed that with the two seeds, with the host school Minnesota going to St Paul, Duluth to Green Bay, BC to Bridgeport, and Merrimack to Worcester. Through the first two lines of seeds, the tournament is looking great, with all 8 schools as close to home as their seeding allows.

The next two lines were subsequently matched up and resulted in two interconference matchups: Ferris St-Michigan St and Merrimack-Maine, one on each line. The first solution is the easiest, as attendance issues were a non-factor in that decision. Maine couldn't be switched with Union (would just create another interconference matchup), so either way a western team was going east and an eastern team going west. The choice was to keep bracket integrity as close as possible, thus Notre Dame to Worcester and Maine to St Paul (it doesn't hurt sending Notre Dame to the Boston area, either).

The next was the tougher decision because trying to keep bracket integrity in this situation was near impossible. Moving MSU off the Ferris game had only one other option and that was swapping with the 16 seeded Air Force. Unfortunately that means the top team in the tourney gets stuck with the toughest four seed. The only other solution I could come up with was sending Northern to Worcester, MSU to Bridgeport, and Air Force to Green Bay. But does that make the bracket integrity better? I decided it did not, so instead I did solely a MSU/Air Force swap, and voila, there's this week's bracket.

Time to start getting excited folks, conference tournaments start in less than a month!