BU and Denver were two of the three best teams in college hockey this season, as determined by the ratings system to seed the NCAA Tournament, if the eye test didn’t do the job for you already.
BU checks in at No. 2 overall behind archrival BC with not much separating those two clubs, even after the Eagles’ 6-2 pasting of the Terriers in the Hockey East title game. Denver solidified its top-seed (3rd overall) after winning the conference tournament in a wildly-competitive NCHC.
The prize for all that? Traveling across the country for the first two rounds of the tournament.
The reason behind BU and Denver having to go out on long trips boils down to two things: regional hosts being entitled to play in their respective region and the NCAA’s insistence on avoiding any and all intra-conference matchups in the first round.
Two of the four regional hosts, UMass and Omaha, found their way into the tournament after spending the final weeks of the regular season on the bubble. That put UMass in the Northeast Regional in Springfield, Mass. and Omaha in the West Regional in Sioux Falls, S.D. UMass and Omaha are conference rivals with BU and Denver, respectively. As a result, BU was sent out to Sioux Falls instead of Springfield, a 90-minute drive from campus. And Denver heads to Springfield, which is much further from Denver than Sioux Falls is – even if Sioux Falls isn’t necessarily in their backyard.
It all begs the question, is it right, and does it make sense?
And if you think this setup is something that is ‘right’ or ‘makes sense,’ then we have different definitions of both words.
For Denver, it’s the second straight year they’ve earned a No. 1 seed only to have to trudge all the way to New England. Last year, as a 30-win team and the defending national champion, the Pioneers were placed in the East Regional in Manchester, N.H. They were bounced by Cornell in the opening round, 2-0.
And there’s plenty of other instances of teams like Denver realizing a similar fate since the NCAA Tournament took this current 16-team, four-regional format in 2003, finding themselves forced to travel a long way, whether it be due to scenarios like what Denver and BU face or something else.
Like in 2008, when UNH went out to Colorado Springs as a top seed only to fall, 7-3, to Notre Dame in the opening round. Two years later, Denver found itself in a regional in Albany as a No. 1 seed, falling to RIT in the first round. In 2011, BC traveled to St. Louis only to lose, 8-4, to Colorado College while Miami went to Manchester, N.H. and played UNH, which the fourth-seeded Wildcats came out on top, 3-1. The Red Hawks suffered a similar fate in 2015, placed in the East Regional in Providence as a top seed only to face Providence College, falling 7-5 as the Friars kicked off a run to their first national title.
In 2019, Providence kicked off another Frozen Four run after managing to find itself in a regional in its home city, this time knocking off top-seeded Minnesota State, 6-3, in the opening round (not that it makes any difference, but it should be noted Brown was the host school in both the 2015 and 2019 Providence regionals, not PC). In 2022, Minnesota State found itself traveling to Albany and Western Michigan traveling to Worcester, both as top seeds. While the Mavericks managed to leave Albany with its second straight Frozen Four bid via one-goal wins over Harvard and Notre Dame, the Broncos weren’t so lucky – they lost to Minnesota in the Regional Final after escaping Northeastern in the First Round in overtime.
If you’ve managed to stick around through all that, it’s a long way of saying the best teams in the country aren’t properly rewarded for their performance under the current system. Unless you think traveling to Massachusetts or New Hampshire to play a school from less than an hour away, or Providence too play a school that’s literally minutes away, gives a team that won, give or take, 30 games the advantage they deserve.
The simple, and popular, solution is holding early round matchups at campus sites. One could be adopting the format of the NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament, which has a similar 16-team field, in which higher seed hosts first-round games before moving to neutral sites from there. Or just have both rounds prior to the Frozen Four at campus sites. Having the No. 1 seed host the entire regional is an option as well. The latter two would be better options with the current system of first and second-round games being two days apart.
No matter what solution is, it needs to be something that does right by the best teams in the country, because the system as it currently stands does not.
And there’s no greater instance of that than taking one look at this year’s bracket.
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