Seeding this year’s NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey championship was “pretty straightforward,” that according to Tim Troville, senior associate director of athletics at Harvard and Chair of the NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey committee.
Despite some midweek concern that potential intraconference first-round matchups would be either unavoidable or cause a major shift in the bracket integrity, the committee was able to seed this year’s tournament making minimal changes to the ideal bracket (i.e. 1 vs. 16, 2 vs. 15, etc.).
“It was pretty straightforward compared to previous years,” said Troville, now in his third season as a member of the committee and first year as chair. “That’s where the PairWise and the way we try to maintain bracket integrity help us out a lot.”
Always one of the biggest concerns of the NCAA is the attendance of regionals. In recent tournaments, attendance has been up which has quelled the vocal calls for opening-round tournament games to be played on campus.
But Troville said ticket sales for this year’s regionals have been decent and the fields at each site include a team or teams whose fanbases will help drive attendance.
“College hockey is reaching a peak of popularity across the board,” Troville said. “We feel pretty good going into today where we are in regional [attendance]. We’re looking forward to venues that are lively.”
Because there was little the committee needed to do to increase attendance, there were fewer swaps of teams. One swap that did not occur but was being tossed around in social media channels on Saturday evening was the thought of sending Maine to the Manchester Region and shipping top seed Boston College to Allentown.
Friday’s Hockey East championship game at TD Garden where more than 10,000 (possibly more) of the 17,000 plus fans in attendance were clad in Black Bears gear proved that fan base is still one that can mobilize. SNHU Arena in Manchester lists a capacity of 10,019 for hockey. With Maine there that is almost guaranteed a sellout.
But shifting Maine to Manchester and sending top seed Boston College to Allentown to face region host Penn State would have been beyond unfair to the tournament’s top overall seed.
“We considered everything and some things more briefly than others,” said Troville. “For us, having Maine in Allentown was the best solution. We really wanted to consider doing a great service for our membership by considering the bracket before we issued it.”
The start times for the games will once again be staggered, beginning at 2 p.m. each weekday (Thursday and Friday) with slots at 2:00, 5:00, 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. ET each day. Regional final times are listed as to be determined by the NCAA at this point.
All 15 games of the tournament will air on the ESPN family of networks with 13 of those 15 games available linearly on ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPNews.
