The 'V' Spot: ECAC Big Wigs Should Reject Playoff Expansion

At their annual meeting on May 16, the athletic directors of the ECAC will be voting on a proposal to change the current playoff format to allow all 12 men’s hockey teams into the postseason. To avoid making the ECAC even more of a laughing stock of a conference, I urge Harvard Athletic Director Bill Cleary ‘56 and all of the other headmen to please vote no.

The proposal, first reported in the Dartmouth Sports Weekly (nice piece of journalism, Sherzer), will increase the number of teams in the tournament from 10 to all 12, with six winners of best-of-three first round series advancing to Lake Placid. The bottom four remaining seeds would participate in play-in games on Friday for the right to face the top-two seeds in the semifinals on Saturday. The finals then would be on Sunday.

This is a fairly substantial departure from the current format, in which the top ten regular season teams get whittled down to a Final Five at Lake Placid after the first round. The fourth and fifth seeds at Lake Placid have a play-in game on Thursday with the semis on Friday and the ECAC Championship game on Saturday.

Harvard coach Mark Mazzoleni declined to comment and Cleary was, as usual, unavailable, but Dartmouth coach Bob Gaudet advocated for the expansion to USCHO.com.

“Generally speaking, more teams experiencing the playoffs and Lake Placid is positive,” he said. “It’s nice for the kids to have playoff experience and to know that, even if a particular team goes through a tough stretch during the regular season with injuries or other problems, they still have a chance to make it a really successful season.”

As nice as Gaudet’s statement sounds, from a competitive standpoint, this is a bad idea.

First, allowing everyone in the playoffs reduces the regular season to merely a battle for seeding in the tournament. The only thing up for grabs in 22 conference games is home ice for the first round and the right to maul the bottom of the conference in the first round. The regular season took a big hit last year when the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament was removed. Now, it is further devalued by removing the penalty for failing to perform.

There is no real reason to admit the eleventh and twelfth place teams into the tournament. While Gaudet waxes eloquently about the tough breaks involved in missing the playoffs (until this year the Big Green was one of the teams in that race), the ECAC already provides a tremendous opportunity for students to experience the postseason by admitting 10 teams.

At some point, effusive sentiment must be checked by reality and fairness. The playoffs should be a reward for a job well done during the regular season, and even the most kind-hearted cannot make the case that the last place team should be in the playoffs.

This year, Brown finished dead last with just two wins, two less wins than it had in 2000, when it finished last with four. Since 1985, the average win percentage of the doormat has been .160.

This amounts to a golden protection policy for the first couple seeds in the tournament. Vermont became the first team in the ten-team qualification format to knock off a No. 1 seed this year in the first round by eliminating Clarkson. How much less of a chance would Brown have? How embarrassing will it be for the league to trot out its doormats as “playoff-ready” teams?

Moreover, from a travel perspective, the Lake Placid experience has just become more burdensome. While there always will be the solid contingent of great hockey fans from the North Country at the tournament, Lake Placid is nine hours away from Princeton, five-and-a-half from Boston. The six-team format will now induce another set of fans to try and make the long trip, with now two supporters guaranteed to face a major disappointment in hauling out all that way to see their team play once. At least now, four-of-five sets of fans are guaranteed to see two games.

While the league will increase attendance at the play-in games by moving them from Thursday to Friday night, it creates an additional headache, by putting the championship game on Sunday. Because teams will be playing Saturday night in the semis, the finals cannot start any earlier than the late afternoon out of fairness to the student-athletes. Now fans will face a long haul back from Lake Placid late on Sunday with work Monday morning looming large. By its mountain location, Lake Placid creates a brutal travel schedule for fans and student-athletes alike, the new weekend format only enhances that.

Ideally, the ECAC ought to drop two more teams from the tournament and make its playoffs an eight-team affair. This would make the first round ultra-competitive. Harvard saw just how good an eight-seed could be when it eliminated Jeff Hamilton and the good ol’ Elis this year in the first round. Lake Placid then becomes an elegant four team, mini-Frozen Four, for the ECAC Championship and the right to advance to the NCAA Tournament.

However, there is one factor that has gotten buried somewhat in the discussion of playoff expansion-money. Another first round series and another game in Lake Placid means more revenue for a conference that some have said are struggling. How much this factor has to trump competitive interests will be a judgment reserved for when the conference decides to release some data on its financial health. Certainly, the ECAC needs every possible advantage as it falls further behind the other three major D-I conferences

Clarkson coach Mark Morris certainly hinted that to USCHO.

“I think that having the extra team in Lake Placid looks to be a situation where, getting to that point, we can generate more revenue for the league,” he said. “And hopefully, we can help our league continue to improve in terms of being very competitive on a national level.”

As with everything in life, money talks. I just hope that in this case, it won’t let Brown walk into the playoffs.