BC Interruption, "NCAA Ice Hockey Regionals Were Run Like College Baseball? "

As we are about four months away from the start of the Division I college hockey season - here is a great idea from Brian Favat from B.C. Interruption for you to chew on. Favat throws the idea of having the four highest seeds host the regionals and have a double elimination tourney. I think this would definitely prove to be an exciting regional format.

B.C. Interruption --- Had an interesting thought while taking in some of this weekend's NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament regional action. After another year of poor Regional attendance, lots of talk about ways of improving the NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Regional format. Could the answer come from college baseball?

What if the men's ice hockey tournament Regional round took on the same format as the NCAA baseball regional format?

The baseball regional round is a four team, double elimination format hosted by the top seed in each region. The regionals start on Friday, pairing the 1 seed up against the 4 and the 2 against the 3. The winners of those two games advance to the 1-0 game, while the losers face each other in an elimination game.

It would look something like this, I don't know if the NCAA would approve of this Idea... I am up for improving the current state of the college hockey regional format - as we saw from this last year that the NCAA regionals were poorly attended.

Thursday

No. 1 seed vs. No. 4 seed
No. 2 seed vs. No. 3 seed

Friday

1-0 game: 1/4 Winner vs. 2/3 Winner
Elimination game: 1/4 Loser vs. 2/3 Loser

Saturday
1-0 Game Loser vs. Elimination game Winner

Sunday
Saturday game winner vs. 2-0 team

Monday (if necessary)
2-1 Elimination game

Here are the attendance figures from the four regional final games from this season’s NCAA regionals – 5,328, 10,974, 4,470, 3,108 – The highest attended regional was the West Regional in Xcel Energy Center. The NCAA should have more fans attending the regionals, something needs to be done to improve attendance.

Another Idea that I am in favor of - having the four number one seeds host the regionals on their campus sites and keep the format the rest of the way. I think that the number one seeds should have some benefit from playing well all season long and gaining a number one seed. You call also probably have higher attendance numbers that we had last season.

One problem facing UND is that the school is currently under NCAA sanctions and would not be able to host an NCAA regional.