“Mystery Alaska” playoff plan revealed by WCHA

Western Collegiate Hockey Association logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here is some more on the WCHA new playoff format, Matt Wellens from the Mining Journal interviewed Bruce McLeod and here is a what the WCHA Commissioner had to say about their new controversial playoff format.

“There was definitely an uneasy feeling about it,” McLeod said. “Certainly something out of the box, out of the norm, I would say. There was just an uneasy feeling about the whole thing.”

McLeod said the decision was made based on financial concerns the league had with possibly sending two teams to Alaska in a moment’s notice or the league playoffs.

While the “Alaska Plan” was approved by the league, McLeod said there are other proposals on the table from the athletic directors. The league will be revisiting the plan, possibly as soon as next week during a conference call among the ADs.

“It’s not set in stone. Although it was voted upon and passed, there were a couple other scenarios that were definitely talked about. I’m not quite sure,” McLeod said. [Mining Journal]

When a person looks at this league playoff format one must scratch their head and think that it's poorly concocted and not real well thought out. I would not be surprised if this scenario is revisited and possibly scrapped.

The nWCHA playoff format - I am not kidding

The nWCHA's held their meetings in Detroit Michigan this past week and one of the things they came up with was their league's new playoff format.

While the press release from the WCHA didn't include the new playoff format, it didn't take long for the new format to hit the Twitter-verse and this is what the new playoff format is going to look like. The top team in the nWCHA is going to get a first round bye and the rest of the eight teams in the league are going to play in the first round but that's not all of it.

Right out of the gate, the new format is a bit of a buzz kill, or at least what I would just call it a ill conceived idea - the first round of the playoffs is a potential money maker for the program that hosts the first round event.

There is also another great twist - per the beat writer of the Bemidji Pioneer Jack Hittinger - the Alaska Schools are going to play each other each season in the nWCHA playoffs unless one of them is the number one seed - number one seed in the nWCHA will get a first round bye. When I first saw this tweet on Twitter.com I thought it was a joke, but here is the confirmation of this.