NCAA Hockey 101: Time to blow up Beanpot tournament format

It has long been acknowledged that the Beanpot has a serious problem, insofar as it ends up being interesting to only a small sliver of a small sliver of college hockey fandom. 

Flagging attendance figures, diminished discussion, less lively crowds, etc. have only become more of an issue in recent years. It wasn't so long ago that Northeastern coach Jim Madigan, in an admittedly self-serving turn, told the New England Hockey Journal that the only thing that would really fix the Beanpot is if someone besides BC or BU were to win it.

Which, let's face it, doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.

And even then, if Harvard were to somehow win it — for the first time since 1993 — that would be interesting for a year or two. But to put things flatly, very few people actually care whether Harvard wins or loses the Beanpot or just about any other hockey game. Their supporters' sections at the Beanpot are always always always wastelands, with maybe a dozen students, a small pep band, and not much to cheer about.

But if Northeastern were to win, well, that might actually help. Despite the fact that there is an incredible likelihood of crushing defeat, NU students turn out in droves and make a whole bunch of noise all night. Well, on the first night anyway. By the second Monday of February, most have decided to stay home rather than hit the 5 p.m. consolation game, and it's tough to blame them. But if the team were to actually win a Beanpot — for the first time since 1988 — at some point in the near future, more people than just current Northeastern coeds would care for the next decade, based on the scintilla of a chance they win another.

Now, the relatively minor attendance problem at this year's Beanpot final, was that there was a blizzard raging outside the TD Garden. Last year, they had the bright idea to push both days of the tournament due to massive snowfall, but this year the Garden schedule was packed through the end of February. So it was last night or March, an unpalatable calendar turn given the conference playoff obligations all teams involved have early in that month.

So how do you fix the Beanpot?

Easy. You blow up the current format.

(Now, the following comes with the caveat that everyone obviously knows it will never ever ever ever ever ever ever happen, but it's a better, more entertaining, and more democratic than what this tournament has become. It's an idea that Andy Merritt of the aforementioned NEHJ and I cooked up last week at the Beanpot, out of the sheer boredom brought on by a pair of games that were, at the best of times, somewhat interesting foregone conclusions.)

It starts with the idea that you necessarily have to get more teams involved to make this whole thing actually interesting again.

How many more? Try 12.

Very conveniently, there are 20 Div. 1 college hockey teams in New England, 16 of which are in either Hockey East or the ECAC. The split isn't exactly even, as just five of those 20 are in the latter conference, 11 in the former, and four more in Atlantic Hockey. Unfortunately for Atlantic Hockey, this is a 16-team tournament between the two “power” conferences in the region.

This kind of thing has happened before. In the mid-1990s, Hockey East and the WCHA had “interlocking schedules,” which effectively counted all non-conference games between the two schools as conference games. Hockey East also participated in the Big Ten/Hockey East Challenge a few years ago, in which a ton of non-conference games were played between the two leagues and the one with the best record at the end got a trophy or something. That went away as quickly as it started, though.

Again, this is never ever ever ever ever going to happen, but the concept, in effect, is an ECAC/Hockey East Champions League. Take all 16 teams and seed them, trying to avoid too many conference matchups between actual good teams whenever possible.

First you start with group play, in which all teams are seeded based on the previous season's league records (or records in this tournament, in subsequent years). There would be four groups of four teams each, and you play a home-and-home with every team in your group. Those games could be played in October and November, and maybe even into December.

The two best teams in each group advance, while the others go to a “consolation” (see also: losers') bracket that helps determine seeding the next year. After that, it's a traditional knock-out tournament, with the winner of each game advancing and the loser moving into the consolation rounds. You play the quarters at some point in early January.

The semifinals and final are, of course, held on the two traditional Beanpot Mondays, the first two in February. So, too, is the “championship” game of the consolation bracket. At the end, the winner of the whole deal even gets the Beanpot.

Why is this a good idea? Well, apart from injecting as many new angles as possible for getting the Beanpot shaken up and injecting renewed interest from points all over New England — potentially from Orono to New Haven — it also helps to guarantee a pretty strong mix of team quality to bolster the Pairwise hopes of every team participating.

You are, after all, guaranteed at least a few games against teams that are likewise going to be in the top 20 or so in the country; and if a good team or two somehow get bounced early, they get to pound on the other early-elimination teams and boost their overall win total back to respectability. It also prevents teams like BC and Lowell (this season) from loading their OOC schedule with almost exclusively cupcake games and racking up a ton of wins against not-good teams to buoy their NCAA chances.

In addition, this could be a major help to of the lower-level teams in each conference. Often, they have difficulties scheduling quality opponents for out-of-conference games, simply because Western teams don't want to get on a plane to play weaker Eastern teams, even if it is two easy wins. This tournament would guarantee home and road dates against quality opponents without the need to fly across a time zone or two.

Now the obvious argument against this (apart from “All the Beanpot teams would hate losing the exclusivity”) is that you don't want too many non-conference games against conference rivals, but at least in Hockey East, it already happens all the time. Lowell plays UMass in a non-conference date to supplement their two-game season series of league matchups. Maine plays an OOC two-gamer with UNH every year. BC, BU and Northeastern enter into the Beanpot knowing that one of them is likely to play two such games. The list goes on.

Finally, it also leaves some wiggle room for a few more OOC dates for each team involved, so if they really want to play someone from the Big Ten, NCHC, or another conference, they can work that out on their own time. Otherwise, this just makes a bunch of OOC games actually-matter to a lot more teams, giving them something to play for besides the easy W’s.

This is a really, really good idea. And we came up with it in 10 minutes.

I will once again reiterate that it is never going to happen. But it should. Because anything is better than the status quo.

A somewhat arbitrary ranking of teams which are pretty good in my opinion only (and just for right now but maybe for a little longer too?)

1. Quinnipiac (tied Cornell, beat Colgate)

2. North Dakota (idle)

3. Boston College (beat Harvard, beat UNH, beat BU to win the Beanpot)

4. St. Cloud (split at Miami)

5. Michigan (split a home-and-home with Michigan State)

6. Providence (swept at Maine)

7. Boston University (beat Northeastern, won at UMass, lost to BC)

8. Notre Dame (swept at Vermont)

9. Yale (beat Dartmouth and Harvard)

10. Harvard University (lost to BC, won at Brown, lost at Yale, lost to Northeastern)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and also covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is here and his Twitter is here.