Breaking Down The M. Hockey Brackets

St. Paul, Minn. is halfway across the country from Boston. It is a four-hour flight, a 23-hour drive, a 29-hour bus ride and a 31-hour train trip.

For the Harvard men’s hockey team, however, it is just 120 minutes on skates.

Assuming the team doesn’t continue its streak of three consecutive overtime contests, two hours of hockey is all that stands between the No. 15 Crimson (15-14-4) and its first trip to the Frozen Four since 1994.

With a 4-3 double-overtime victory against No. 9 Cornell (24-7-2) on Saturday in the ECAC Championship, Harvard advanced to the 12-team NCAA Championship field, earning one of five automatic bids.

The Crimson had more to cheer about Sunday night when the seedings for the East and West Regionals were announced. Harvard is heading to the Centrum Center in Worcester as the east region’s No. 6 seed.

Despite receiving the lowest seed in the tournament, Harvard faces arguably the easiest road to the Final Four of any lower-seeded team.

The Crimson plays sixth-ranked and third-seeded Maine (23-10-7) at noon on Saturday. The winner of that game moves on to face No. 5 BU (25-9-3) with a trip to the Frozen Four at stake at noon Sunday. The Terriers, who beat Harvard, 8-4, in November, received a bye in the first round with their No. 2 seeding in the east.

New regional alignment rules worked to Harvard’s advantage. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the NCAA Championships and Competition Cabinet issued a directive to avoid air travel, if at all possible, for NCAA Regional tournaments.

As a result, for the first time since the NCAA went to a 12-team bracket in 1988, all six eastern conference schools will be heading to Worcester, while the six western teams selected will be traveling to the West Regional in Ann Arbor, Mich.

In the past, the fifth and sixth seeds in the east and west have traditionally been switched. Had that happened, Harvard would have flown to Ann Arbor and faced No. 4 Michigan State (27-8-5)—a Frozen Four team last year—in the opening round. In that case, a win would have earned the Crimson the opportunity to play No. 3 Minnesota (29-8-4) in the quarterfinals. Instead, No. 10 Colorado College (26-12-3) faces that deadly draw.

Harvard narrowly avoided Michigan State again when the Spartans lost 3-2 to rival Michigan in the CCHA Championship Sunday, which probably cost the Spartans a first-round bye and a No. 2 seeding in the East. A Michigan State win might even have sent Harvard west.

The NCAA committee was allowed to disregard regional flight considerations when selecting the top four teams in the bracket, each of which receives a first-round bye. Otherwise, any school within 400 miles of a regional site was forced to stay within that region regardless of seeding and prohibited from flying. All six eastern conference teams are based within 400 miles of the Centrum in Worcester, while four of the six teams in the west were farther than 400 miles from either NCAA Regional tournament site.

The only other way a western team could have crossed over to the east is if more than six earned bids to the tournament. Either Alaska-Fairbanks or Northern Michigan would have been the seventh western team, but Harvard’s improbable win, coupled with Cornell’s dominating ECAC campaign, placed two ECAC teams in the NCAA bracket. The Crimson’s win was especially bitter for Alaska-Fairbanks, which could have earned its first-ever NCAA berth.

Harvard might have been seeded as high as No. 5 in the east, but that spot went instead to No. 18 Quinnipiac (20-12-5), who will face the fourth-seeded Big Red. The selection committee was likely hesitant to schedule a Harvard-Cornell rematch in the first round.

Whatever the underlying rationale, Harvard probably caught a break. Cornell might have drawn the easiest first-round matchup, but the Big Red’s reward if it wins is a game against No. 1 UNH (29-6-3)—winners of its last 10 in the quarterfinals.

The Crimson instead faces two beatable teams in Maine and BU. The Terriers were only ranked No. 6 a week ago and all they did in the past seven days to improve their ranking was lose to Maine in the Hockey East semifinals.