Format change for NCAA hockey tournament?

Proposal could add best-of-3 first-round NCAA series at campus site of higher seeds.

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By Pete Conrad, Staff Writer 11:04 PM Wednesday, May 12, 2010

OXFORD — When the NCAA Ice Hockey Championship Committee meets in Indianapolis in June, the topics will include a proposal to change the format for the NCAA tournament’s first round.

That proposal seeks to change the first round into best-of-three game series at the home sites of the eight highest seeds in the 16-team field.

The eight winners would advance to one of two super regional sites.

Although such a format change might be a dream come true for Miami University’s players — a chance to play in the NCAA at home — RedHawks head coach Enrico Blasi and associate athletic director Steve Cady, who was the NCAA committee chairman last year, are dubious about the proposal’s prospects.

“I honestly don’t think it’s going to happen. I think the way we have it right now is pretty good,” said Blasi, who led the RedHawks to their second straight Frozen Four appearance last month after they received the tournament’s overall No. 1 seed.

It certainly won’t happen right away, said Cady, the first coach in the history of Miami varsity hockey.

“I think it will be at least a year before a vote is taken,” he said. “There will have to be a lot more information gathered and a lot more discussion on this before anything is done.”

The change was proposed recently at a college hockey national convention in Florida partly due to attendance concerns.

This year’s championship game drew a Frozen Four record crowd of 37,592 at Detroit’s Ford Field, but “the attendance at regional sites hasn’t been great,” Cady said.

This year Miami played at the regional in Fort Wayne, Ind., which Blasi noted has a successful minor-league team “that has the support of a lot of fans,” but added that the regional ticket prices were too high, or as he said, “crazy.”

The proposal also seeks to reward teams that have enjoyed an outstanding regular season. “No doubt it would,” Cady said.

Cady, however, is concerned about college hockey’s schools with “smaller venues,” which includes Miami’s Steve Cady Arena and its seating capacity of 3,200.

“A small venue would have to, I would assume, make a significant financial guarantee as they do right now for the regional sites,” Cady pointed out. “The programs with the big arenas will have no problem with it.” But at the smaller venues, “ticket prices would have to be significantly increased for it to fly.”

Blasi said he hopes the committee will “discuss other options.

“Just to say you’ll go to a campus to hold the regionals is not an easy solution,” he said. “This isn’t going to happen in the short term, if it does ever happen.”

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2197 or pconrad@coxohio.com.

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