Michigan hockey teams average distance to first tournament game 696 miles

Submitted by M Vader on March 21st, 2022 at 4:26 PM

Average seed 1.667

Massachusetts teams average distance to first game 425 miles.  Average seed 3.8. 

If you take out Lowell having to travel 1732 miles (as the crow flies), the other four Massachusetts schools only travel an average of 99 miles, with 3 seed Massachusetts traveling only 37 miles to take on the 2 seed University of Minnesota (traveling 1086 miles) in Worcester,  MA and 4 seed Northeastern traveling 39 miles to play 1 seed WMU (traveling 704 miles).

Bizarrely,  I think Michigan actually did pretty well only having to travel 441 miles to play AIC, an automatic qualifier 4 seed who is 20 in pair wise.  1 seed Minnesota State has to travel 1019 miles to play Harvard in Albany, New York, which is only 136 miles to Cambridge, MA.

It's getting so bad Michigan State decided to skip the tournament entirely this year.

I took an average of travel distances in miles for schools in each state.  

North Dakota 1162 (North Dakota only) Ave seed 2

Minnesota 972 (high 1086, low 783) Ave seed 2

Michigan 696 (high 943, low 441) Ave sees 1.667

Indiana 642 (Notre Dame only) Ave seed 3

Massachusetts 425 (high 1732, low 37) Ave seed 3.8

Connecticut 145 (Quinnipiac only) Ave seed 2

Colorado 46 (Denver only) Ave seed 1

Three of the Four 1 seeds are from the Midwest but none of the regional are in the Midwest.  In addition, the Frozen Four will be in Boston.

I know this has been like this forever but I figured I would just do the numbers to show how awfully skewed this is.  Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

lhglrkwg

March 21st, 2022 at 5:14 PM ^

Yes, but we have to play in front of neutral sites in places where its actually profitable. Duhh. What else would you do? Play at the higher seed like most other division 1 sports? How silly

Joined: 07/03/2008

MGoPoints: 87982

Eng1980

March 21st, 2022 at 5:15 PM ^

Yeah, this crap is (should be) embarrassing for the NCAA.  I didn't realize it was this bad.  They live it almost every year.  A regional should be in the Midwest every year.  How do they justify this practice?  RPI and Harvard tradition?

Joined: 04/28/2016

MGoPoints: 12008

ShadowStorm33

March 21st, 2022 at 5:22 PM ^

It's long past time to allow top seeds to host, just like softball. Offer it to the 1 seeds, if they decline offer to the 2 seeds, etc. If you want to keep the Frozen Four at a neutral site, fine, but there's no reason not to have first and second round games on campus. NCAA hockey isn't NCAA basketball (where you can oftentimes get pretty packed houses for the first two weekends despite being at neutral sites), and never will be...

Joined: 07/22/2008

MGoPoints: 23141

Don

March 21st, 2022 at 6:31 PM ^

The NCAA clowns who make decisions about the post-season hockey tournament are gormless chucklefucks. Nothing will change unless the best programs in the midwest form an informal consortium to lobby for improvements. The NCAA isn’t going to change on its own.

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 148387

Go for two

March 21st, 2022 at 6:42 PM ^

First round should be at the home stadium of the 1 seed in that region. Problem solved, not hard to figure out plus a big reward for being the top seed

Joined: 12/23/2016

MGoPoints: 20309

ex dx dy

March 21st, 2022 at 7:40 PM ^

Nice analysis! Here's an alternate way to visualize the eastern/western disparity. Cool colors indicate the western conferences, warm colors the eastern ones. Ideally we'd see a straight, ascending line for fairness, or at least something resembling that. For the western teams, we do actually see a trend roughly resembling that principle, but the eastern teams break that pattern completely. Michigan, FWIW, is the blue dot on the far left, indicating that by western standards, they did get rewarded for their high seed, but by eastern standards, it's nowhere close.

Joined: 10/30/2018

MGoPoints: 4437