The WCHA held a press conference after today's WCHA third-place game to talk about the new WCHA tournament format.
As most everyone knew, the tournament will feature all 12 teams playing in one of six first round playoff series, followed by two games on Thursday, two on Friday, and just a championship game on Saturday.
Among the stuff I found interesting about the new playoff system...
-They looked at a number of different formats, but the coaches felt strongly about this system because they were excited about the opportunity for one more team to make it to the Final Five every year, which is a pretty big deal for schools.
-The times for the Thursday games will be 4pm and 7pm, and will be on one ticket. The reasoning is that they wanted to make it easier for people to get to the Thursday games if they were traveling.
-The "Minnesota rule" with the Gophers getting the primetime game regardless will still exist. Among the coaches, Don Lucia is the biggest opponent of the Minnesota rule, but it's a decision made with budgets in mind. They can't reseed teams in the tournament because of the Minnesota rule.
-They've petitioned the NHL for the Wild to hold a game at 1pm on the Saturday day of the championship game to give fans something to do during the day. There are also other activities planned for that day for fans looking for something to do, but not going to the Wild game.
The WCHA also unveiled--Quite literally. I gasped. No one else did.--their new Broadmoor Trophy. It's purdy. The original was just something a couple guys went out and bought one day, and the WCHA wanted something that looked a little better in comparison to the MacNaughton Cup. The trophy has a sculpture of the Broadmoor hotel atop it. There will be three versions of the trophy: a large one on permanent display at the XCel Center, a medium-sized one that will current title holder will keep, and smaller ones that each winning team will get to keep.