Welcome back to Bracketology.
We’re working off the updated NPI after the weekend’s games, and we’re keeping the same framework: start with the NPI as the backbone, but make sure every conference is represented. Once again, there’s no Atlantic Hockey America team in the top 16, so we’ll treat Bentley as the AHA regular-season champion and placeholder for the league’s autobid.
So our 16-team field, using overall seeds 1–16, is: Michigan, North Dakota, Michigan State, Western Michigan, Providence, Denver, Quinnipiac, Minnesota Duluth, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn State, Wisconsin, Augustana, Massachusetts, St. Thomas, and Bentley (AHA autobid placeholder).
Now we seed the bracket by bracket integrity. The initial four pods are 1-8-9-16, 2-7-10-15, 3-6-11-14, and 4-5-12-13.
On the first pass, that gives us:
1 Michigan / 8 Minnesota Duluth / 9 Cornell / 16 Bentley (AHA)
2 North Dakota / 7 Quinnipiac / 10 Dartmouth / 15 St. Thomas
3 Michigan State / 6 Denver / 11 Penn State / 14 Massachusetts
4 Western Michigan / 5 Providence / 12 Wisconsin / 13 Augustana
Then we ask the first question the committee asks: do we have any same-conference first-round matchups? And yes — right away — in the 2-7-10-15 pod, Quinnipiac and Dartmouth would meet in the opening round, and both are ECAC teams. The committee will do almost anything it can to avoid intra-conference first-round games, so we need a fix — and one that stays inside the bands.
The cleanest move is a swap inside the 9–12 band: switch Dartmouth (10) with Penn State (11). That breaks up the ECAC first-round matchup immediately, and it doesn’t create a new same-conference pairing elsewhere.
After that swap, our pods become:
1 Michigan / 8 Minnesota Duluth / 9 Cornell / 16 Bentley (AHA)
2 North Dakota / 7 Quinnipiac / 11 Penn State / 15 St. Thomas
3 Michigan State / 6 Denver / 10 Dartmouth / 14 Massachusetts
4 Western Michigan / 5 Providence / 12 Wisconsin / 13 Augustana
Now we move to site placement. The hosts are Holy Cross in Worcester, Union in Albany, Omaha in Sioux Falls, and Denver in Loveland. Only one true hard lock: if Denver is in the field, the committee is going to work hard to keep them in Loveland. With Denver sitting in the Michigan State pod, that pod goes to Loveland:
Loveland Region
Michigan State (3), Denver, Dartmouth, Massachusetts
From there, Sioux Falls is the natural landing spot for North Dakota, and it’s also the easiest way to make that building feel like a real regional. So we place the North Dakota pod in Sioux Falls on the first pass:
Sioux Falls Region
North Dakota (2), Quinnipiac, Penn State, St. Thomas
Albany is hosted by Union, and with Cornell in the overall No. 1 pod, it’s a clean spot to keep Michigan in the East — and it also keeps the Bentley placeholder in a manageable travel setup.
So we place:
Albany Region
Michigan (1), Minnesota Duluth, Cornell, Bentley (AHA)
And that leaves the final pod for Worcester:
Worcester Region
Western Michigan (4), Providence, Wisconsin, Augustana
Now, here’s where the week-to-week reality matters. We don’t have Boston College or UConn in the field as easy Worcester levers this time, and Worcester is the building that most needs an eastern attendance push. The best solution is to get UMass into Worcester — but we also don’t want to waste the chance to juice Sioux Falls even more if we can get Augustana there alongside North Dakota.
You can’t accomplish both with a single one-for-one move. So we end with something a little more complicated — and something the committee might avoid because it isn’t “simple,” even though it stays completely within the rules.
We make a three-team rotation inside the 13–16 band:
UMass goes to Worcester (essentially a home game, protects the building),
Augustana goes to Sioux Falls (hometown bonus demand on top of North Dakota),
and St. Thomas goes to Loveland as the balancing piece.
It’s more moving parts than the committee loves, but it makes real sense: Worcester becomes buildable, Sioux Falls gets even stronger, and you’re still operating entirely within the band structure.
So the bracket this week looks like this:
Albany Region
1 Michigan (1)
2 Minnesota Duluth
3 Cornell
4 Bentley (AHA autobid placeholder)
Worcester Region
1 Western Michigan (4)
2 Providence
3 Wisconsin
4 Massachusetts
Loveland Region
1 Michigan State (3)
2 Denver
3 Dartmouth
4 St. Thomas
Sioux Falls Region
1 North Dakota (2)
2 Quinnipiac
3 Penn State
4 Augustana
Last in (at-large): St. Thomas
Last out (at-large): Connecticut
This column has a short shelf life with both Hockey East and the Big Ten hosting playoff games on Wednesday night.
Also worth noting: Omaha (the host in Sioux Falls) has been eliminated from the postseason. Holy Cross (AHA) and Union (ECAC) will play best-of-three series this weekend and could still win their conference autobid.