The NCAA Division 1 men's hockey tournament will be underway in just under two months, as the puck drops on regionals on March 28.
While there's no way to know what will happen over the rest of the season, what is rather certain is that various New England schools will be vying for the national championship.
Two of the last three national champions — Quinnipiac last season and UMass in 2021 — hail from the region.
So, how did we project this bracket?
For starters, we identified the top four seeds based on the PairWise and assigned them a region. The four regions are Providence, R.I., Sioux Falls, S.D., Springfield, Mass. and Maryland Heights, Mo. We also made sure the bracket made sure that if all four No. 1 seeds made it to the Frozen Four in St. Paul, Minn., No. 1 would play No. 4 and No. 2 would play No. 3.
To seed the final 12 spots, we had to take many things into consideration.
The first was travel. UMass is one of the host schools at the Springfield regional, meaning if it makes the tournament, it has to play there. While Providence College isn't directly hosting the Providence regional, we still had to put Providence College in Providence. We made necessary accommodations for non-New England schools at non-New England regionals, too.
Another was each conference champion from the six conferences (Atlantic, Big Ten, CCHA, ECAC, Hockey East, NCHC) is seeded. The Big Ten, ECAC, Hockey East and NCHC all had representation in the top 16 for PairWise, so we selected the highest seeded team as the projected champion.
As for the Atlantic and CCHA, we picked the top team in each conference's standings as the projected champion. Those two schools were No. 15 and 16 seeds.
Then, we seeded each team off of two things: the PairWise and avoiding inter-conference in the first round. That resulted in some unfortunate travel for some, but it also resulted in some intriguing matchups.
We'll be doing more of these as the tournament gets closer. Here's our first bracket projection two months out from the tournament.
