While Notre Dame’s departure for the Big Ten leaves Hockey East with an uneven number of teams, the association is in no rush to find another 12th member. For the next two seasons it will go to an unbalanced schedule with each team playing an additional two home and two away games.
“If you just played each team twice you’d get 20 league games and 14 nonleague games,’’ says commissioner Joe Bertagna. “That’s a basketball-type balance and not everybody can put together a nonleague schedule with the same ease.’’
While the league has drawn up a schedule using an algorithm based on past standings there’ll be certain tweaks. “We tried not to add a Boston game to a Boston school since they pick up a couple of those in the Beanpot,’’ says Bertagna. “Conversely, we did try to add a Maine-UNH because they both wanted that and probably a Merrimack-Lowell but we can’t give them too many variables.’’
The Big Ten, which now will comprise seven hockey-playing schools, has inquired about having its idle teams on a given weekend playing Hockey East counterparts. “I don’t see those kinds of structured scheduling arrangements working because people want to play certain teams in the other league but they don’t want to play all of them,’’ says Bertagna.
If the unbalanced schedule format works, Hockey East may decide to stick with it indefinitely. “The coaches, after they try it, could embrace it and say, this is fine,’’ muses Bertagna. “Or say, hey, we’ve got to find a 12th team.’’
That team likely would come from Atlantic Hockey, possibly Holy Cross or RIT. But any new arrival would have to have a 4,000-seat facility or reliable access to one and would have to be competitive in a demanding league.
“Our 10th team this year was UNH and they pushed the No. 1 team to three games,’’ observes Bertagna. “We have fairly strong teams up and down so it’s important that we don’t upset that by bringing in somebody that would have to struggle. You’ve got to have somebody that is going to carry their weight -- winning games, selling tickets, being a factor.’’
After four years the Irish Experiment ended with a thud in TD Garden when Notre Dame was pummeled, 5-1, by UMass Lowell in Friday’s semifinal. While the three-time CCHA champions performed creditably enough in Hockey East, finishing third and fourth in the last two regular-season standings, they never made the tournament final. “The top teams in the CCHA ever since that league disbanded have all struggled,’’ said coach Jeff Jackson. “You look at what’s happened to Michigan State and Michigan, Miami and ourselves. As much as we’ve been proud to be a member of Hockey East I’m not sure that we’ve quite felt like we belonged here.’’
By joining the Big Ten the Irish will be reunited with three former CCHA rivals and won’t spend anywhere near as much time aloft. “We will be back for the most part to busing to our games, very similar to what the Hockey East teams do out here,’’ said Jackson, whose squad flew East seven times this season. “It’s a nice thing to not have to worry about planes breaking down or weather issues. We’re very fortunate that we can charter so we don’t miss school but our trip back from Maine was a nightmare. We didn’t get home the next day until 11 in the morning. You know on a bus you’re going to get back at a certain time. Traveling two and a half hours by bus to Michigan or Michigan State or three hours to Ohio State and Wisconsin, it’ll make it a little less wear and tear on us.’’
NCAA bracket Sunday
Hockey East, which qualified six teams for last year’s NCAA tournament, likely will send four this time. Boston University and UMass-Lowell are guaranteed, probably both as No. 2 seeds, as is Notre Dame, which likely will be a 4 seed. Providence, which was on the bubble going into Saturday’s games, also qualified as a 4 seed after Lowell and Penn State won their conference tournaments. Had BC won the final, it would have wrapped up an automatic berth.
Hats off to rival
BU coach David Quinn, whose team lost to BC for the first time this season in Friday’s semifinals, gave a postgame salute to the Eagles. “They had a phenomenal year,’’ he said. “That’s as good as job as Jerry [York] has done coaching. You lose seven players like they did and have the season they had — that’s a heck of a job.’’
Scuffle breakdown
Sorting out that scuffle at the end of the BC-BU game took so long that the penalties (all at 20:00) weren’t listed in the original game summary. Nearly half of the skaters on the ice were flagged: BC’s Graham McPhee and BU’s Jordan Greenway got two minutes for roughing and a 10-minute misconduct; BC’s Casey Fitzgerald two minutes for hitting after the whistle; BU’s Brandon Hickey five minutes for hitting after the whistle and a game misconduct and BC’s Ryan Fitzgerald a game misconduct.
John Powers can be reached at john.powers@globe.com.
