Weekend Recap: BU declines opportunity to play for HE Championship

The BU men's hockey team took a bold strategy this weekend by declining a chance to play for the Hockey Tournament Championship and defend their title from last season. At first glance, it may seem like a poor decision and that the team should have performed better against UMass Lowell(2-3 and 0-5 losses)but in all reality it was just another example of Coach David Quinn playing chess while the rest of college hockey plays checkers.

BU is going to make the NCAA tournament regardless of the outcome of the Hockey East Tournament. The NCAA tournament field is decided by a mathematical formula that weighs a number of factors including strength of schedule, quality wins etc. and thanks to BU's regular season where they had 9 wins against the top 14 in the Pairwise, they are a mathematical lock for the tournament. There is no committee that can keep them out despite what the Lowell Sun may or may not believe. The only decisions that come into play is what regional BU will play in. The easiest way to explain this is how others on Twitter have  already done so below.

If UML loses to PC on Friday BU will be a 2 seed and play in either Albany or Worcester no matter what happens in all other games.

— BurntBoats (@BurntBoats) March 15, 2016

Please trust the math from folks at @chnews and @chranked. We won't finish lower than 9th and we have a better chance at 2-seed than 3-seed.

— Brian Kelley (@BKelleyBU) March 15, 2016

So now that we are all on the same page that BU is either a 2 seed east or a 3 seed out west, we can move on to why BU chose not to go for the HE championship this year. To be honest, the Hockey East Championship is nice and all but it isn't worth your time when there are more important trophies on the line in April. 2 out of the last 3 national champions didn't win their conference tournament. The tournament only means anything to teams who sucked in the regular season and need it to get into the NCAA tournament. If BU won the Hockey East tournament, they are probably a two seed out east which is exactly what they will be if Lowell loses to PC Friday night. They really have nothing to gain besides some hardware that doesn't mean much without a National Championship. I am not jealous of BC fans who get to watch an injured Colin White beat up his body more and more with each game played while Ahti Oksanen is chilling at Agganis taking a million shots as happy as can be waiting for his next goalie to victimize.

BU will be rested,motivated and ready to go no matter where their first NCAA game is. The NCAA hockey tournament is really anyone's tournament to win every year but especially this year. If you get the right draw and get hot at the right time , that is all it takes. Two of the last three champions were a 4 seed and the other was a 2 seed. Basically, all you have to do is get in to the tournament. There really is no advantage unless you are the top seed and get the Atlantic Hockey winner or if you get a Big Ten team in the first round because oh man do they suck. Next weekend BU will play a top 14 team in the country like they have done 20 times already this year and when they win, fans will forget that the Hockey East Tournament even happened.