18 Points Left to Play For

5th Place Lowell, 6th Place BU Vying For Two of Them Tonight

Let's be honest.  The only way BU is making a run at a repeat is by winning Hockey East.  Even if they find a way to run the table, which would be an insane run of 12 straight victories, and 16 of 18 in 2010, it probably won't be enough to climb up the Pairwise Rankings and secure an at large bid into the tournament.  Granted, anything is possible, but the realistic route to Detroit has to go through the familiar ice at the Boston Garden Fleet Center TD Banknorth Garden.

(If you don't know what the PairWise Rankings are, or want to learn more about the NCAA Hockey Tournament selection process, check out the Bracketology Posts on USCHO.  I am not going to begin to explain it.)

And the most likely way they will get to the semi-finals and finals at the Garden to play for a right to hoist the Lamoriello Trophy is by playing the quarterfinals at Agganis Arena.

In Hockey East, 8 of the 10 teams in the conference make the playoffs.  Of those, the top 4 seeds earn the right to play postseason games on home ice.  Even though the first round is a three game set, all three games are played at the higher seeds home rink.  This makes the difference between the 4th and 5th spot tremendous.

Going into tonight's crucial game against the RiverClowns, the Terriers are 4 points away from that important four seed, and just 4 points away from the dreaded and unthinkable nine seed.  Luckily for the Terriers, the teams ahead of them are UMass Lowell and Maine.

 Although each of these teams has a game in hand on the Terriers, BU still has a chance to quickly make up points against them both.  BU would move into a tie for the five seed with Lowell with a win tonight, and a week from tonight they will get Maine at Agganis for two straight home games to finish the season series with the Black Bears.

If you really want to dream, you can look even higher in the standings.  If you believe the Terriers have turned things around and they can make a run at the four seed, than you probably also believe that it's not outside the realm of possibilities for the Terriers to sneak all the way up to the second seed.

BC and UMass Amherst both have 22 points to share the two seed.  But if BU ended the season in a tie with either of those two teams, the Terriers would be granted the higher spot due to the fact that BU won the season series against the Eagles and the Minutemen by a count of 2-1 each.

Now if you really want to dream, you're looking at a miracle at large bid, which would mark one of the most unbelievable swings in a given season that I can feasibly even think of.  From National Champs and pre-season top 5 team, to bottom of the barrel in Hockey East, all the way back to Top 15 in the country.    I don't think it will happen, but just for reference, USCHO predicts that if the season ended today, Maine would be the first team out of the tournament.