Seeding will matter more in Hockey East

Winning hockey games is the most important thing a hockey team can do, but in the NCAA, winning certain games matters for very different and particular reasons.

Any team wants to win conference matchups because those catapult you up the standings and necessarily deprive your rivals of the points that will matter so much for conference playoff seeding come March. But winning inter-conference games matters in a much more pointed way, not just for yourself — again, you want to win as many games as possible — but for all your conference rivals as well.

Because of the (dumb) way in which the NCAA tournament is seeded, quality of competition matters quite a bit. If your conference collectively wins a tonne of inter-conference games, everyone you play in-conference improves your strength of schedul