NCAA notebook: An early look at the national tournament

This past Tuesday was Nov. 11, and that's a fairly consequential date in college hockey.

Think of it like that infamous "Nov. 1" cutoff in the NHL, where you might think it's too early to say the postseason picture is mostly set, but in reality, we know the vast majority of playoff teams on that date. The same is true of Nov. 11. If you're not in the top 14 of the Pairwise on that date, historically, you have only about a 33 percent chance to make the NCAA tournament.

Of course, there's a wrinkle to all that this year: NCAA hockey no longer uses the Pairwise to determine who gets an at-large bid. Instead, it has switched to the NCAA Percentage Index, a slight tweak to the formula that produces many of the same results, but obviously isn't a perfect 1-to-1 exchange.

Right now, there are only t