Notebook: Hockey East announces changes to standings, playoff format

Ian Bethune/The UConn Blog On Tuesday, Hockey East announced a major shakeup to both its regular season standings and playoff format. The final standings, which will determine seeding for the conference tournament, will no longer use total points or percentage of points earned, but will instead utilize the Hockey East Power Index, a metric similar to RPI.

Due to the pandemic, the league couldn’t play a balanced schedule where each team faces every conference member at least twice. For example, UConn has played first-place Boston College four times and third-place UMass three times during the course of the season but hasn’t faced eighth-place Maine or last-place Vermont at all.

The goal of the…