Dates March 8–16, 2002 Champions Denver (13th title) | Teams 10 | |
Finals site Xcel Energy Center
St. Paul, Minnesota Winning coach George Gwozdecky (5th title) MVP Wade Dubielewicz (Denver) | ||
The 2002 WCHA Men's Ice Hockey Tournament was the 43rd conference playoff in league history and 49th season where a WCHA champion was crowned. The 2002 tournament was played between March 8 and March 16, 2002 at five conference arenas and the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, the home of the NHL's Minnesota Wild. By winning the tournament, Denver was awarded the Broadmoor Trophy and received the Western Collegiate Hockey Association's automatic bid to the 2002 NCAA Men's Division I Ice Hockey Tournament.
Contents
Format
The first round of the postseason tournament featured a best-of-three games format. All ten conference schools participated in the tournament with teams seeded No. 1 through No. 10 according to their final conference standing, with a tiebreaker system used to seed teams with an identical number of points accumulated. The top five seeded teams each earned home ice and hosted one of the lower seeded teams.
The winners of the first round series advanced to the Xcel Energy Center for the WCHA Final Five, the collective name for the quarterfinal, semifinal, and championship rounds. The Final Five uses a single-elimination format. Teams were re-seeded No. 1 through No. 5 according to the final regular season conference standings, with the top three teams automatically advancing to the semifinals.
Conference Standings
Note: GP = Games Played; W = Wins; L = Losses; T = Ties; PTS = Points; GF = Goals For; GA = Goals Against
Bracket
Teams are reseeded after the first round
Note: * denotes overtime period(s)
All-Tournament Team
* Most Valuable Player(s)