'Final Five' name likely to stay

I'm not going to take credit for this because I think it was an obvious solution, but I'm pretty sure I floated this idea on the blog last summer:

The WCHA Final Five likely will not change its name next year when the league expands to 12 teams and will have six first-round winners playing in the conference's showcase event. Instead of referring to the final five teams still standing, it will refer to the final five games before the NCAA tournament.

Nothing has been finalized as of yet, according to Todd Milewski's article.

A change in format will mean getting rid of the always-controversial third-place game and playing two play-in games on Thursday to get to the Friday semifinals instead of one. That would give the top two remaining seeds a bye into the semis.

Apparently, the notion of keeping the same format but dropping the bottom two teams in the final standings out of the tournament all together was a nonstarter.