February 6, 2017
South Lake Tahoe, CA
The regular season of the PAC-8 Hockey Conference has come to a close and it’s time decide this year’s tournament champion at this weekend’s 2017 PAC-8 Championship Tournament in South Lake Tahoe, CA.
The three-day tournament begins on Friday with the first round game and will conclude on Sunday afternoon with one of five teams taking home the trophy.
Washington is the number one seed in this year’s tournament, winning the PAC-8 regular season title with a 12-2 conference record. Your second seed this year is UCLA, who finished the PAC-8 season with a 9-5 record. Both of those teams will be the home team in each semifinal game on Saturday.
The third and four seeds went down to a tiebreaker as Cal-Berkeley and Oregon finished the regular season with identical 6-5 conference records. With no head-to-head matches between the two teams, the tiebreaker came down to total goals allowed during the PAC-8 season, which is what the ACHA uses to break ties after head to head records. Cal finished their 11 games with a total of 32 goals allowed while Oregon played their 11 games with 45 goals allowed. Cal will be the three seed in the tournament while Oregon will be the fourth seed.
The fifth seed in this year’s tournament is last year’s runner up in the PAC-8 tournament in the USC Trojans, who finished the PAC-8 season with a 5-8 record.
The tournament will begin on Friday night at 7pm PT with the first round game between #4 Oregon and #5 USC. The winner of Friday night’s game will take on top-seeded Washington in the second semifinal at 4pm on Saturday. The first semifinal will be at 1pm and will feature #2 UCLA versus #3 Cal.
The losers of each semifinal will play in the PAC-8 Third Place Game on Sunday morning at 10am. The winners will advance to the PAC-8 Championship Game, which will happen Sunday at 1pm.
Tickets for the entire tournament are available below or at the door of the South Lake Tahoe Ice Arena, where all five games will be played. The entire tournament will also be broadcasted live on the PAC-8’s Youtube page.
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