If you’re headed to the Frozen Four a day early and want to check out the Verizon Center and the four competing teams, check out the free practice sessions.

Not only do you get the chance to see how the hockey-covering media lives (note the tongue planted firmly in cheek there), but teams usually make things a little light on the day before a game, so there’s a chance you’ll see a shootout or the like. It’s not quite a dunk contest like many basketball teams do in their open practice sessions, but there’s some entertainment to be had nonetheless.  And maybe someday we’ll get teams to add a little more sizzle by letting fans vote on who has the most creative shootout move.

Here’s the schedule for Wednesday’s practices (times Eastern):

11 a.m.-noon — Bemidji State
12:15 p.m.-1:15 p.m. — Miami
1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m. — Vermont
2:45 p.m.-3:45 p.m. — Boston University

On a related note, I’ll be posting updates from the Frozen Four on our new Twitter feed, @USCHO (or www.twitter.com/USCHO). Those reports will start Wednesday.

If you have no particular rooting interest in this year’s NCAA tournament (or even if you do but can separate that from an overall view of things), answer this question:

Is this year’s tournament the best in recent memory, or maybe just the one with the most parity?

How else does the Frozen Four feature the top overall seed, a three seed and two four seeds — one of which had an RPI ranking of 37th going in?

We’ve seen our share of upsets in the tournament, but this season’s list and the way some of the games finished makes the last three days an unforgettable experience.

We saw Minnesota-Duluth score twice in the last 40 seconds of regulation, the second with 0.8 seconds left, to force overtime against Princeton, and the Bulldogs won it.

We saw New Hampshire complete a rally with 0.1 seconds left in regulation, then beat North Dakota in OT.

We saw Cornell score with 18 seconds left to beat Northeastern.

And none of those three victorious teams made it to the Frozen Four.

Boston University punched its ticket to Washington, D.C., by scoring with 14.4 seconds left against New Hampshire.

Vermont earned a spot on Saturday when the referees found after a lengthy video replay that a Dan Lawson shot tore through the net in overtime against Air Force.

Then there were the No. 4 seeds.

Miami made it with a strong all-around effort, beating a pair of WCHA teams in WCHA territory.

And Bemidji State made a run for the ages, ousting Notre Dame on Saturday and Cornell on Sunday to earn the first Frozen Four trip for a school not associated with the WCHA, CCHA, ECAC or Hockey East. Think that’ll do anything for its application with the WCHA?

All in all, it was quite a weekend. We can only hope the Frozen Four comes close to matching it.

I wanted to get this post up Friday, but then the games started and, well, there went the rest of the night at Mariucci Arena.

With 37 entries in an informal NCAA tournament poll I conducted, some interesting things developed:

** Only 8 percent did not have either Boston University or Notre Dame winning it all. The top two seeds are clearly defined this year, and with seeds Nos. 3 and 4 bowing out on Friday, there may be an even clearer line there.

** 54 percent have a Boston University-Notre Dame championship game. There was a tie next most popular matchup: BU-Denver or BU-Minnesota-Duluth, both of which were on 11 percent of the brackets.

** 86 percent picked Notre Dame to get to the Frozen Four, whereas 84 percent picked BU to get to DC. The favorites in the other regionals: Michigan (73 percent) and Minnesota-Duluth (51 percent).

** Bemidji State and Ohio State were the only two teams not given at least one nod on a bracket.

** Only one person had a perfect Friday, but his chances of a perfect bracket ended with North Dakota’s overtime loss to New Hampshire.

By this time, we’re all looking ahead to the NCAA regionals next weekend, but there were some amazing things that took place in the conference tournaments this weekend that need to be revisited.

** Of the 19 games played, eight were shutouts. Four of those came in Saturday’s championship games, with Minnesota-Duluth, Yale, Boston University and Air Force blanking their opponents.

Think there’s a premium on goaltending this time of the year? That’s as good an indication as any.

** Half of the semifinal games played on Friday featured a goal scored with an extra attacker in the final 90 seconds.

Yale scored with 1:28 left to tie St. Lawrence, then claimed a 4-3 victory by scoring again 22 seconds later.

Northern Michigan tied Notre Dame with 1:23 left, but the Irish regained the lead 23 seconds later for a 2-1 victory.

Massachusetts-Lowell forced overtime by scoring with 20 seconds left, then beat Northeastern 3-2 in overtime.

Cornell scored with 25 seconds left to force overtime, then beat Princeton 4-3 in the extra session.

And RIT extended its game against Mercyhurst by scoring with 59 seconds left, but the Lakers advanced in overtime.

** My nomination for quote of the weekend came from St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh after the Saints won a shootout to claim third place in the ECAC Hockey tourney.

It seems he’s not a fan of the format.

“It would’ve been just as meaningful to have [Princeton coach] Guy [Gadowsky] and I go out and have a quick round of canasta at center ice,” Marsh told reporters. “I think it’s preposterous. It isn’t hockey.”

Denver’s line chart for today’s semifinal game against Wisconsin at the WCHA Final Five is a little thin down the middle.

With Tyler Bozak and Tyler Ruegsegger out injured, the Pioneers have only three centers listed, and one of them is hurting, too.

Jesse Martin, who’s listed on the top line between Rhett Rakhshani and Anthony Maiani, was questionable for the Final Five after suffering what has been reported as a groin injury.

Joe Colborne and Brian Gifford are the other centers listed on Denver’s line chart.

The Pioneers have seven defensemen dressed to make up for being one forward short.

The shuffle adds a little more intrigue to the semifinal matchup. Denver has won all four games against Wisconsin this season, but the Badgers are 11-0 against the Pioneers all-time in the postseason.

A quick update on the WCHA awards: Wisconsin defenseman Jamie McBain is the league’s player of the year, and North Dakota’s Dave Hakstol is the coach of the year.

The first team includes McBain and North Dakota’s Chay Genoway on defense; Minnesota’s Ryan Stoa, Colorado College’s Chad Rau and St. Cloud State’s Ryan Lasch at forward; and Minnesota-Duluth’s Alex Stalock at goaltender.

Look for the full teams and reaction later on the main site.

This is a great time of the year for college hockey, with conference playoffs, NCAA regionals and the men’s Frozen Four dotting the landscape.

But this coming weekend is my favorite of them all, and here’s why:

** Men’s conference tournaments and all the PairWise banter that comes with them. I’ve only ever been to the WCHA tournament, but I’m sure they all have a little of the same flavor. You can go into the weekend with one set of ideas about how things are going to shake out, but by Saturday night (or early Sunday morning, as has been the case), everything can be completely different.

** The women’s Frozen Four. The best there is. It was a great atmosphere in Duluth last year; here’s hoping Boston can crank it up a notch, even with the closest team being Mercyhurst.

** The Division III men’s and women’s championships.

** Selection Sunday. We’ll probably know who’s in the tournament by Saturday night, but you never know how the brackets will shape up until you see them on TV. But here’s my one complaint: For those of us who have to travel back home from the conference tournaments, the 10:30 a.m. Central Time show is a little on the early side. What can I say? I value sleep, even in the heart of college hockey’s best time of the year.

No overtimes in the first round of the WCHA playoffs? It seems like a rarity, but it happens.

No Game 3s? Same deal.

Until this season, however, those two things have never happened together since the league went to best-of-three series in 1988.

The five first-round series this weekend combined for no overtimes and no need for Sunday action.

In the first 20 years of best-of-three play, five seasons went without overtime (last in 2005) and four went without a Game 3 (last in 2002).

I don’t think there’s any big-picture significance in this. It just seemed interesting.

The voting process for the WCHA awards was a little more rushed than usual — I didn’t know I was going to be voting until last Friday night, and the ballots were due less than 48 hours later — but I managed to pull together all of my statistical research in good time.

This year, however, things were a little more difficult in the voting process. More on that later, though.

My typical routine for the forwards is to determine how the nominated players did against their WCHA opponents, with scoring performance against the top defensive teams meaning more to me than big numbers against the weaker defenses. For defensemen, it’s looking at plus/minus ratings. Goaltenders stand out a little more in the memory, so I rely less on numbers there.

Put the stats together with a visual account of the nominated players, and that’s how I come up with my picks. So here they are, with explanations following:

First team
F: Ryan Stoa, Minnesota
F: Ryan Duncan, North Dakota
F: Ryan Lasch, St. Cloud State
D: Chay Genoway, North Dakota
D: Jamie McBain, Wisconsin
G: Alex Stalock, Minnesota-Duluth

I didn’t realize until now that I picked an all-Ryan first team of forwards. I don’t think there’s much debate with Stoa and Lasch — they’re the premier point-getters in the league. I picked Duncan for the first team more for his leadership for a team that put together a great run for the title than for his scoring, although being plus-7 in a season where no one put up overwhelming plus/minus figures helped.

I had a long internal debate about McBain’s presence on the first team. Through covering Wisconsin for most of the season, I got a good look at both sides of the junior — he can be an incredible force for his team in experience on defense and has a great sense for offense on the power play, but he can make inexcusable mistakes and sometimes appears to be absent while he’s on the ice. That, and he was minus-8. But I chose him over Denver’s Patrick Wiercioch on value to the team — I think Denver is still a very good team without Wiercioch but I’m not sure I can say the same for Wisconsin and McBain.

Stalock really impressed me when I saw him this season, and with no one running away with things in the statistics, he seemed like a good pick.

Second team
F: Jordan Schroeder, Minnesota
F: Garrett Roe, St. Cloud State
F: Rhett Rakhshani, Denver
D: Patrick Wiercioch, Denver
D: J.P. Testwuide, Denver
G: Brad Eidsness, North Dakota

Here’s my argument for Rakhshani: He had six of his 11 league goals and 15 of his 26 league points against the teams with the second-, third- and fourth-best defenses in the league (Denver was first). Schroeder is an incredible talent, even when he doesn’t put points on the board.

I mentioned before that I was considering Wiercioch for the first team, and that was based on two things: that he scored better than a point per league game (26 in 24), and that, in four games of watching him in person, you can tell how composed he is as a freshman. Denver got a great catch there.

I picked Eidsness over Denver’s Marc Cheverie for the second team because he was able to pull himself out of a sluggish start and backstop a run to the MacNaughton Cup.

Third team
F: Chad Rau, Colorado College
F: Justin Fontaine, Minnesota-Duluth
F: Anthony Maiani, Denver
D: Garrett Raboin, St. Cloud State
D: Josh Meyers, Minnesota-Duluth
G: Marc Cheverie, Denver

Fontaine probably had the overall numbers to be on a higher team, but he feasted on St. Cloud State (seven points), Alaska-Anchorage (six points) and Michigan Tech (six points), the defenses ranked fifth, ninth and 10th. Rau earned his way back onto the the list with his late-season performance at North Dakota.

I thought Meyers was a better player than his plus/minus rating (minus-10) showed.

Rookie team
F: Schroeder
F: Joe Colborne, Denver
F: Derek Stepan, Wisconsin
D: Wiercioch
D: Jake Gardiner, Wisconsin
G: Eidsness

Colborne took a while to get going, but his talent came through at the end. Stepan impressed me throughout the year, especially when the Badgers put him at center and on the penalty kill at midseason. That latter move paid off last weekend, when he scored twice on the same North Dakota power play.

I picked Gardiner over Colorado College’s Gabe Guentzel for the rookie team because Gardiner’s presence, while not to Wiercioch’s level, was impressive in its own right. He didn’t shy away from attempting to carry the puck end to end or going through opposing defensemen at the blue line

Eidsness was the only available option for rookie goaltenders, and this time I actually pulled the trigger on that check mark. There was one year where there was only one freshman goaltender on the ballot, and I couldn’t in good conscience vote for him because he had an awful set of statistics. No such issue with Eidsness.

Player of the year

I picked Stoa, even though, as a colleague pointed out, it’s tough to vote for a guy who captained a team that melted down in the second half. Not tremendously excited about any of the other options (CC’s Richard Bachman, Cheverie, Stalock, Genoway, Lasch and McBain), I went with Stoa because he can show that man-among-boys quality.

Rookie of the year

Wiercioch got the check mark because he impressed me more than Schroeder, and that’s saying something.

Coach of the year

When it came down to it, my only two choices were North Dakota’s Dave Hakstol and Denver’s George Gwozdecky. I was already leaning toward Hakstol because he helped his team rise from the ashes again, but then I remembered Gwozdecky’s little walk across the ice and subsequent suspension for talking to his coaches from the press box after being ejected at North Dakota, and that clinched it. Hakstol was the pick here.

Looking back on it, the struggles in trying to pick the player of the year (colleagues told me I wasn’t the only one in that situation) just show the talent drain that the WCHA has endured recently by having its best players leave early for the pros. We could have been voting for T.J. Oshie or Jonathan Toews or Brock Trotter or Blake Wheeler or Andreas Nodl or Kyle Okposo this season. Just the way the game is right now, I guess.

You should always remember and learn from your failures. And in terms of picking the WCHA standings, I’ve had plenty of failures. The good thing (for me, anyway) is that I’m usually not alone.

In the media poll I organized before this season for The Capital Times, I was one of 22 voters to pick Colorado College to defend its regular season championship. Only three picked North Dakota for the title, and they get bragging rights — if they choose to identify themselves. I said I wouldn’t reveal the votes but individuals had the right to do so on their own.

There are a couple other noteworthy items from the aggregate poll results, compared to the actual standings:

** Three of the 25 voters correctly picked North Dakota as the champion, and five voters correctly picked the pool of teams finishing in the top five (although no one had the correct order). But no one was able to do both.

** The three first-place votes given to North Dakota were balanced by three low votes — two people picked the Sioux for sixth, and another chose them for fifth.

** Four voters correctly picked the top four teams, but not in order. No one picked the top three teams in their top three.

Here are the final standings, including the media poll picks and how I thought the teams would finish:

1. North Dakota (media 2nd, me 2nd)
2. Denver (media 3rd, me 3rd)
tie-3. Wisconsin (media tie-4th, me 4th)
tie-3. Colorado College (media 1st, me 1st)
5. Minnesota (media tie-4th, me 7th)
6. St. Cloud State (media 6th, me 6th)
7. Minnesota-Duluth (media 8th, me 8th)
8. Minnesota State (media 7th, me 5th)
9. Alaska-Anchorage (media 10th, me 9th)
10. Michigan Tech (media 9th, me 10th)