Acadia Hosting Nationals finishing last in AUS?

[msr]

So Acadia just lost 6th vs 7th play-in game for AUS Playoffs effectively placing them in last in league.
They now get a Automatic berth into nationals which seems absolutely crazy. I know AUS hockey is pretty good and the calibre from top to bottom is quite high but these seems pretty ridiculous. I know COVID kinda screwed with their window as players graduated/ moved on to pro and they probably needed to keep host rights to meet sponsorships requirements but is there not another more deserving team.

[Jack Bauer]

Does anyone care about the AUS enough to think there's some massive audience who will view the champion as flawed?

Keep this in mind: We have a pro football league in this country who has seen below .500 teams be crowned its champion.

I honestly dont think the integrity of a CIS championship is at all jeopardized by an average team winning from a league with a lot of parity.

The last place AUS team isn't the same as say the last place Q team vs the top teams for example.

So while I can see fans really into it not like it....I don't think there's near enough of an audience for most people to pay any attention to regular season success when the national tourney rolls around. Especially when most attention will only come for the final game anyway as Canadians have little to no interest overall in CIS hockey as a product when compared to almost any other level of hockey.

[jimmy]

The CIS actually can wear a fair bit of the blame on this ... Acadia had a decent team, certainly strong enough to compete at University Cup but when CIS shut down for COVID and spent longer than other leagues dithering on whether or not they would return for the second half, lost a bunch of top players to the pros mid-season, and had to scramble to finish the season with second string guys.

[scotiahockey]

UQTR upset Alberta in Double OT to win Nationals. Heck of a game and great to see all the Q players win.

[pinkbeaver]

Pretty impressive weekend Alexis Gravel had. He stopped 66 of 70 in the final game.