Chris Dilks over at SB Nation's Western College Hockey Blog has chimed in on the setup of this year's brackets:
This year, the bracket looked like it could be pretty straightforward. It was possible to create a perfect 1 vs. 16, 8 vs. 9, etc. bracket without any sort of intraconference match-ups in the first round. But the committee did throw a curveball into things by rearranging the number 3 seeds to get Michigan into the Fort Wayne regional to help increase attendance--and for the more cynical, to increase their odds of getting a local team to the Frozen Four.
As with all brackets, basketball and hockey, no bracket is going to be perfect, but this one seems like it fell in line nicely. Not that it matters once they start playing the games, but it helps.