Looking for tickets to the Frozen Four at the FleetCenter in Boston next week? Join the club.

The great ticket scramble has begun and University of Maine hockey fans are logging onto Web sites, passing the word, working the phone lines, and tracking down ticket agencies in an effort to secure tickets to the national hockey semifinals and championship game.

Judging from the postings on sites such as U.S. College Hockey Online (uscho.com) and eBay, most Frozen Four ticket prospectors are getting the cold shoulder: “In need of 2 FF tickets, seeking FF tickets, need 1-3 tickets, have cheap rooms – will barter for FF tix.”

In many respects Frozen Four tickets are harder to get than those for basketball’s Final Four, especially if you live in Maine or Massachusetts.

“You think you guys are having trouble? Think about what it must be like for Boston College fans,” said Matthew Whelan, the FleetCenter’s director of ticketing operations.

Why the ticket crush? Simple, it’s a numbers game. There aren’t enough of them.

“For every ticket we have available for the public, we have five requests,” Whelan said.

Here are the numbers: The FleetCenter’s capacity for hockey games is 17,929 fans.

. Before any go on sale, 4,169 are reserved for FleetCenter suite and club seat holders. All club seat holders opted to buy Frozen Four tickets. Had they chosen not to, those seats may have been sold to the general public, but Whelan said that’s a gray area. Suites, on the other hand, remain empty if their owners decide not to buy into the Frozen Four.

. Another 3,768 are set aside for the NCAA, as 2,000 (500 each) go to the four participating colleges, 100 for the bands, 62 for the two teams not participating in a single session (so players and coaches can watch the other game), and six are reserved for on-ice officials not working that particular game. The remaining 1,600 tickets are allocated to college hockey coaches, school athletic directors, conference commissioners, officials representing future Frozen Four sites, NCAA corporate partners and sponsors, and hockey booster groups such as USA Hockey and the Hobey Baker Award Committee.

. Still another 2,700 tickets are allotted to the host arena (the FleetCenter) and the host institution (Boston University) to do with as they see fit.

That leaves 7,292 tickets for the general public, and that’s when it really starts getting complicated. The NCAA uses a lottery system to determine who gets to buy the remaining tickets. The tiered system changes each year. Last year, it was a six-tier system. This year it’s seven and next year it will be eight.

“It’s a system with seven levels of priority. If you’ve been to each of the last seven Frozen Four events, you’re a priority 7, which is the highest, and you’re guaranteed a chance to buy as many as four tickets to all three games,” said Whelan, who added there presently are about 100 priority-7 people.

Priority 6 is for people who have purchased tickets to the last six Frozen Fours, and so on down to priority 1.

This year, people with priority levels of four through seven were able to buy tickets. After their demand was satisfied, the NCAA held a second lottery for fans with priority levels of 1-3.

“Slightly less than half the tickets were left after we went through the 4-5-6-7s,” said Whelan. “Then the second lottery left a minuscule amount for the priority zeros.”

Those few were all snapped up in a third lottery by priority zero (first-time or didn’t purchase last year) buyers.

This is the second go-around for Whelan, who also helped supervise and run the process in 1998, the last time the FleetCenter hosted the Frozen Four. He doesn’t sound like he plans to be around for a third time.

“There is nothing more complicated than the Frozen Four ticket distribution process. Nothing comes close. It makes my head spin,” Whelan said.

So why bother with it?

“They’re trying to reward loyal ticketholders, and how do you fault someone for taking care of loyal customers?” Whelan said. “These people have followed the sport before it got popular.”

Another complicating factor is the seat layout at the FleetCenter.

“Ninety percent of the FleetCenter are odd-seat rows and most people want even numbers,” Whelan said. “If you could be a single, you would have gotten a great seat.”

The lottery is held annually in mid-June – a full nine months before the Frozen Four.

“I think part of selling the tickets so far in advance is the demand is always there and it allows buyers plenty of time to make travel plans and reservations,” said Mark Bedics, NCAA assistant director of media coordination for championships.

So there you have it. The last hope for UMaine students, fans, and boosters – if they didn’t get lucky enough to land tickets in the lottery – are the 500 Maine was given by the NCAA.

Seventy-five of those tickets were available to students Wednesday morning and only a few were left by 9:30 a.m. The other 425 are being distributed via yet another priority system and (surprise) still another lottery. At the top of the priority list are all UMaine hockey players and their families. Then come the students. Next in line is athletic department donors who have given $10,000 or more annually to UMaine.

Bedics said UMaine’s ticket distribution process, while uncommon, is acceptable.

“This is definitely not unheard of,” he said. “I’ll give you an example. I worked at Marquette and regular-season tickets were like that. The more money you gave the school, the more choice you had on which seats you had and how quickly you could buy them.”

The only restrictions the NCAA places on schools regarding ticket distribution concern ticket cost.

“You can’t have an auction because you can’t sell the tickets over their face value,” said Bedics.

If any tickets still remain after Maine’s priority distribution system runs its course, they will be sold via a weighted lottery that will take into consideration both season ticket holders and athletic donor levels during the 2003-04 season. There will be a limit of two per person.

Maine athletic director Patrick Nero did not return several calls Tuesday and Wednesday seeking comment and clarification.

So what’s a Maine fan to do? Whelan has a suggestion.

“What I understand is there are a lot of Maine fans and Denver fans, and since their teams play at different times, maybe they can swap some tickets and go see their teams,” he said.

Failing that, they can always hope that not all the tickets reserved for Denver or Minnesota-Duluth fans are sold, which is a possibility. And there’s always eBay. Let the bidding begin.