Latest pairwise rankings

[model94]

And with that we're starting to see how massively overrated the NCHC is. But I'm sure there are STILL some blowhards out there who will continue to insist that it so vastly superior to all other conferences combined.

Yea. The Montreal Canadians were "massively over rated" in 1980 probably as well.

[UncleRay]

Imagine if a contact to the head penalty had been committed by Minne instead. That game could have looked a whooole lot different. The vaunted Gophs, kings among the royalty of the BI6, appeared to have been nekkid much of last night.

[J.D.]

Ya ya the PWR was close but Harvard sucks right now and should have been paired with Minnesota!

[mookie1995]

And with that we're starting to see how massively overrated the NCHC is. But I'm sure there are STILL some blowhards out there who will continue to insist that it so vastly superior to all other conferences combined.

????
mookie thought there was only one blowhard who was going on about the b1g being so great?? Who fg was due of course by pedd state doing ooc games at home vs independent teams (which is preferred to them doing young kids in the rape room at tofftrees :-0

[FredsDeadFriend]

Of course you're trying to crow today...

I thought he has been crowing all season? lol

[FredsDeadFriend]

It's pretty dumb to yell about how overrated the NCHC is when Denver won title last year and UMDs run before them. It's a bad year for the NCHC. It's not anymore complicated than that. A singular year.

Having said that, WMU was horrendous yesterday and Denver wasn't much better.

I believe he stated early on that he was talking specifically about this year. I remember him making that clear back in December.

Now from my perspective, I pointed out years back that some B1G teams were simply having down periods but that their merely being B1G programs meant that they would eventually rise back up and that new rivalries would develop or old ones revived and in time the conference would evolve into the best conference in hockey. Now this year's tourney is not over yet, but I've also stated in the past that one team does not a conference make. A conference does not have to win the Title to be the best conference, so this isn't the first year the B1G has had a good year. And keeping track of recruiting seems to indicate that several B1G teams are doing quite well in the recruiting dept, most notably Michigan and Minnesota and those 2 along with Wisconsin are still historically among the Top 5-8 producers of NHL talent with MSU being Top 10 as well. That's unlikely to change anytime soon, while OSU & ND & PSU will rise in those rankings, is my guess.

Now at this moment I'm watching tOSU pummel Harvard, OSU just made it 7-0, lol. Minnesota racked up 9 goals in their game. The Commentators I saw picked Minnesota as their pick to win the Title. At this rate, I wouldn't be shocked if Michigan scored 6-9 goals as well and who knows, maybe PSU can pull off an upset as well?


Is Denver or UMD or UND going to suck going forward? I doubt it, nor will SCSU who could possibly win the title still this season. But it'll be programs like CC, Miami, WMU & Omaha, all of whom have basically sucked for the vast majority of their existences, along with the 2 giants and the 2 new powers having their down years that will keep the NCHC from ever becoming the all-time best hockey conference. It would be good for college hockey if those 4 could rise up like UMD & SCSU have, but they won't. Best you can hope for is that they have the occasional good seasons like they have had recently going forward. But unlike how some of you NCHC fans have assumed, those programs having some good seasons early on in the NCHC's existence does NOT mean that the NCHC's supposed mojo magically turned them into legit consistent powers to be annually feared going forward, lol. UMD & SCSU have had the advantage of being located in the hotbed of high school hockey and were able to take advantage of UMn's taking a break from dominating to establish themselves. The breakup of the old WCHA also helped those 2 and Mankato as well, as I predicted it would even before it happened.

NCHC fans better hope UW screws up their coaching search/hire and don't rise back up. B1G still needs to expand some.

[StateofHockey78]

As far as first round matchups go, I don't think the committtee could have done anything differently having been confined by first round matchups due to B1G and ECAC conflicts. The only possible question would be the location of the 7Harvard/9OSU and 6St. Cloud/11MSU games. As to whether one or the other matchup produces a stronger opponent for the 1 seeds is very debatable. First they have to get by their own opponents. Minnesota easily got the most desirable opponent but in it they play one of the best goalies so if Canisius can somehow steal a goal they do have a chance. Quinnipiac will have their hands full with Merrimack in what may be a 0-0 OT game. Bridgeport got 3 of the 4 New England schools which is essentially the same as Fargo getting the 3 Minnesota schools. Attendance probably would not have suffered if it was a switch but saying that St. Cloud is better than Harvard is very questionable and may likely be untrue but the difference between Ohio State and Minnesota State is likely greater. Harvard has 3 players with higher PPG than the first SCSU player and their goaltender has a better GAA and Save Percentage than SCSU. So those wishing for a different combination may want to reconsider their gripes.

Remember when you said this...amazing what high PPG and low GAA gets you when you beat up on ECAC hockey teams.

[J.D.]

As I said before either the PWR numbers matter or they don't. I don't particularly care that SCSU only barely finished ahead of Harvard. The fact of the matter is they did. And they won their conference tournament in the process playing very good hockey. As we can see with Harvard, they gagged against Colgate and are getting embarrassed today. They should have been with Minnesota in Fargo. The numbers allowed for it and you could even back it up with a "human" evaluation. Hell, they probably would have lost their first game regardless of opponent but still.

[J.D.]

And whether we want to admit it or not, the PWR has its flaws (ya I know, every system does)

[Numbers]

Of course the PWR has flaws. So does what we can now call the CHN Power Ratings (previously known as KRACH). However, had the committee been using KRACH, the broacket would likely have been something like:
Minn v Canisius, Mankato v Ohio State.....
Den v Notre Dame, BU v WMU (Manchester)
Quinn v Mich State, SCSU v Harvard
Mich v Colgate, Penn State v Mich Tech.

Not much different from what we got, except 6 B10 teams. And, Cornell and Merrimack out. Is there anyone who would call Harvard's resume worse than Cornell's? And yet, Cornell shut down Denver, and Harvard is getting smoked.

Hockey is just a different breed than basketball.

[J.D.]

Well the Harvard/Cornell comparison could be as simple as one had to play a Big Ten team in a "banner" year for the Big Ten and one got an NCHC opponent in what looks like a real down year for that league. My only real gripe in the bracket was not placing Harvard in Fargo.

[FredsDeadFriend]

Imagine if a contact to the head penalty had been committed by Minne instead. That game could have looked a whooole lot different. The vaunted Gophs, kings among the royalty of the BI6, appeared to have been nekkid much of last night.

I don't agree. The score may not have ended in such a big blowout, but the Gophers weren't playing horribly the first 30 minutes, instead I think Canisius was playing great and a style that worked to neutralize the Gopher's high powered offense up to that point. But they knew that they had to keep it close and their PP defense was no where near as good as UMn's PP defense. Had the 5 minute major gone against UMn, worst case scenario they come out of it down 3-1 but still score at least 2 more goals in the 3rd and come out with the win. They were not limited to scoring on the PP and eventually figured out Canisius' style of play and adapted. UMn has great defense and a pretty good goalie, too, so like I said, had the major gone against them, I am sure that they would have limited the damage to maybe one goal, a deficit they could overcome vs any team in the country, including Canisius.

[FredsDeadFriend]

Of course the PWR has flaws. So does what we can now call the CHN Power Ratings (previously known as KRACH). However, had the committee been using KRACH, the broacket would likely have been something like:
Minn v Canisius, Mankato v Ohio State.....
Den v Notre Dame, BU v WMU (Manchester)
Quinn v Mich State, SCSU v Harvard
Mich v Colgate, Penn State v Mich Tech.

Not much different from what we got, except 6 B10 teams. And, Cornell and Merrimack out. Is there anyone who would call Harvard's resume worse than Cornell's? And yet, Cornell shut down Denver, and Harvard is getting smoked.

Hockey is just a different breed than basketball.

The PWR is a horrible ranking system, it's basically nothing more than the RPI. I've kept track over the years and with the exception of a few rare slight differences, the PWR ranking almost always ends up identical to the RPI or whatever they call it now. But it's at least not a mystery, coaches know what they need to do to make it into the NCAA tourney and there is no human bias that keeps deserving teams out.

It may have been better or more just to use the Krach and have 6 B1G teams in the tourney this year, but who outside of MSU & NDm would have wanted that? Maybe SpeedKills? The Forum would never have heard the end of it. lol

[Numbers]

The PWR is a horrible ranking system, it's basically nothing more than the RPI. I've kept track over the years and with the exception of a few rare slight differences, the PWR ranking almost always ends up identical to the RPI or whatever they call it now. But it's at least not a mystery, coaches know what they need to do to make it into the NCAA tourney and there is no human bias that keeps deserving teams out.

It may have been better or more just to use the Krach and have 6 B1G teams in the tourney this year, but who outside of MSU & NDm would have wanted that? Maybe SpeedKills? The Forum would never have heard the end of it. lol

Not to make this into a commentary thread on the system (although it seems we always get one), the way to scheme the system is for your entire conference to play the lower ranked teams (not the higher ranked teams) in the other conferences, and beat them at an 80% rate. That doesn't make your entire conference better than any other conference. But it does mathematically give you an advantage for the way the RPI and the KRACH are calculated.

I'm anxious to see this "NPI" thing that the committee is probably going to use next year. But, I'm afraid they are going to ruin it by continuing to use a 'Quality Wins Bonus". That's just a stupid math idea. The fact that you beat a high ranking team is already calculated into any decent system, so you don't need a QWB.

[BC/HE]

Remember when you said this...amazing what high PPG and low GAA gets you when you beat up on ECAC hockey teams.

It still may be true. I wasn't comparing Harvard to Ohio State. I was comparing them to SCSU. I also referenced that Ohio State was a much tougher opponent than Minnesota State. Minnesota may be better off playing St. Cloud than tOSU as tOSU has played like the best team in the tournament so far. It is not a given that the higher seeded teams are better and that the second round opponent will be the 2 seed for an overwhelming #1 seed. Had St. Cloud been matched with tOSU in Bridgeport they likely would be sitting home now and perhaps Harvard would have matched up differently with Mankato. That is why I referred to not complaining about getting different matchups.

The PWR is a horrible ranking system, it's basically nothing more than the RPI. I've kept track over the years and with the exception of a few rare slight differences, the PWR ranking almost always ends up identical to the RPI or whatever they call it now. But it's at least not a mystery, coaches know what they need to do to make it into the NCAA tourney and there is no human bias that keeps deserving teams out.

It may have been better or more just to use the Krach and have 6 B1G teams in the tourney this year, but who outside of MSU & NDm would have wanted that? Maybe SpeedKills? The Forum would never have heard the end of it. lol

Nobody wants to see 6 teams from one conference in a 16 team field even if it is your own conference. Perhaps they need a limit and bypass until a different conference team comes up. Every Power Conference 5th or 6th place team is not necessarily better than a 3rd or 4th place team from another Power Conference. Look at Basketball where they gave out 8 to the B1G and by the time it was down to 15 they had none left.