siouxperirish
New member
To begin, let me make it clear, this rationale I am suggesting should not consider game statistics post regular season, whereby a team is able to win themselves a bye because of dominant play. This also would not apply to the automatic seed given to those teams like Air Force, Army, etc. because those numbers would cause too much turbulence because of their inherent inconsistency.
What I am suggesting is a discussion around what quantifies a game played for teams that don't amass the same amount of tangible (actual) games played throughout the season. The affect that playing less games ~vs~ a full schedule can be answered better by players and coaches of the game. Consider what I'm suggesting analogous to combat, the more times you are exposed to danger, the better chance you have of getting hurt; more opportunity to have your collective ability as a team assessed and that assessment reflect against overall wins ~vs~ losses.
Teams (not counted what I first mentioned), that are able to cruise into the Frozen Four with a lighter season load will be fresher, less hurt and have potentially more players available for all games; those teams carrying a full complement of games are more exposed to among other things, poor calls by refs that are not able to reverse calls in retrospect so the affect of this could cause a team to lose a key player if he were to get that third misconduct. Playing a full season may allow individuals to collect better stats but overall, the teams with more ice time increase the likelihood they'll at the very least, be affected by a poor penalty.
With that out of the way, I'm suggesting a conversation on how to quantify that "non-game" for those teams with the lighter schedules. Again, not including those in the first paragraph.
A quick and easy way would be to remove outliers from those that play more games. Outliers removed would be based on the likelihood those teams with lighter schedules, would have fared against those same opponents. But how do you compare and qualify the ability of those teams with lighter schedules? You consider each of them individually against the teams they did play. That is, if Yale played Minnesota during a given year and Yale beat Minnesota, then an argument could be made that Yale "might" have beat the other teams Minnesota played. Accumulate the teams they both have in common for a given year, determine which team had more success with those teams they have in common and if the Minnesota ~vs~ Yale comparison comes out in Yale's favor, then Yale's factor for that comparison can be +1. Every team that doesn't play the same amount of games in a year (excluding 1st paragraph), should have their "non-game" games weighted to even this out.
The benefit would still be in the favor of those teams with less games because of injuries, bad penalties, etc. but I believe a method like this for starters, would help. There are going to be more methods to approach this but the most important consideration is how to better flatten out the baseline.
Another (future) discussion needs to be on a historical representation and how a team's intangibles should be accounted for. Obviously this is going to get even more squishy with team's recently added to the Category, "Men's Division 1". The art will be in how to create that history for those teams and then once that baseline can be established, certain unstable prognostication came become another topic for consideration. But just for fun really because then you would need to draw in coaching history, school support, etc.
What I am suggesting is a discussion around what quantifies a game played for teams that don't amass the same amount of tangible (actual) games played throughout the season. The affect that playing less games ~vs~ a full schedule can be answered better by players and coaches of the game. Consider what I'm suggesting analogous to combat, the more times you are exposed to danger, the better chance you have of getting hurt; more opportunity to have your collective ability as a team assessed and that assessment reflect against overall wins ~vs~ losses.
Teams (not counted what I first mentioned), that are able to cruise into the Frozen Four with a lighter season load will be fresher, less hurt and have potentially more players available for all games; those teams carrying a full complement of games are more exposed to among other things, poor calls by refs that are not able to reverse calls in retrospect so the affect of this could cause a team to lose a key player if he were to get that third misconduct. Playing a full season may allow individuals to collect better stats but overall, the teams with more ice time increase the likelihood they'll at the very least, be affected by a poor penalty.
With that out of the way, I'm suggesting a conversation on how to quantify that "non-game" for those teams with the lighter schedules. Again, not including those in the first paragraph.
A quick and easy way would be to remove outliers from those that play more games. Outliers removed would be based on the likelihood those teams with lighter schedules, would have fared against those same opponents. But how do you compare and qualify the ability of those teams with lighter schedules? You consider each of them individually against the teams they did play. That is, if Yale played Minnesota during a given year and Yale beat Minnesota, then an argument could be made that Yale "might" have beat the other teams Minnesota played. Accumulate the teams they both have in common for a given year, determine which team had more success with those teams they have in common and if the Minnesota ~vs~ Yale comparison comes out in Yale's favor, then Yale's factor for that comparison can be +1. Every team that doesn't play the same amount of games in a year (excluding 1st paragraph), should have their "non-game" games weighted to even this out.
The benefit would still be in the favor of those teams with less games because of injuries, bad penalties, etc. but I believe a method like this for starters, would help. There are going to be more methods to approach this but the most important consideration is how to better flatten out the baseline.
Another (future) discussion needs to be on a historical representation and how a team's intangibles should be accounted for. Obviously this is going to get even more squishy with team's recently added to the Category, "Men's Division 1". The art will be in how to create that history for those teams and then once that baseline can be established, certain unstable prognostication came become another topic for consideration. But just for fun really because then you would need to draw in coaching history, school support, etc.
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