Re: Doug Woog vs. Dave Hakstol
There's something to that angle for sure. Also of note that '90 team that lost 2 games to 1 to BU those games were at BU. So while they had some games at home, some were also on the road but definitely not neutral until the FF. There was plenty of discussion in those years about "East Coast bias" when the fields were being "selected".
But all that aside imho a legit argument can be made for Hak - the guy won a lot of games at UND my only point of contention would be thinking it's not even close. And even then ok no worries.
That's really the difficulty of comparing the two eras, even though they aren't that far apart in terms of years.
Woog coached when only 8, then later 12 teams made the tournament. That meant it was easier to reach the Frozen Four and win the whole thing, which neither managed. It can also be legitimately argued that it was harder to make the tournament then because fewer teams were admitted. However, he also coached at the end of the "smoke-filled room" era in which there was a clear bias in favor of the larger, more traditional powers like Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, BU, etc..., getting in.
What's interesting when you look at their records is that Woog's teams had to play a lot more games in the opponent's rinks, as you pointed out. However, they also played a lot more games in their home rink.
By my calculations, the coaching records for each were:
Woog
Home ice: 8-1
Home crowd (St. Paul): 1-2
Neutral: 5-5
Away Crowd: 1-3
Away ice: 4-5
Hakstol
Home ice: 2-0
Home crowd (Fargo): 2-0
Neutral:10-8
Away crowd: 2-2
Away ice: 1-1
As you can see, more than 60% of Hakstol's games were on neutral ice, whereas Woog saw only about 25-30% of his there.
I'd say the one thing cutting against Woog in this comparison of great coaches who failed to win the big one is that Woog did get a chance to have two of his six Frozen Fours in front of his people in St. Paul. I know all North Dakota fans would have loved to have seen a Hak coached team play a Frozen Four in Grand Forks or Fargo during his tenure there. He had a pretty great win/loss record in North Dakota.
The other thing that surprised me when I looked at the records was the number of times a Hak coached team was the favorite (by seed) as opposed to the underdog, and comparing those numbers with Woog's.
Woog was 12-3 as the favorite, but 7-12 as the underdog and 0-1 when the two teams were seeded identically (Harvard and MN were both #2 seeds in the '89 championship game). I was surprised that Woog's teams were the underdog that often.
On the other hand, Hakstol was just 11-8 as the favorite but 6-3 as the underdog. Two out of three games we were the favorite.
