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The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Fighting Sioux 23 said:
It's doable. However, I think you are confusing the greatest teams and greatest programs formulas. They are two separate formulas.
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I undedrstand that. I don't "have a horse in that race" so to speak. I was merely tossing out a palliative compromise.

That being said, I am much more engaged in the greatest teams countdown than the greatest programs countdown. To me it is mildly ironic that greatest "teams" are partly scored by the presence of outstanding individual talent, but so what. You laid out the groundrules and I tried to follow them as best I could.

There's too many "bragging rights" or whatever in greatest programs for me to care, as I know my team is nowhere near the top. After all, I went to my first Cubs game when I was just a kid.

Fighting Sioux 23 said:
As for shaping my formula around what UND is good at, I guess Happy has a point. There was a heavy emphasis on National Championships, Frozen Fours and NCAA success. :p:D:D
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of course. i don't think his complaint is related to the criteria you used, I suspect it is based more on criteria you didn't use. Criteria he can sense but not quite articulate never mind try to measure.

I still think one of the best measures of "fan base passion" would be attendance as percentage of undergraduate enrollment, but there is no way to get the data you'd need to measure it. When you have a school with enrollment of 5,200 and average attendence of 3,150 that is a pretty high testimony to the fan base. I've attended road games where the visiting team's fans are about 1/3 of total attendance. If one could measure those two metrics for all teams I definitely would add it to the greatest programs formula, but the data just isn't there.

and as you noted, we are discussing greatest teams here.

BTW glad to have you back.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Although I tend to appreciate Gopher hockey from the perspectives that mariucci and happy hold, tradition is not my issue with this thread. FS23 is doing this for fun and, I think, is trying to get folks involved in some actual hockey discussion, rather than the tedious, neanderthal-like flame wars that typify this forum. For that, I congratulate he and the others who support this thread.

That said, I don't see tradition as the issue with this ranking. In my mind, tradition is a qualitative measure that simply doesn't work with a quantitatively derived ranking process, such as FS23 used, which is both its strength and its weakness. To me, a more fundamental flaw of the ranking is the time span. It doesn't make sense to me to compare championship teams from the 50's and 60's with those of the past few decades just because they took place under the auspices of the NCAA, anymore than it makes sense to compare an AAU championship with an NCAA championship.

Of course, the UofMI, MTU and DU, for instance, will hotly dispute my point for obvious reasons. But think about it...the game was far different in the 50's and 60's than it was over the last 20. I know, I played during the 60's. Back then, there were far fewer elite level players and they played fewer games with inferior equipment and facilities. The average level of coaching was also inferior at the college level, considering experience, tactics and motivational skills. The game changed radically after the Soviets began to dominate international play and a number of college coaches had the foresight to adopt Soviet tactics, while the NHL lagged behind holding desperately onto "old-time hockey." Since then, cycling, puck control and transition attack have become nearly standard practices at all levels. Consequently, it takes a team with considerably deeper talent and expert coaching to win a championship today than was the case in the earlier decades of the NCAA. That's not to say the earlier championships don't count, or that they should be downgraded somehow.

One could sort of normalize for this issue by constricting the time spans into decades or two each. But that would defeat the purpose of the ranking, which I believe is basically about bragging rights, so why bother? I'm simply saying there are too many unmeasurable variables, each with unintended consequences, for this type of ranking to have credibility for anything other than bragging rights on the quantitative success of a program.
 
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Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

HiStick said:
Although I tend to appreciate Gopher hockey from the perspectives that mariucci and happy hold, tradition is not my issue with this thread. FS23 is doing this for fun and, I think, is trying to get folks involved in some actual hockey discussion, rather than the tedious, neanderthal-like flame wars that typify this forum. For that, I congratulate he and the others who support this thread.

That said, I don't see tradition as the issue with this ranking. In my mind, tradition is a qualitative measure that simply doesn't work with a quantitatively derived ranking process, such as FS23 used, which is both its strength and its weakness. To me, a more fundamental flaw of the ranking is the time span. It doesn't make sense to me to compare championship teams from the 50's and 60's with those of the past few decades just because they took place under the auspices of the NCAA, anymore than it makes sense to compare an AAU championship with an NCAA championship.

Of course, the UofMI, MTU and DU, for instance, will hotly dispute my point for obvious reasons. But think about it...the game was far different in the 50's and 60's than it was over the last 20. I know, I played during the 60's. Back then, there were far fewer elite level players and they played fewer games with inferior equipment and facilities. The average level of coaching was also inferior at the college level, considering experience, tactics and motivational skills. The game changed radically after the Soviets began to dominate international play and a number of college coaches had the foresight to adopt Soviet tactics, while the NHL lagged behind holding desperately onto "old-time hockey." Since then, cycling, puck control and transition attack have become nearly standard practices at all levels. Consequently, it takes a team with considerably deeper talent and expert coaching to win a championship today than was the case in the earlier decades of the NCAA. That's not to say the earlier championships don't count, or that they should be downgraded somehow.

One could sort of normalize for this issue by constricting the time spans into decades or two each. But that would defeat the purpose of the ranking, which I believe is basically about bragging rights, so why bother? I'm simply saying there are too many unmeasurable variables, each with unintended consequences, for this type of ranking to have credibility for anything other than bragging rights on the quantitative success of a program.
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I have to disagree with one of your statements. It was just as hard to win a championship 50 years ago as today. You said "it takes a team with considerably deeper talent and expert coaching to win a championship today than was the case in the earlier decades of the NCAA." I say bull to that. It is different, sure, but only one team won back then, and only one team wins today.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Fighting Sioux 23 said:
Sorry. I knew you would not be too pleased, but it is important to note that being #9 out of thousands of teams is very impressive.
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True, but like I said earlier, I don't think you put enough weight on the trifecta of Regular Season Champion, Conference Tournament Champion and NCAA Champion.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

FreshFish said:
Ralph, did you enter the contest? If not, who would be YOUR top five teams?
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No I didn't. I was too lazy. The three that come to mind are Maine in 1993, Cornell in 1970, and RPI in 1985. The others would take research. :D
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Happy said:
I have to disagree with one of your statements. It was just as hard to win a championship 50 years ago as today. You said "it takes a team with considerably deeper talent and expert coaching to win a championship today than was the case in the earlier decades of the NCAA." I say bull to that. It is different, sure, but only one team won back then, and only one team wins today.
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The more teams there are, the harder it is. If there is only one team, it is quite easy. Clearly there are some teams with virtually no chance of winning, but that has always been the case. Actually, 50 years ago in 1962, there were more teams with no chance since the ECAC had not broken up into ECAC-I and ECAC-II yet.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Happy said:
It is different, sure, but only one team won back then, and only one team wins today.
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Naturally. And that's a valid argument that any national championship, regardless of auspices, is equally meaningful. But that's not my point. I'm saying it's not all relative, as you seem to be suggesting. If it were, then you ought to be willing to accept a rival fan's taunt that 7>5 without any objections about recruiting differences since that's a value judgment that can't be objectively measured.

The rankings in this thread are based on numbers, thoughtfully done to be sure, but nonetheless one-dimensional. I simply don't agree that teams of vastly different eras, qualitatively, can be meaningfully compared to allow one to formulate the "top" teams of the entire NCAA period, anymore than one can meaningfully rank order the best player of all time based on something like points per game. It's fun to consider, but ultimately means nothing, especially given the contentious crowd that frequents this forum.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Shirtless Guy said:
True, but like I said earlier, I don't think you put enough weight on the trifecta of Regular Season Champion, Conference Tournament Champion and NCAA Champion.
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Perhaps. What hurt this Tech squad the most was that the WCHA was not quite as strong in 1961-1962 as in surrounding seasons. If this Tech squad had put up identical numbers in either the season before or after, they would have been a notch or two higher. Obviously there was nothing that Tech could do about that, but a part of the formula deals with conference strength. That, and having a losing record to the other WCHA team in the Final Four, prevented Tech from being a top 5 team.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Ralph Baer said:
No I didn't. I was too lazy. The three that come to mind are Maine in 1993, Cornell in 1970, and RPI in 1985. The others would take research. :D
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Just out of curiosity, how do you stack RPI 1984 vs. the 1985 team, aside from the obvious fact that one team won the NC, the other didn't? Wasn't the 1985 team pretty much the same as its predecessor?
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

HiStick said:
Naturally. And that's a valid argument that any national championship, regardless of auspices, is equally meaningful. But that's not my point. I'm saying it's not all relative, as you seem to be suggesting. If it were, then you ought to be willing to accept a rival fan's taunt that 7>5 without any objections about recruiting differences since that's a value judgment that can't be objectively measured.

The rankings in this thread are based on numbers, thoughtfully done to be sure, but nonetheless one-dimensional. I simply don't agree that teams of vastly different eras, qualitatively, can be meaningfully compared to allow one to formulate the "top" teams of the entire NCAA period, anymore than one can meaningfully rank order the best player of all time based on something like points per game. It's fun to consider, but ultimately means nothing, especially given the contentious crowd that frequents this forum.
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I see that you are relatively new around here, so I will point out that I had a previous thread using this same formula and ranked teams within their era. I was then approached by CHW about doing a list for all the teams, and ultimately decided to tweak the formula as best I could so that teams from different eras could compete on a somewhat neutral playing field. Ultimately, I tend to agree with your vantage point. When this list is done, there are going to be a few more interesting lists and threads done through CHW that should be of more interest to those that like to see comparisons of like eras. Hopefully the site is still around for those to be done.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

buoldtimer said:
Just out of curiosity, how do you stack RPI 1984 vs. the 1985 team, aside from the obvious fact that one team won the NC, the other didn't? Wasn't the 1985 team pretty much the same as its predecessor?
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They were pretty much the same team. The 1984 team had better players than 1985 mainly because Marty Dallman '84 was better than any of the incoming players, but the experience gained in 1984 greatly helped the 1985 team. Of the 18 skaters and 3 goalies who dressed in the 1985 championship game, all but transfer John Tiano and freshman Mo Mansi were on the team the previous year, although I think that a couple of others didn't dress when RPI lost to North Dakota in 1984.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

Ralph Baer said:
No I didn't. I was too lazy. The three that come to mind are Maine in 1993, Cornell in 1970, and RPI in 1985. The others would take research. :D
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I had those teams plus Denver '60-'61 as the four teams that seemed to me to be the most likely to be in the top five. We'll see how it plays out.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

From time to time, will you provide the point totals generated by your formula? I have them for # 11 - # 25. No need to do it now, at the end would be sufficient, although I would be curious if you posted it for # 6 - # 10 and then for each of the top five as they are released.

BTW, on a somewhat-related matter, the distribution of teams across 'eras' (so far) is roughly the same as the distribution of overall championships won during each 'era', which could indicate that your adjustment to your formula to equalize across eras is working (assuming that greatest teams would be equally distributed across eras).

45% of championships were won in the "four team" era while 47% of the greatest teams so far were from the "four team" era. 23% of championships were won in the "twelve team" era and 23% of the greatest teams so far are from that era, and 14% of championships were won in the "sixteen team" era and 17% of the greatest teams so far are from that era. Given that we are only looking at 17 teams so far, that is amazingly close correspondence.

We'll see how it works out in the end...my 'gut feeling' told me that the sixteen-team era would be slightly overweighted, and so far this is not quite the case.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

FreshFish said:
That thread doesn't seem to be available any more.....
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Correct. Apparently it was sacrificed when USCHO cut all threads that were 2+ years old (or perhaps that hadn't been posted on in 2+ years).

Of course, that thread was done "pre-tweak", so its results would not be exactly the same.
 
Re: The Top 25 College Hockey Teams of the NCAA Era

FreshFish said:
From time to time, will you provide the point totals generated by your formula? I have them for # 11 - # 25. No need to do it now, at the end would be sufficient, although I would be curious if you posted it for # 6 - # 10 and then for each of the top five as they are released.

BTW, on a somewhat-related matter, the distribution of teams across 'eras' (so far) is roughly the same as the distribution of overall championships won during each 'era', which could indicate that your adjustment to your formula to equalize across eras is working (assuming that greatest teams would be equally distributed across eras).

45% of championships were won in the "four team" era while 47% of the greatest teams so far were from the "four team" era. 23% of championships were won in the "twelve team" era and 23% of the greatest teams so far are from that era, and 14% of championships were won in the "sixteen team" era and 17% of the greatest teams so far are from that era. Given that we are only looking at 17 teams so far, that is amazingly close correspondence.

We'll see how it works out in the end...my 'gut feeling' told me that the sixteen-team era would be slightly overweighted, and so far this is not quite the case.
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Interesting. I had no intention of it coming out that way, but I'm glad it has. We'll see how it shakes out at the end.

Also, it looks as though it will be #8 this weekend, and at some point there will be a double-release. Sunday looks like the day that they will be posted, so there will not be a mid-week release. Right now the options being discussed are to do #4 and #3 in one week and then #2 and #1 in the final week, or release them one at a time, and then release #3, #2, and #1 for the finale. I like the first option, but we'll see what happens.
 
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