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WCHA 2017-18 Season

Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

Timothy A said:
What's to complain about? Looks good to me.
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Yeah, right.

I expect Minn and OSU people to complain about Roque (with some justification.)

I think OSU people might complain about Baldwin.

I have no doubt that OSU people will complain about Campbell.

And I think Minn people might complain about Maltais (with some justification).
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

robertearle said:
WCHA individual season awards announced: let the complaining begin.

http://www.wcha.com/women/pres1718/201802/feb28awa.php
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I would have taken Dunne over Baldwin, but the edge went to a senior, so ok I guess. Dunne wins this the next 2 years.

Johnson over Muzerall as I think he did a better job coaching with how much he lost to the Olympics and managed to stay ranked number one. Johnson reminds me of the Babcock syndrome. Does great every year and never gets a sniff at winning a coaching award. But I digress.

Sauve should be there over Campbell. Still wrapping my head around the Kaz voting too. Can you imagine the numbers Sauve would put up in Wisconsin?

The most impressive honor for me is Daoust. Wow. Impressive young lady.
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

I would take Sadek , Joyce or Anderson before Dunne. Not sure about the hype with Dunne other than she gets more ice time than Ryan Suter

Roque Player of the Year? 6 goals and 15 assists. That is a joke. How about Tykles? Give it to Maltais who deserves it.

Sauve might have won the award if not hurt so much. Campbell wins it by default even though she see about 5 quality shots a game.
 
pgb-ohio said:
Completely disagree with this first comment. A "Universal Playoff" is a perfectly acceptable option. I thought we were trying to address the problem of unwanted byes.

A "Winner's Tournament" is also a good option. And if we go that route, then I'm OK with your second set of comments. It should be noted, though, that if you brought all 5 teams to a central site, you'd almost certainly play Thursday through Saturday. I suppose Friday through Sunday could be a viable alternative.

Another possibility: Playing the #4 vs. #5 game on Tuesday might be more fair in terms of the rest factor. Most likely you'd treat this as a Play-In Game, hosted by the #4 seed. IIRC, the Men's CCHA playoffs used a play-in round for a few seasons.

The Women's WCHA also had a Final Five for a short while. At the beginning, in 2000 & 2001, the Original 7 teams all went to a neutral site. But in 2002, 2003 & 2004, the league went with a 5 team format -- very similar to what shelfit describes. North Dakota joined in time for the 2005 tourney. That year all 8 teams went to a central site, which happened to be Ridder. Starting in 2006, the first round match-ups went to campus sites, followed by the four team Final Face-Off. Not sure if the term Final Face-Off was used immediately. But IIRC it's been that way ever since.

With North Dakota now gone, you can certainly make a case for a return to the Final Five format.
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I'm more of the mind that not every team deserves to be in the playoffs after the regular season and I'm not as concerned about unwanted byes. If you look across the board at D1 and D3 you see a lot of really undeserving teams (teams with terrible records) that somehow make the playoffs. In most cases it's because conferences allow too many teams in to begin with.

Even though I believe the MIAC should be a 6 team tournament because they have 10 teams in the conference, their 5 team structure for playoffs is very sound. 4v5 just played last Thursday, with the semi-finals last Saturday. The championship game takes place this coming Saturday. Plenty of rest for both top teams.

Take a look at Hockey East. They allow 8 out of 9 teams into their playoffs. Last weekend the 7th place team beat the 2nd place team in their quarter-finals because #7 put one good weekend together after not putting a good regular season together. Do we really want a team like that getting lucky in one weekend and knocking off a top team?! I don't think so. The top teams should be rewarded for their efforts all season long. In this example, they should only let 6 of 9 teams into the playoffs and give #1 and #2 a bye into the semi-finals and go from there.
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

dd17 said:
I would have taken Dunne over Baldwin, but the edge went to a senior, so ok I guess. Dunne wins this the next 2 years.

Johnson over Muzerall as I think he did a better job coaching with how much he lost to the Olympics and managed to stay ranked number one. Johnson reminds me of the Babcock syndrome. Does great every year and never gets a sniff at winning a coaching award. But I digress.

Sauve should be there over Campbell. Still wrapping my head around the Kaz voting too. Can you imagine the numbers Sauve would put up in Wisconsin?

The most impressive honor for me is Daoust. Wow. Impressive young lady.
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Agree with the above however do believe that OSU coach is deserving of the award. She is blessed with a talented team that was put together by her predecessors but you are still required to coach the team. These selections are governed by statistics and it is difficult to argue with data!
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

robertearle said:
For many years, the mens WCHA had ten teams, and would play a first weekend with all ten teams playing (either a best-of-three, or two game, total goals series), and then a "Final Five", with the two bottom-most remaining seeds playing Thursday night, and then normal Friday and Saturday single elimination.
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The total goals format was just plan weird although it led to some unusual coach's strategies in the 2nd game. Wouldn't want to go back to that.
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

What is the difference between "Goaltender of the Year" and "Goaltending Champion"?
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

robertearle said:
I expect Minn and OSU people to complain about Roque (with some justification.)
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Wasn't an obvious winner; she's as good as anyone else I suppose.

robertearle said:
I think OSU people might complain about Baldwin.
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She must be getting the senior bump. I can understand the complaints.

robertearle said:
I have no doubt that OSU people will complain about Campbell.
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She's not the first goalie to benefit from being on a dominant team.

robertearle said:
And I think Minn people might complain about Maltais (with some justification).
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IMO, Maltais was very, very good this season.
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

ARM said:
I think champion is strictly by the numbers.
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If that is the case, Polusny and/or Sauve got ripped on the Goaltender of the Year award. You could make a case on Zumwinkle or Skaggs as worthy candidates for the offensive player of the year award as well but the fact that they are both freshmen likely hurts them. How can you be the offensive player of the year and not be the rookie of the year or vice versa in Maltais' case. Happy for Baldwin as she did have a good season. Going forward, you would expect players like Thiessen and Dunne to be at the top of the D class.
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

What I like about all this is that you could make a reasonable argument that the (current) #1 team in the country has nobody who belongs an the Kazmaier list, and a reasonable argument that the team that won the WCHA by five full games has nobody who was the conference's Offensive/Defensive/Goalie Player of the Year, or Coach of the Year.
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

robertearle said:
What I like about all this is that you could make a reasonable argument that the (current) #1 team in the country has nobody who belongs an the Kazmaier list, and a reasonable argument that the team that won the WCHA by five full games has nobody who was the conference's Offensive/Defensive/Goalie Player of the Year, or Coach of the Year.
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Funny but true. The fact is that awards are always debatable and the easiest way to push off any argument is to base your selections on statistics which in most cases apply. There will always be deserving players that are missed and some that are selected that are perceived to be less deserving. These boards would be dull if we all agreed. So always happy to debate even if we are not always aligned.
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

robertearle said:
What I like about all this is that you could make a reasonable argument that the (current) #1 team in the country has nobody who belongs an the Kazmaier list, and a reasonable argument that the team that won the WCHA by five full games has nobody who was the conference's Offensive/Defensive/Goalie Player of the Year, or Coach of the Year.
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If there was an award for best forecheck (or best backcheck, for that matter), then the Badgers would win that handily. Wisconsin is where it is because it plays the best team game. Which would argue for Coach of the Year, but how many of those awards does Johnson really need?
 
Re: WCHA 2017-18 Season

robertearle said:
What I like about all this is that you could make a reasonable argument that the (current) #1 team in the country has nobody who belongs an the Kazmaier list, and a reasonable argument that the team that won the WCHA by five full games has nobody who was the conference's Offensive/Defensive/Goalie Player of the Year, or Coach of the Year.
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Yes, that would be reasonable. But would you want to change talent with OSU this year? It is also reasonable to argue that Muzzerall did more with less talent. The only useful thing about any of these subjective awards is that reasonable arguments can be made that they are wrong because there is no way to disprove any of them. I think both coaches have a strong argument but I didn't get a vote this year.
 
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