41 is the number of comparisons won. You will note that it almost perfectly follows RPI rank (inversely). Minnesota State is the only team ahead of us with a lower rank than their RPI would imply, and that's just a matter of swapping them with Colgate. The new criteria are what has virtually aligned RPI and ranking, by removing TUC. A team behind another team in RPI has to beat them both head-to-head and against common opponents to win the comparison now. Since there aren't that many head-to-head comparisons, and since common opponents mostly follows RPI, the two are highly aligned. In the case of Mankato vs. Colgate, Mankato loses the comparison to Duluth, who they lead in RPI, while Colgate wins the comparison with Cornell, who they trail in RPI. Those two combine to put Minnesota State one behind Colgate.
For Yale, it's all RPI: they can't pass anyone ahead of them in RPI by other means, or lose to anyone behind them, given the way it breaks down. (Just to be clear, their RPI can still move up or down, of course.) So just follow the RPI column and you're all good. Beating QPac has a much better upside to RPI than beating Cornell, so if you want to sneak in without the autobid (which probably still means getting to the Lake Placid finals) that's who you want to play. [EDIT: I take CGYF's point -- we match up much better with Cornell. I'm just saying that beating Cornell 2-1 will probably still require a first-round Lake Placid win at a minimum, and may still even require the autobid. Not so with QPac -- 2-0 and a semis loss to Union might conceivably squeak us in.] If you get the autobid, of course, it doesn't matter -- there's essentially no way for Yale to get better than a 4 seed without tremendous luck.
One more in-the-weeds issue: RPI this year is affected by so-called Quality Win Bonus Points. Yale has done really badly in this category, since our only wins against top 20 RPI teams are the two wins against Colgate. (We also get points from the ties with QPac and Vermont.) Beating Cornell will get us precious few more, because 2 losses will almost drop them from the top 20 and the points are graduated. But unless we play them, we really want Colgate to do as well as possible -- they're already giving us about 6 extra RPI points, and that will grow if their ranking grows (6 points is pitiful, but every point helps.) A good run by Vermont in the hockey East tournament might give us another couple of points as well.
