Welcome to the final weekend of the B1G hockey regular season! Michigan has just three games remaining and the postseason is drawing near. The Wolverines are fresh off of a frustrating but also mostly unimportant weekend against Arizona State that saw the Maize and Blue win an easy game on Friday, followed by an enraging tie on Saturday. Matty Beniers was the headliner of the weekend because of his Friday hat trick, while Cole Brady helped snare ASU the draw on Saturday thanks to saving all but one of the 41 shots Michigan put on him. 

Michigan now sits at 13-8-1 on the season and though I typically do a section of this column recapping the preceding weekend, I don't think there was anything in the ASU series that was not already known and discussed. So, as a more efficient use of time and words, I'm going to devote this week's Hockey Weekly to looking at the postseason chase. With the final stretch of the season unfolding, there are a lot of questions about the B1G and NCAA picture, and I will attempt to tackle those today. I will cover the B1G tournament, the NCAA tournament, and then preview Minnesota, so let's get started: 

B1G Standings Update 

​Notre Dame and Michigan are still vying for #3 in the conference [James Coller]

We're now into the final weekend of the B1G regular season, and every team has less than four games remaining. The conference continues to be interesting, with a battle for #1, #3, and #6 still raging. Here are the updated standings, calculated using winning percentage in conference games, which we now know serves as the tiebreaker for the conference: 

1. Minnesota, .750 WP%, +49

2. Wisconsin, .705 WP%, +37 

3. Michigan, .555 WP%, +36

4. Notre Dame, .500 WP%, +0

5. Penn State, .438 WP%, -9 

6. Michigan State, .275 WP%, -31 

7. Ohio State, .273 WP%, -44 

The remaining schedule sees Minnesota face Michigan, Wisconsin face MSU, and ND face PSU, with Michigan and MSU playing one more game next week. Ohio State faces Arizona State, which means they are finished in conference games and locked in with that dreadful .273 clip. 

The battle for the league championship will be decided this weekend. A sweep for the Gophers of Michigan puts their regular season title on ice, but a split puts them in danger. A Minnesota split and a Wisconsin sweep would hand the Badgers the banner and the #1 seed for the BTT. Ties would complicate things considerably. As for Michigan, the Wolverines have the assurance that going 2-1 or 1-1-1 means Notre Dame cannot catch Michigan. Thus, the easiest path to the #3 seed is simply splitting with Minnesota and beating MSU. A Notre Dame split with Penn State would mean that the Wolverines need just a single win in their last three to wrap up the #3 seed. 

The race to the bottom is pretty clear. If MSU loses out, they will slide below OSU. A single win will keep them in the #6 position. Since Michigan still has the inside track to the #3 seed, the race to the bottom determines who they will draw in the first round in that 3/6 matchup. I have long believed that OSU is the worst team in the conference and thus I would root for anything that allows them to face Michigan in the BTT first round. Therefore, the ideal scenario is Michigan winning 2 of their last 3 (or getting help from PSU) to finish 3rd, and then having MSU lose out to Wisconsin and Michigan themselves, which would put OSU 6th and set up a Michigan/OSU first round battle. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: do you like brackets? I like brackets!]

NCAA Tournament Picture

​The chance of seeing Owen Power in the NCAA Tournament seems high [JD Scott]

There've been a lot of questions about the NCAA Hockey Tournament picture thrown at David and I, as well as in the general Michigan fan sphere, including Ace on this week's MGoPod as well. This will be my attempt to answer all of those questions in the most systematic way that I can. Although, as you will learn in the next few paragraphs, there are still a lot of unknowns to the process. But here goes nothing: 

As has been discussed several times before in this column, NCAA Hockey has abandoned their typical process of seeding the 16 teams through PairWise Rank due to the fact that PWR is useless in a season with next-to-no non-conference games being played. So, this season includes a selection committee for the first time, which puts us in uncharted waters. We don't know what priorities the committee will be using, and there's no track record to use as a past indication of future choices. That leaves the process of figuring out where Michigan, a team that's quite good but not untouchable, sits headed into the final couple weeks before the field is picked rather complex. 

But we're not completely without ways to get a read on the situation. For weeks this column has been using the CHN's Power 16 ranking, as well as the USCHO and Coaches polls to try and figure out where the nation's teams stack up. This week I'm going to take a bit deeper of a dive and try to seed who I think the 16 teams should but also will be, but I will also acknowledge that your author is not an oracle. This is merely an educated conjecture but one that I think is generally well reasoned. 

College hockey has six conferences, of which four(ish) are power conferences and two are not. The NCHC, the Hockey East, the ECAC, and the B1G are the power conferences, while the WCHA and Atlantic Hockey are less powerful. The former four generally comprise over 3/4 of the spots in the field, with the WCHA getting only 1-2 per year, and Atlantic Hockey has gotten just one in each of the last five tournaments. Here is the breakdown of how many spots each conference has gotten on average in the last five tournaments (2015-19): 

- NCHC: 4 

- B1G: 2.2 

- Hockey East: 4 

- ECAC: 3.2 

- WCHA: 1.6 

- Atlantic Hockey: 1 

There are a few things to note here. First off, it took the B1G a few years to get off the ground but in the last three tournaments they were averaging 3 bids per season. Secondly, the ECAC only has four teams this year since the majority of their conference (the Ivy League schools) chose not to participate this season, so they will almost certainly not get their usual three slots. Since teams are only playing conference games, the above numbers are good factors to keep in mind when weighing how good each team is. Based on their track records, if the #3 team in the NCHC and the #3 team in Atlantic Hockey both have the same conference record, it is extremely likely that the NCHC team is better than the Atlantic Hockey team since those wins have come in a historically much better conference. 

Moving beyond the conference weights, let's just go conference by conference here and pick out which teams appear to be really good, based mostly on record and goal differential. There are nine teams that have a goal differential of +30 or more: North Dakota (NCHC), Minnesota (B1G), Wisconsin (B1G), Michigan (B1G), BC (Hockey East), UMass (Hockey East), QPac (ECAC), Minnesota State (WCHA), and Bowling Green (WCHA). It may be unsurprising to you that eight of those nine teams find themselves in the top nine of the Power 16, and seven of them are in the top nine of the USCHO poll. Bowling Green is the lone one to be absent from the top nine of both, docked for having an extremely easy schedule. But if we just look at the first eight, those eight teams seem to be the ones that should feel pretty good about getting into the tournament. They all have phenomenal goal differentials and in all but Michigan's case, sterling records (Michigan's been bitten by the puck luck monster a bit too much this year). 

So if we take those eight teams, we get 1 from the NCHC, 3 from the B1G, 2 from the HE, 1 from the ECAC, and 1 from the WCHA. That leaves a bunch of slots open from the NCHC based on what that conference is used to getting, as well as a couple slots from the HE. Delving into the NCHC, there are three teams that are in the running: St. Cloud State, Duluth, and UNO. They all have similar records and similar goal differentials (~+10). Given that the NCHC is a power conference, I would guess that all three have a good shot of getting in. There's no one else in that conference that merits a bid, and since the NCHC normally gets four bids, in my mind it's quite easy to give all four a golden ticket and call it a day. 

The ECAC only has one other team besides QPac that merits a bid, and that's Clarkson. They're 11-7-4 with a +10 goal differential and though they play in a normally great conference, the absence of the Ivies has more or less rendered the ECAC as a minor conference this year. Many of Clarkson's games have come against dreadful St. Lawrence and Colgate, or other Atlantic hockey non-con opponents like RIT, Mercyhurst, and Niagara. So we should dock them a bit for strength of schedule and I'd put them on the bubble. Moving to the Hockey East, this is where the bubble conversation gets most interesting. BU has a 10-3 record but hasn't played many games and has three OT wins, suggesting some bit of luck. Northeastern and Providence have similar records and goal differentials, while UCONN is in the goal differential conversation, but not the record one. Of this group BU has the best KRACH, which is a decent metric for comparing teams within conferences, and their record is hard to ignore, so let's put them in. That puts us at 3 for the HE, and for the last one let's go with Providence, since they have more wins than Northeastern or UCONN and a better KRACH than both, but this will be interesting into the final weekends. 

So now we're up to 13 teams: NoDak, St. Cloud, Duluth, UNO, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Minnesota State, QPac, BC, UMass, BU, and Providence. Atlantic Hockey will get one autobid team and should not be considered to get any more than that no matter how tempting the records or goal differentials may seem. We know that is the MAC of College Hockey, and don't fall for it. Toss in their autobid, and we're up to 14. That leaves us with two slots for either Clarkson, additional teams from the WCHA, or another team from the Hockey East. In the WCHA, Bowling Green's got the crazy good record and goal differential, but that mostly comes from playing a ton of non-con games against Atlantic Hockey teams. Within the conference they're locked in a tight battle with Lake State, Bemidji, and Tech for #2. KRACH says that Bemidji is the second best team in the conference, and they've got the best head-to-head record against those other teams, so let's put them in. Thus, the last spot sits between either Northeastern and Clarkson. They have similar records (9-7-3 vs. 11-7-4) and identical goal differentials (+10), but Northeastern plays a better schedule, so let's put the Huskies in. 

Voila, there's our 16. And just for the fun of it, here's my attempt at seeding it: 

Midwest Regional: Fargo, ND

1.) North Dakota vs. 4.) American International (proj. Atlantic Hockey autobid) 

2.) UMass vs. 3.) Duluth 

West Regional: Loveland, CO

1.) Minnesota vs. 4.) Bemidji State 

2.) St. Cloud State vs. 3.) Boston University 

Northeast Regional: Albany, NY

1.) Boston College vs. 4.) Nebraska-Omaha 

2.) Michigan vs. 3.) Quinnipiac 

East Regional: Bridgeport, CT

1.) Wisconsin vs. 4.) Northeastern 

2.) Minnesota State vs. 3.) Providence 

What does this extremely thorough exercise mean for Michigan? I continue to believe that the Wolverines are in a very strong position to make the NCAA Tournament for the second time under Mel Pearson. Though the Wolverines' record is a frustrating 13-8-1, they play in a power conference that contains two of the NCAA's best teams and have one of the most impressive goal differentials in the country at +36. The eye test will play a sizable role this year and the eye test is Michigan's singular saving grace on the resume, perhaps alongside their three wins against Wisconsin. I feel that going 2-1 to close the regular season (a split vs. Minnesota and beating MSU) would put Michigan in. If they did that, they'd end the regular season at 15-9-1 and would probably be around +40 in goal differential. That would be a lock to me. Getting swept by Minnesota makes things a bit more interesting, but they still can probably survive it. Just can't lose to MSU, though. And of course winning the BTT in South Bend would end this discussion entirely thanks to the autobid. 

I would be remiss to end this section without noting that this could all be a bogus exercise because the selection committee could be comprised of imbeciles. Though I went about seeding the tournament in a way that mostly conforms with other analysts who publish their work, there are some who have, uh, a different approach. In a mind-numbing article from USCHO published last weekend, one analyst proposed giving every conference two bids and then letting four third-placed teams in. The result of this ridiculous method was Atlantic Hockey getting THREE teams into his projected field, a conference that, remember, has never gotten more than one team in ever in the last five years. So yes, there are people who write for prominent websites that have different opinions on how to seed the tournament that would disadvantage Michigan largely because they go contrary to logic. The simplest way of concluding this section is to say that while Michigan seems to be in a good spot to make the tournament, never ever underestimate college hockey's ability to reach the worst, most stupid decision possible. 

Previewing Minnesota 

​The first meeting wasn't fun. But it probably wasn't indicative of this time [Patrick Barron] 

This is the second series of the year between the Wolverines and Gophers, but in some ways, it's really the first. That earlier matchup came in early December after both teams (but really Michigan) had suffered heavy roster losses due to Team USA's World Juniors camp. Minnesota lost some high impact defensemen, but were still drawing from their deepest position and could fill those holes with drafted plugs, and they still had their entire offense intact. Michigan meanwhile lost their #1 defenseman (York), their two primary playdrivers (Beniers and Bordeleau), and their second-leading goal-scorer (Brisson). In total, Michigan was without four of this season's top five scorers for that series. It's safe to say that that team doesn't resemble the one who will take the ice in Minneapolis this weekend. 

The Gophers came blazing out of the gate, starting 10-0, but have cooled off since then, at 9-5 in their last 14. Perhaps the biggest thing separating Minnesota from Michigan is that the Gophers have had no letdown games against bad teams. Against the other two *respectable* teams in the conference (Notre Dame/Wisconsin), Michigan is 5-3 and Minnesota is 3-5.  Yet against the bottom feeder opponents (OSU/MSU/PSU/ASU), Michigan is 8-3-1 and Minnesota is 14-0. The Maroon and Gold have cleaned up against bad teams, but haven't separated themselves from the better opponents. That should bode well for Michigan's ability to hang with Minnesota this time around. 

As for the actual team, Minnesota has everything you could want in a good college hockey team. They have a deep defensive corps that features multiple 1st/2nd round picks including Ryan Johnson, Brock Faber, and Jackson Lacombe, as well as 5th rounder Mike Koster. They form a reliable defense that has done a good job of protecting Old Friend Jack LaFontaine in net, whose 1.56 GAA and .941 SV% make him seem very likely to win B1G Goaltender of the Year. I'm still not convinced that the aforementioned stat line is the result of JLF being exceptional as much as it is the result of his great defense, but it's hard to claim that JLF hasn't been good for Minnesota. 

Offensively the Gophers feature a similarly deep group of forwards, although they lack the high-end NHL talent of the defense. Six players are registering >0.85 PPG: Sampo Ranta, Ben Meyers, Sammy Walker, Brandon McManus, Scott Reedy, and Blake McLaughlin. The production tails off quite considerably after that top six, but it's one heck of a group that powers most of Minnesota's offense. One of the keys to this team's success is that while the defensive gang is made up of younger NHL prospects, the forwards are made up of veterans. Five of those top six forwards are either juniors or seniors, having a lot of experience under their belts. 

Minnesota boasts the B1G's best PK at 86.9%, while their PP is in the middle of the pack (but still the upper half of the country) at 20.8%. They're deep, well-coached, well-rounded, and experienced, which is why Minnesota is in line for a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. But we shouldn't confuse them for being unbeatable. They are quite beatable, as Wisconsin taking 3 of 4 from them shows. If Michigan plays two strong games, I like their chances to come away from the Twin Cities with one win. If you do that, you bolster your tournament resume, and set yourself up for being one win vs MSU away from likely sealing your berth into the NCAA's, as well as the #3 seed in the BTT.