hockey bracketology, uscho
Important points:
- M in as 3 seed(!) @ cincy with umass- Lowell, st cloud st (molly!), and Cornell. I look at that as a favorable seeding.
- no real chance to jump up in seeding at this point. Losing streak to state and Minnesota with early exit in btt probably means wrong side of bubble.
- my reading of the leaves and pairwise says Michigan sweep this weekend with at least one tourney win gets us at least a 4 seed and in the tourney. Anything less than a sweep of Staee means we need points vs Minnesota and a tourney win.
There's probably numbers to support or refute this, but I think splitting with FYS means we need to get 3+ points off Minnesota. Being swept by State probably means we're hoping for a tournament title.
They're toeing the line and are in danger of missing a 2nd straight tournament. I'd hope that they realize this and it lights a fire or something but history has shown that that's not really how Michigan Hockey works (in the regular season). Just win please
Check out the customizable pairwise at CHN. You can pick the winners of future games and see the effect on pairwise. Of course, this doesn't include the effect of all other games, but it's interesting.
While the Customizable PairWise chart on the CHN Website contains far too many permutations to quickly predict the field for the NCAA Men's Hockey Tournament, if you just customize the results for Michigan and give the Wolverines three wins in the next four games, they'll move to tenth in the PairWise.*
A sweep of Michigan State and two losses to Minnesota drops the Wolverines to 13th -- still in the field, but dangerously close to missing out if there isn't another win in the Big Ten Tournament. Two wins over the Golden Gophers, but two losses to the Spartans or four ties (but what are the odds of that happening?) wouldn't be as bad (12th in the PWR), but that result seems less likely today than a split of the next four, with 2-0 vs. MSU and 0-2 vs.Minnesota.*
This is where you see how much the two losses to Penn State have hurt Michigan's chances to make the tournament field. Reverse just those results, make no predictions about the next four games, and Michigan now would be fifth in the PairWise. Reverse those results and have the Wolverines lose the next four games, and they'd only drop to 13th.*
* These results are limited to making changes just for Michigan, so it's not the best way to analyze the Wolverines' chances of making the field, but it was the quickest way to see what Michigan's chances of playing in the NCAA Tournament will be.
If we had just beaten Penn State like we should have we'd be just fine right now. We dug our own grave here
Jayson Moy’s USCHO Bracketology Blog this week makes one strange move that causes Michigan (now 12th in the PairWise) to face Massachusetts-Lowell (now 8th in the PairWise) in the opening round.
Because you can’t have conference rivals Michigan and Wisconsin (now fifth in the PairWise) meet in the opening round, he moves UML out of the West Regional in St. Paul where it would’ve played 9th seed North Dakota in the opening round, and then, for "attendance reasons," moves Wisconsin to the West Regional to play North Dakota in the opening round while creating the Michigan matchup with Lowell in the Midwest Regional in Cincinnati.
Had he moved no teams out of their projected regions and just flipped Wisconsin and St. Cloud State (now fourth in the PairWise) in the opening round of the Midwest Regional, he would’ve avoided having the 12th and 8th seeds meet in the opening round, when usually (for "Bracket Integrity" reasons) the 12th seed would be playing the 5th seed, and the eighth seed would play the ninth seed in the opening round. That wouldn’t make it any easier for Michigan than having to play Wisconsin or Lowell in the opening round, but it would keep the seeds closer to a natural bracket.
Some big games to watch in Hockey East this weekend. Notre Dame, Vermont, and Maine all have single elimination playoff games on Saturday, and if they lose, they're likely out of the NCAA picture, which makes things a lot easier for Michigan.
I miss the CCHA :(