In With A Chance Comment Count

Brian

1/19/2018 – Michigan 4, Penn State 0, 11-10-2, 6-7-2 Big Ten
1/20/2018 – Michigan 3, Penn State 2, 12-10-2, 7-7-2 Big Ten

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incoming [James Coller]

Here's a weird graph.

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That's Michigan hockey's Pairwise ranking. For those who may have forgotten this weird thing about college hockey, the Pairwise is a computer ranking that selects and seeds the NCAA hockey tournament. Yeah, man, the robots took over like 20 years ago and hockey is fine with it.

This graph shows Michigan leaping from the mid-20s in that ranking to 15th last weekend. There are 16 teams in the tournament and one conference that will definitely occupy a spot with an otherwise-out auto-bid team. So... yeah. They'd be in if they got lucky with conference tournaments.

Hockey's made some tweaks that make some games more valuable than others but not even I, a person who knows what the Pairwise is and can give you its life history, believed that an 8-10-2 Michigan team could haul its ass from "not even on the bubble" to "maybe in the tournament" with one weekend sweep against Minnesota. Nor did I expect a sweep against another bubble team, Penn State, to do nothing further. I guess Michigan consolidated its gains?

Anyway, this caught me off guard. I hadn't even looked at the Pairwise all year since there seemed to be no reason to. I'd been interpreting the hockey team in front of me as a try-hard, much-improved outfit that had too far to go in one season. This weekend I saw... basically that, but now with a tourney bid at stake. Against the rootinest, tootinest, shootinest team in all the land. Penn State.

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[Bill Rapai]

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If there were seven seals that had to open before last year's Michigan Hockey Apocalypse, #2 or #3 was A Penn State Program The Same Age As My Son, Who Regularly Has To Be Told Not To Bite People, Gives Michigan The Business. Year 1 PSU went 3-2 against Michigan despite winning just five other games all season and knocked Michigan out of the tourney with a two OT win in the conference tourney. Year 2 PSU went 3-1.

Adding insult to injury, these Penn State teams played like Red Berenson teams, zipping up and down the ice pell-mell while trying to score goals with skill, if skill would do, or sheer erosion if it wouldn't. Penn State was (and is) prone to exploding into bits because they don't quite have the talent to do what they want to do, but from the drop they seemed to be a version of Michigan on the rise instead of the decline.

Penn State's still Penn State. At certain points their sheer aggression overwhelms. Michigan got out of the gate slow on Friday and shots were 9-3 PSU despite a Michigan power play ten minutes in. One particular shift on Saturday saw the Slaker line so gassed they couldn't even ice the puck; they ate two solid minutes of desperate defensive zone time. Lavigne got the biggest cheer of the night for swallowing a puck directly in his chest to end this shift.

That shift was the second half of the Saturday game writ large. Michigan staked itself to a 2-0 lead and seemed to have the much better chances through 30 minutes even if a bunch of point shots had PSU ahead in shots on goal. Dave had Michigan with an advantage on shots in the "house" through 20, and then the roof caved in.

The rest of the game was spent with Penn State even more amped up than they usually are. The last ten minutes of the second period was nonstop PSU attacking, with the defensemen pinching on almost literally everything. Whenever Michigan broke PSU's line they had a shot at an odd-man rush that they couldn't quite put together. (A major reason why: Yost's ice still sucks even after they redid the plant.) Michigan struggled to cope in the third, with PSU launching 31 shot attempts, almost half of them from the house.

Lavigne stood tall; puck luck bit PSU. And then Penn State pulled the goalie with three minutes left. That was finally it. PSU scored twice and made the final minute a sphincter test. They lost because Michigan did pay off on one of the opportunities PSU's hyper-aggression provided, when Dakota Raabe scored the first goal of his career on a breakaway.

If that didn't feel too different than previous PSU games, the Friday game did. Michigan outshot and significantly outchanced PSU after the rough start; that 4-0 win probably should have been 4-2 or 4-1, but it was not that scramble to hold on Saturday.

That's the team: working for it. Getting there. Still liable to get clonked. But in it. For the duration.

DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK, CALL IT THE PAIRWISE STATUS

Hey, pairwise is relevant again! Hooray. I used to have to eyeball this stuff but there is now an excellent site called College Hockey Ranked that plays out the various scenarios over and over again and spits out graphs. Here's Michigan's graph:

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To (probably) be in position for an at-large when conference tourney play starts Michigan needs to go 6-4 down the stretch. That would be about a 75% shot at the #13 spot, which is safe in all but the most apocalyptic bid-stealing scenarios. At 6-4 they would probably have to win their first round series to feel good about securing the bid. 7-3 would be pretty secure. 8-2 and they'd be close to 100% safe, but that's a tall, tall order.

Because college hockey's RPI gives you bonuses for beating highly-ranked teams and weights a road W 50% more than a home win, the most important games left by far are this weekend's series at OSU (#6 PWR) and the ND (#1 PWR) home and home, especially the road half of it. Even a split this weekend is pretty good.

Since the Pairwise is now identical to RPI unless head to head intervenes, with limited exceptions anything that's good for Michigan's RPI is good for their pairwise. The main thing to root for is for Michigan's opponents in the top 20 to do well unless there's a direct conflict.

This means you're in favor of Minnesota winning games—Michigan has already banked 3 Ws against them. Penn State is a little trickier because they still manage to win their comparison with Michigan because their 3-1 H2H deficit is made up for by their better RPI and Common Opponents, and then RPI breaks the tie. Your pecking order in conference:

  1. Minnesota—Gophers literally cannot win a comparison with M so win away, Goldy. This may change if M and Minnesota are specifically competing for a last at large spot late. For now, go Gophers.
  2. OSU/ND—both of these teams are big quality win bonuses waiting to happen if Michigan can pull games off of them in their upcoming series, and are so far ahead of Michigan that there's no way Michigan could win a comparison with them.
  3. MSU—irrelevant.
  4. PSU—Quality win bonus, on the one hand, bubble team on the other. Michigan can win or lose this comparison based on PSU does, and their QWB isn't huge.
  5. Wisconsin. Currently safely out but plays their way on to the bubble with 5 wins in their last 8.

Nonconference teams you hate because they're on the bubble are Providence, UNO, Northeastern, Harvard, BGSU, Northern Michigan, Miami, and BC, but this far out it's about 90% Michigan and 10% how others play. This is especially true because the league has four bubble teams (M, Minnesota, PSU, and Wisconsin). If they finish third in the league they're probably good.

Comments

Squad16

January 23rd, 2018 at 1:52 AM ^

Looking at the remaining schedule, the most likely path seems to be:

 

  • Sweep a terrible Arizona State team at home.
  • Win 3 out of 4 in the MSU (road + neutral) and Wisconsin (home) series. 
  • Win 1 out of 4 in the Ohio State (road) and Notre Dame (road + home) series.
  • Probably would still help to win the quarterfinal matchup of the BTT. 

On the other hand, if we go 0-4 vs Notre Dame and Ohio State, it's probably safe to assume that even winning out the rest of the way (which is never likely) we'd still probably be out, without perhaps a road upset in the semis of the BTT?

The Maizer

January 22nd, 2018 at 12:19 PM ^

I checked the pairwise rankings for the first time on Friday. My intent was to see how mad I should be that we lost games earlier in the season that we maybe shouldn't have and to think about what-if scenarios that would have put us on the bubble. I was shocked to see we were already there.

ToledoWolverine

January 22nd, 2018 at 12:22 PM ^

And not feel confident that the future is very bright for Michigan hockey. May the dominance of the 90s come back to Yost. I am talking buzzsaw people, these guys are gonna wreck some mother fuckers. You can see it being molded and sewn into their play. Every game improving, making better decisions, skating a bit harder. Maybe I’m over confident or putting the cart before the horse but it sure seems like a storm is brewing.

matty blue

January 22nd, 2018 at 12:30 PM ^

if we're looking at this season as something of a consolidation season, which it obviously is, are the last two weekends a "hoo boy, we are all the way back, too bad we struggled midseason," or are they a "this team is not that good" thing? 

are we where beilein was about four years in?  still under-talented but scary?

SF Wolverine

January 22nd, 2018 at 12:39 PM ^

for starting to get with Mel's program.  Great back- and fore-checking this weekend.  Still some issues with the D making clean first passes, but the effort these last two weekends seems to be pretty uniform across the team.  If everyone skates hard, this team has enough talent to get into the postseason.

chatster

January 22nd, 2018 at 1:10 PM ^

If you’ve followed college hockey since the 1960s, as I have, you know that there have been cycles where eastern and western teams have taken turns dominating the NCAA championships. 
 
This year, the current PairWise would have an NCAA Tournament with only five eastern teams – Cornell (tied for first), Clarkson (tied for fourth), Providence (tied for tenth), Northeastern (13th) and whichever Atlantic Hockey team wins their tournament. Canisius is currently the top-ranked Atlantic Hockey team at 31st in the PairWise.

mgobaran

January 22nd, 2018 at 1:37 PM ^

I never thought this small of a league would be beneficial. But when you have 6 of 7 teams with a winning record, all ranked in the top 20 of the PairWise, every win looks better and every loss isn't that bad.

Adding ND was huge, but if just two years ago you told me Michigan and Wisconsin would rebound this strong, OSU could field a nationally competitive hockey team, and PSU  would turn into a solid team I would have laughed in your face. If only MSU had a decent program...

MW147

January 22nd, 2018 at 1:48 PM ^

If only we had this kind of goaltending 2 years ago, we may have beaten North Dakota and very possibly won a national championship. Oh, well. 

The Mel effect is strong here. Making the tournament in his first season would be tremendous. 

I think Marody leaves after this season. I am sure the Flyers will push that agenda. But hopefully Norris and Hughes stick around for one more. If so then a run to the Frozen Four is very possible. 

 

 

stephenrjking

January 22nd, 2018 at 2:01 PM ^

It will be interesting to see how the new playoff format influences rankings. Three-game series aren't a new concept, but holding them between two highly ranked teams is a lot less common. But, theoretically, a lot more fun.