Hockey pairwise update: one day to go
Michigan's 3-2 win over Bowling Green in the second overtime advances them to the CCHA championship game against Western Michigan. It also officially secured a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament. In fact, it looks like the second overall seed has been locked up, as just about every game in the country went Michigan's way. Here's what happened on Friday around college hockey:
CCHA tournament: Besides Michigan over BG, Western Michigan defeated Miami. That probably drops the RedHawks out of a #1 seed, which is a little unfortunate.
WCHA tournament: Denver beat Duluth, and North Dakota beat Minnesota. Both results were good for Michigan, and ensure that no WCHA team can pass Michigan after tomorrow's games. That should lock up the #1 slot in Green Bay for Michigan, as long as the committee doesn't decide to put us in St. Paul to screw us.
Hockey East: BC beat Providence, but BU lost to Maine. This is also good, because we couldn't pass BC anyway, and now BU can't pass us.
So what does it all mean? Well, a lot can change tomorrow, but Michigan is probably the second overall seed in the tournament, and they should be placed in the closest regional, which is Green Bay. The opponent depends on other results, most notably the ECAC 3rd place game between Cornell and Colgate. Should Cornell win or tie,, we will probably face them in the first round. Should they lose to Colgate, the 13th, 14th, and 15th seeds could all be CCHA teams, in which case we would draw the Atlantic Hockey champ in the first round. Another scenario is if Harvard beats Union in the ECAC finals, they steal a bid (possibly from MSU), and we could end up matched up with Harvard.
As for the other teams in our region, it all depends on tomorrow's games; I have seen some scenarios that end up with Miami as #3 overall, and some that have Miami as #10, so a lot can change. I ran a scenario with most of the higher seeds winning, and came up with the bracket below. Note: should Michigan lose tomorrow, the only change in this bracket would be that MSU and Western would be switched. Changes in the other results (Maine beating BC, for example) would have much more drastic effects.
Worcester
1. Boston College
16. Atlantic Hockey champ
7. Minn.-Duluth
10. Maine
St. Paul
4. North Dakota
14. Michigan State
8. Minnesota
9. Boston University
Green Bay
2. Michigan
13. Cornell
6. Ferris State
11. Denver
Bridgeport
3. Union
15. Western Michigan
5. Miami
12. Mass.-Lowell
The bracket integrity is a little off because Minnesota had to be placed in St. Paul, and first intraconference matchups had to be avoided. It should get good attendance to each regional, including Bridgeport, as Union and Lowell are reasonably close.
I’ll have another post up after tomorrow’s games with a final look at the pairwise standings before the actual brackets come out on Sunday. Go Blue!
who doesn't catch a lot of non-CCHA hockey, do we have any real interest in first round opponent, or do Harvard, Cornell and AH champion all come with similar resumes?
I don't follow non-CCHA doings a huge amount either, but I checked out Inside College Hockey's power rankings, and they have Cornell at 11, Harvard at 14, and Air Force (one of the two candidates for AH champ) at 19. RIT, the other contender, they do not have ranked. USCHO.com's poll has Cornell at 13, Air Force at 17, and Harvard at 19.
My conclusion from that is that RIT would be the best-case scenario, and then Harvard or Air Force would be next best. Esp. since Volkening (who shut us out & made the greatest save I've ever seen against Miami: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5klyieJzqk) no longer plays for Air Force.
Cornell is the #2 team in the ECAC, just behind Union, with a 12-4-6 record in the conference and 17-8-7 overall. Since the start of 2012, they have played 19 games, with a record of 9-4-6. Amazingly, 10 of those 19 games went to at least one overtime. They need a win over Colgate to make the tournament at all, but were swept by Colgate in January. Their schedule is not particularly strong, as the ECAC is the second-worst conference, but Cornell did go 1-0-1 against Union, FWIW. They also lost to Harvard today by a score of 6-1. They scored 2.91 GPG this year (23rd overall) and gave up only 2.34 (12th overall). By comparison, Michigan scored 3.28 (10th overall) and gave up 2.13 (3rd). They have five shutouts on the year (all before December 4) and only allowed over three goals 6 times all year. Cornell is 2-2-2 against Harvard and the likely NCAA field combined.
Harvard is 3rd in the ECAC, with an 8-5-9 conference record (13-9-11 overall). That's an awful lot of ties, usually of the 3-3 or 4-4 variety. Harvard's games tend to by higher-scoring. They lost to Yale 7-1 near the end of the regular season, then beat Yale 8-2 in the conference tournament. They scored 3.18 GPG (12th overall), and gave up 2.94(39th overall). They don't have a single shutout all year, and held their opponents to one goal only 3 times. They are 1-5-3 against likely tournament teams.
For the Atlantic Hockey champ, I'll look at the top seed, Air Force. The Falcons rank just behind Cornell in offense, but much better in defense (5th overall), albeit against a much weaker conference. They have not given up more than 3 goals in a game since January 7th, and have 5 shutouts during that time. Air Force is 0-3 against the NCAA field.
Cornell has the highest RPI and Pairwise ranking of the three, followed by Harvard and then Air Force. Based on the results of our last NCAA matchup with Air Force, I'm leery of playing a team that has the potential to shut us out, especially given that Michigan is not the prolific offense that its statistics suggest (take out the St. Lawrence game and our offense ranking drops from 10th to 16th, tied with Air Force). Both Air Force and Cornell are strong defensively, and as we saw with the BG game, it's easy to lose a low-scoring game if the puck doesn't bounce your way. If I had to pick one of these teams, it would be Harvard, but they may be the hottest team of the three.
are just ridiculous. There should be a different moderation option for posts like these. Obviously, thanks.
Also thanks SBW, much appreciated.
Such foul mouthedness should not be tolerated!
Still completely inappropriate and not really how things are handled around here. As you can tell from the prompt deletion, the mods have these things pretty much in hand. If someone's pissing you off, downvote them and move on.
Btw, I see from your point total that you're fairly new to posting here. Welcome to MGoBlog, hope you enjoy it here.
I'm guessing his comment wasn't deleted, but rather, his account was caved (aka, no one can see his comments but him), however, as the iPhone App doesn't run Drupal, I'm guessing they can't cave users there, hence the comment showing up there.
posted in a hockey thread? I had an MSU fan try to taunt me on my facebook in my status about beating Bowling Green. One day, people are going to realize that I simply don't care to compare Michigan to their shitty schools.
March 17th, 2012 at 10:31 AM ^
informative analysis. as always, a great update on everything Michigan.
Just win tonight. All that matters to me is winning championships. I want Playoff Championship #10 so bad.
Awesome that Michigan has a #1 seed, but the team needs to remember that seeds in hockey don't mean squat.
It's amazing that we have the #2 overall seed locked up, and I have absolutely no confidence that we'll even make the frozen four. Not that I don't think the team is good enough, it's just that the tournament is so freakin random that I've just given up getting my hopes up. Just buckle up and go along for the ride