Each week during the season, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey in Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
Dan: Greetings to all of our readers, and a special Happy New Year to you all…and especially Happy New Year to my cohost for the week. It’s been a wild couple of weeks, but I’m thrilled just to be back and discussing hockey with you again, Paula.
As of our conversation yesterday, the most recent USCHO.com Division I Men’s Poll is out, and as expected after Denver’s split with Alaska, we have a new No. 1 team. This time, it’s Quinnipiac, which finally broke the western stranglehold with its weekend sweep of Dartmouth and a Harvard team now ranked ninth. The Bobcats are 12-0 in ECAC Hockey play and unbeaten in 16 straight games. They haven’t lost their last five games against ranked teams (shoutout Cameron Boon and the QU sports information staff for those numbers via the Bobcats’ Twitter account this weekend).
Ordinarily, I’d start with a conversation about Quinnipiac in general, but I want to actually take a different approach this week because we’re in the second half of the year and, well, we have a lot of ground to cover today. If you looked at the poll, Quinnipiac is No. 1 with Minnesota, St. Cloud and Denver ranking 2-3-4. Penn State is fifth. Boston University is sixth.
If you look at the Pairwise Rankings, Minnesota is first, Quinnipiac second, with St. Cloud, Penn State, Denver going 3-4-5 and a tie between Michigan and Ohio State (ha, irony!) before BU sits eighth and Harvard ninth.
Basically, the PairWise and the national poll are starting to line up against one another. Normally, I discredit the PWR for being too devoid of emotion and not taking into account how teams look. A bad loss here or an unexpected win there can really throw those numbers off, especially when the season is still in its toddler stage, but it feels like the voters are capturing exactly how college hockey is lining up. The teams receiving top votes are backed up by the numbers this time, and the numbers are reflective of where voters think teams belong.
How have you seen things line up? Are these teams that are respected on both sides really that good, even though we all understand that things can change on a dime in the next month?
Paula: Dan, my friend, it’s good to be talking college hockey with you again – especially when you use words like “stranglehold” to describe any reference to western hockey.
You’ve asked two really good questions here and I will address them, but first I want to address an underlying assumption in your opener, that the “teams that are receiving top votes are backed” by the PWR, and that “the numbers are reflective of where voters think teams belong.”
While we are seeing more of an alignment between the poll and the PWR, couldn’t the opposite of what you’re saying be true, that voters are looking more at the PWR and that the data is influencing their votes?
In the end, we all know that two things determine who makes it into the NCAA tournament field of 16: the autobids that go to conference playoff champions and data that the selection committee uses to fill out the field. (Where teams are placed to play is an entirely different discussion.) I think it’s conceivable that some voters begin to consult the PWR at about this time of the year to norm their ballots.
I do look at PWR but only in the first half, when it’s statistically less reliable. Hear me out. I find myself disagreeing in significant ways with parts of the poll early on, and when I see a team in the poll where my own perception of where they should appear is so very different from the field, I look at the PWR to see whether I’m missing something in terms of what the PWR measures. Sometimes it helps to see that my own eyeballs aren’t lying to me, that Team X really should be No. 16 instead of No. 6, for example, and sometimes a glance at the PWR helps me see past some of my own personal biases.
In the first half of the season – especially very early – win percentage helps me to determine where some of my votes should go if I have doubts. Because I like some data to back up my decisions, voting for the Ivies early in the season is really difficult for me to do. That by-reputation voting is something I like to avoid altogether after the first couple of weeks of the poll, regardless of number of games played.
So I am thinking that I’m not the only voter who consults the kind of data that the PairWise rankings can provide to determine how to vote.
But I do want to circle back to something else you said, about faulting the PWR for its lack of feeling. That is, in my opinion, its chief strength – the strength of all data. Taking emotion out of the process of determining the NCAA field should be a primary objective, and the best way to do that is to consult the numbers.
Yes, that potentially harms some teams that get hot in the second half and help teams that had really good first halves or early good play against opponents ranked high at the end of the season. I get that.
But the primary difference between the PWR and the weekly poll – again, my opinion only – is that the PWR is a tool to determine the NCAA field and the poll is a snapshot of how things are going right now. In poll voting, especially in the second half, I often vote teams that are hot in the moment higher than teams that are not but that are significantly higher in the PWR. And I often vote teams into the poll that aren’t even bubble teams in the PWR.
Are the poll and PWR aligning right about now? It appears so, and I don’t think this is uncommon.
Are the teams that are high in the PWR that are getting love in the poll that good? Yes, I think for the most part they are – but, as you said, things can change and it doesn’t take much.
Here’s my question for you, since you bring up changing on a dime: What do you think may be likely to transpire in the next month to change fortunes for any of the teams that are currently in your line of vision?
Dan: Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to experience more of what we saw these past two weekends when teams rated highly in the Pairwise Rankings took an absolute beating in the statistical numbers. I know one game doesn’t necessarily dictate an entire season, but a good number of teams took some damage to their postseason hopes because of bad results against teams rated very low by the numerical algorithms.
This is a point Jim and Ed mentioned last week, so I won’t dive too much into the conversation about Alaska Anchorage’s wins over UMass Lowell or Northeastern’s loss at Bentley. What I will say is that some of these results continued this week when Merrimack lost to Brown and dropped into 10th one day after it tied Yale. Those were two of the lowest-seeded teams in the PWR, and they narrowed the razor thin margin for a team that was as high as third, if my memory serves me correctly.
Given what we know about the Pairwise, games against 18th-seeded Providence and Northeastern, which is still mired in the 30s, are now big games where they might have been a one-off giveaways for losses. The late season series against Lowell looms, and Maine and Vermont, both teams in the 40s, could be critical missteps for a team that was right there in the thick of the running for the No. 1 overall seed.
But that’s kind of life at this stage of the season. One game won’t change any of that, but there are highly-touted teams currently fighting for their postseason lives. Providence and Minnesota State are on the outside, and Connecticut – a team I once ranked No. 1 in the nation – is down in 16th with a Notre Dame team that keeps losing games on Friday night. Michigan State came back to reality this past weekend in its own right. Boston College is sneaking around the bubble, and as much as everyone mapped Arizona State’s independent path to the NCAA tournament, Alaska is in 21st with maybe enough juice to sneak into the conversation if it doesn’t lose a game to LIU or Lindenwood.
Stepping off the ice, last week and this week are going to bring some arena talk to the forefront. I don’t know if ironic is the right word – I tend to overuse it – but last week’s celebration of the oldest continuous rink in college hockey history – Princeton’s Hobey Baker Rink – is now leading to the grand opening of college hockey’s newest arenas on Saturday night. Both are in Connecticut, a state that I’ve been watching for years as the potential challenger to Massachusetts in the Northeast. In Fairfield, Sacred Heart’s Martire Family Arena is going to host Boston College at 7 p.m. on Saturday while UConn launches the Toscano Family Ice Forum against Northeastern with a puck drop that starts a half hour later.
I kind of smiled when Princeton celebrated Hobey Baker’s centennial last weekend because it gave us a chance to remember games from simpler times. The rink – a good, old fashioned rink – is as old school as it gets and is a treasured piece of college hockey history. It’s been modernized without losing its rustic feel, and more than a few people told me how it fits Princeton perfectly. New arenas, though, are glittery and gorgeous and are capable – cough, cough, Arizona State, cough, cough – of hosting an NHL team, but I can’t help but reminisce about old times in barns. Heck, I grew up at Walter Brown Arena, practically.
I’m curious where you stand when you walk into a rink. Happy to be in a new place or do you long for those simpler times?
Paula: Well, Dan, when I began covering college hockey in 1995, I lived in Columbus and Ohio State’s rink was the venue I could attend regularly. The old OSU ice rink is a place easy not to miss. You had to walk through the home bench to get to the ladder-like stairs that led one short flight up to an open press box that hung over the benches, a press box that provided an extraordinary view of the rink in addition to the smell of each team.
If you needed to leave the press box between periods to use the restroom – which was in the fabled St. John Arena, a really great old building once home to many OSU sports, including basketball – you needed to make it back before the teams took their benches again or you couldn’t access the press box for that period.
Also, while the press box gave a remarkable proximity to the game – I’ve heard things, man – it was without glass and dangerous, as I learned the hard way with a puck to the head and a trip to the hospital in 1998 (insert punchline here). It was also freezing, separated from the outside by a thin sheet of corrugated plastic. The single time an SID tried to provide a much-needed space heater, the wiring shorted out. I know that our good friends Ed Trefzger and Chris Lerch have stories of rinks completely open to the elements from when they first began covering hockey, too.
So yes, Dan, I enjoy modernity.
I will say, though, that old barns that are retrofitted perfectly – like Yost Ice Arena and Munn Ice Arena, just to keep it in the Big Ten – provide the college atmosphere that I crave. Newer arenas that take into account the things that lead to a good college atmosphere, like Notre Dame’s Compton Family Ice Arena and Steve Cady Arena at Miami, are things of beauty. Every aesthetic can work from the old-time to the modern, as long as the design fits the purpose of the building.
Weirdly, I think this goes back to our discussion about the PWR vs. the poll – what works now as opposed to what worked (or was just adequate) once upon a time. Yes, I do long for some simpler times, as Jimmy Connelly and I discussed at the end of the first half of the season in regard to holiday tournaments. And some people long for the smoke-filled rooms in which sports tournament fields were once debated.
I, however, like shiny new buildings that work as much as charming older ones that do. In short, make it work for everyone and I’m good. Coffee in the press box helps, too.
Dan: You know, it’s funny, because I love the Bentley Arena and wouldn’t ever want to return to the old days, but there’s a part of me that remembers the JAR so fondly. My wife’s introduction to Division I college hockey game was in that building because I invited her to come watch Bentley play Air Force for a New Year’s Eve game. I didn’t tell her about the building, and I think she showed up thinking we were going to some palatial arena (this despite the fact that she went to Bentley). A couple guys on the team figured out who she was when she was sitting and watching warmups, and they flipped a puck over the glass into the row of seats behind her to rattle her cage a bit. I made dinner for us that night after the game and got so nervous I boiled six cups of white rice because I thought the pot didn’t look full enough.
I also remember the first time she walked into the Bentley Arena, though, with big, bugged-out, proud eyes saying, “This is where I went to school.”
I suppose we could wrap there, but I need to let you have the final word this week. It’s New Year’s still (technically? maybe?). Tell me one New Year’s resolution that college hockey should have as we wrap things up in the second half of this year.
Paula: I can give you three things that college hockey can resolve to do.
First, fix the problem with regionals. Ideally, the regionals should return to campus sites or should figure out a way to attract fans to neutral sites.
Second, work on convincing more programs that potentially can sustain a D-I program to explore doing so – especially schools that have club hockey teams with devoted fan bases. This kind of expansion lends itself to large universities; it needs to be done in such a way that existing smaller programs aren’t further disadvantaged and that potential programs from small schools can be welcomed.
And finally, do something to find homes for current independent teams. I don’t know how much realignment may need to take place for this to happen, but something needs to happen and soon – or we risk losing independent programs that need conference membership to survive. Without a solution for the independents, we also risk condemning programs like Arizona State – those that can thrive without conference membership – to a future without much promise of postseason play.
