Hockey Bracketology: Pre-Beanpot Final Edition

Well, in an effort to resurrect this sorry blog, and to burn some time that should be spent on academic pursuits, I figure it's about time for some hockey bracketology. Now, as I've explained before, hockey bracketology is far more objective than the ever subjective committee system used by the hoops people.

The formula, known as Pairwise Rankings (PWR) compares all teams over .500 in the RPI (which is 25% win percentage, 50% opponents' win percentage, and 25% opponents'-opponents' win percentage, plus a mysterious bonus for wins on the road versus high RPI non-conference opponents) against all other such teams by 4 comparison criteria, with each team scoring one point based on having a higher RPI, Win % versus TUCs (teams with a RPI over .500), and Win % versus common opponents, plus one point for every Head-to-Head (H2H) win. The 6 conference champs and next 10 in PWR make the field.

So who's in right now? The six conference champs, if the season ended today, assuming current leaders win their conferences tournaments:

AHA: Sacred Heart (since current leader RIT isn't eligible for the NCAAs until next season)
CCHA: Notre Dame
CHA: Niagara (Bemidji State has 1 more point, but has played 2 more games, so I'm going with the higher Win %)
ECACHL: Saint Lawrence
HEA: New Hampshire
WCHA: Minnesota

Add in the next 10 in PWR - assuming that the mysterious RPI bonus is about .003 for non-conference, quality road wins, and the field looks like this (courtesy of www.uscho.com's PWR predictor):

1 - New Hampshire*
2 - Minnesota*
3 - Maine
3 - Notre Dame*
3 - Saint Cloud State
6 - Clarkson
6 - Denver
8 - North Dakota
9 - Boston University
10 - Colorado College
10 - Michigan
10 - Michigan State
13 - Boston College
16 - Niagara*
16 - Saint Lawrence*
NR - Sacred Heart*

(14 & 15 - would be Vermont and Miami of Ohio, who get bumped by the automatic bids, as denoted by the asterisks*. Sorry guys.)

This is the messiest seeding I've ever seen with the PWR, requiring the breaking of 2 two-way, and 2 three-way ties. First, the easy stuff, the two-way ties.

Clarkson v. Denver

Clarkson has the better RPI (.560 to .552), better record versus TUCs (6-4-3 to 10-8-3), and better record versus common opponents (5-2-1 to 9-5-0). Clarkson wins the comparison 3-0.

Niagara v. Saint Lawrence

The battle of the autobids. This comparison is a 2-2 dead heat after SLU gets credited with the better RPI and record against TUCs (although both teams are under .500), while Niagara has the better record against common opponents and a H2H win. In the end, SLU gets the comparison by having a higher RPI, which is the default tiebreaker.

Now the more difficult question, settling three-way ties.

Maine v. Notre Dame v. Saint Cloud State

After running the comparisons, Maine beats SCSU, who beats Notre Dame, who beats Maine. Once again, the default tiebreaker is RPI, which ranks the teams SCSU, Notre Dame, UMO, in that order.

Colorado College v. Michigan v. Michigan State

Like above, Michigan beats CC, who beats State, who beats Michigan. After breaking the tie via RPI, then the order is MSU, UM, then CC.

So now our 16 teams rank as follows:

1 - New Hampshire
2 - Minnesota
3 - Saint Cloud State
4 - Notre Dame
5 - Maine
6 - Clarkson
7 - Denver
8 - North Dakota
9 - Boston University
10 - Michigan State
11 - Michigan
12 - Colorado College
13 - Boston College
14 - Saint Lawrence
15 - Niagara
16 - Sacred Heart

Now the questions are who goes where, and who plays who:

Regional hosts have to play at that regional. This means #1 New Hampshire has to play in the Northeast Regional in Manchester, and #7 Denver has to play in the West Regional in Denver (which makes a mess of things, as I'll explain). East host RIT and Midwest host Western Michigan make it easy on us by missing the field, the former because they can't as they're playing their second probationary year of D-I, and the latter because they're playing sub-.500 hockey this year.

Typically, the NCAA seeds the top 4 seeds based on proximity to the regional site, which would place Minnesota in Grand Rapids and SCSU in Denver. Because DU is guaranteed a slot in Denver, however, the question is whether to send Minnesota further than SCSU in order to maintain bracket integrity, or to keep Twin Cities fans happy by giving them to shorter trip to Michigan. The last few years, the NCAA seems to have shifted from monetary concerns to fairness in seeding, so I'm guessing Minnesota would head to Denver in this situation.

So my preliminatry brackets, with full bracket integrity are as follows:

NORTHEAST REGIONAL (MANCHESTER): 1 v. 16 / 8 v. 9
1 - New Hampshire
2 - North Dakota
3 - Boston University
4 - Sacred Heart

WEST REGIONAL (DENVER): 2 v. 15 / 7 v. 10
1 - Minnesota
2 - Denver
3 - Michigan State
4 - Niagara

MIDWEST REGIONAL (GRAND RAPIDS): 3 v. 14 / 6 v. 11
1 - Saint Cloud State
2 - Clarkson
3 - Michigan
4 - Saint Lawrence

EAST REGIONAL (ROCHESTER): 4 v. 12 / 5 v. 13
1 - Notre Dame
2 - Maine
3 - Colorado College
4 - Boston College

Miraculously, this completely avoids intraconference 1st Round matchups, and provides every regional with at least 1 local draw and multiple teams that draw well (which avoids past concerns about the NCAA shuffling things in order to maximize attendance).

With this bracket, we would have East v. Northeast and West v. Midwest regional champs meet in the Frozen Four in Saint Louis.