One of the neat things about everyone’s favorite college hockey ranking scheme, KRACH, is that it can be easily applied to predict the likelihood of the winner of a game. I took the current KRACH and used to predict each team’s chances of winning it’s opening round game, advancing out of the regional, winning the semifinal at theFrozen Four, and winning the national championship.
The full data is below, but here are a few interesting observations:
- Though Mankato’s KRACH is only a bit higher than North Dakota’s, the Mavericks are given a much better chance of both emerging from the regional (62%) and winning the national championship (23%) due to significantly weaker competition in the Midwest than in the West.
- In fact, Mankato is the only 1-seed given a better than 50% chance of emerging from its region.
- The regions all have strong teams and weaker teams. This same analysis last year featured a region where each team had between a 20-30% of emerging; no region is even close to that parity this year.
- All four 2 vs. 3 opening round games are very tightly contested with KRACH prediction ranges of only 58-62% vs. 42-38%.
KRACH | East | Game 1 | Game 2 (Region Champ) | Game 3 (Frozen four semifinal) | Game 4 (National Champ) |
386.382 | 1. Miami (OH) | 65.19% | 36.49% | 18.05% | 9.39% |
206.325 | 4. Providence | 34.81% | 14.15% | 4.94% | 1.82% |
364.441 | 2. Denver | 61.96% | 33.38% | 16.04% | 8.12% |
223.772 | 3. Boston College | 38.04% | 15.99% | 5.86% | 2.28% |
Midwest | |||||
523.143 | 1. Mankato | 92.36% | 62.16% | 38.54% | 22.89% |
43.2923 | 4. RIT | 7.64% | 1.13% | 0.14% | 0.02% |
289.538 | 2. Omaha | 57.94% | 22.92% | 10.93% | 4.92% |
210.181 | 3. Harvard | 42.06% | 13.80% | 5.51% | 2.06% |
West | |||||
487.207 | 1. North Dakota | 69.05% | 40.59% | 24.86% | 13.96% |
218.395 | 4. Quinnipiac | 30.95% | 12.13% | 5.06% | 1.87% |
399.556 | 2. Michigan Tech | 59.87% | 30.61% | 17.30% | 8.88% |
267.776 | 3. St Cloud St | 40.13% | 16.67% | 7.78% | 3.24% |
Northeast | |||||
375.473 | 1. Boston University | 66.36% | 37.22% | 18.57% | 9.25% |
190.328 | 4. Yale | 33.64% | 13.26% | 4.49% | 1.52% |
339.557 | 2. Minnesota Duluth | 58.76% | 31.18% | 14.79% | 7.01% |
238.363 | 3. Minnesota | 41.24% | 18.34% | 7.15% | 2.78% |