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% |
Jim – great work all year, every year. A number of folks feel like Miami and other teams got a raw deal/better deal than they should have. Could you post the Krach percentages for the tournament like they are above if everyone had been paired exactly 1/16, 2/15, 3/14, etc.? Then one could compare how the odds changed against or in favor of each school due to the rearrangement to meet NCAA priorities.
Great question.
For Miami, they just swapped Yale (190) for Providence (206) and SCSU (268) for BC (224). Not much KRACH difference there, with Miami’s odds of escaping the region moving from 36.6% to 36.5%.
Another way to think about it is that the seeds fall into the following bands:
1: 375-523
2: 290-400
3: 210-268
4: 43-218
So, swapping two and particularly threes around won’t make a huge impact as far as KRACH is concerned. The huge advantage, not surprisingly, is what #4 you draw.
Here’s how the eventual winner has fared in this forecast each of the last 7 years:
2014 Union 16% (1 seed / 3rd favorite)
2013 Yale 3%
2012 Boston College 22% (1 seed / favorite)
2011 Minnesota-Duluth 7%
2010 Boston College 7%
2009 Boston University 24% (1 seed / 2nd favorite)
2008 Boston College 2%