More predictions coming soon, and the perils of fan-made tools

Update Mar 21, 9am — USCHO has updated its PWR Predictor so it now produces results that match the predictions on this site and the results of CHN’s calculators. Results from that calculator from before today should be disregarded and recalculated.

There’s some chance the final PWR on this site and CHN will differ from that on USCHO, and someone will be wrong about who is going to make the NCAA tournament. Keep that in mind when considering forecasts from any source.

I’m a bit slow this year at posting analysis in what is usually the busiest week for discussing who will make the NCAA tournament. That’s because I wasn’t completely confident in my analysis; my forecasts did not agree with the results generated by the calculators at CollegeHockeyNews and USCHO, and I wanted to understand why before making predictions that I knew would be interpreted as fact.

I’m happy to say that I feel that I now understand the issues, and hope to provide some interesting analysis in the next couple days. To start, here’s a summary of all 49,152 remaining possible outcomes to the season:

College Hockey Tournament Possibilities

The biggest known difference between the online calculators centers around whether to treat the on-campus conference championships for the Big Ten and WCHA as home games for the hosts. That matters in RPI. Forecasts on this site, and now CollegeHockeyNews, treat them as home games. USCHO treats them as neutral site games.

That means that the forecasts on this site can only be tested and confirmed with the CHN calculator. It also means there’s some chance the final PWR on this site and CHN will differ from that on USCHO, and someone will be wrong. Keep that in mind when playing with these tools!

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