If you want to dive deeper into the numbers, you should go read my previous blog post on NCAA tournament possibilities or go look at the PWR possibilities table.

Background on how PWR matters for tournament selection

Because we get lots of new readers during the tournament season, here’s some background information that my posts generally assume you know:

• The PWR rankings are not a poll or computer model, but are instead an implementation of the same process the NCAA uses to select its tournament participants. They have correctly predicted the NCAA tournament participants for a decade or two.
• Each conference gets to send one tournament winner to the NCAA tournament. So, we don’t need to look at the PWR of a team that wins its conference tournament.
• The remaining 10 slots are given to top teams as ranked by the process implemented in PWR. So, PWR ranks 1-10 are in for sure; but, for 11-16 to make it requires some of the autobids to have gone to teams ranked above them (e.g. if an autobid goes to the team ranked #3, then an extra slot is open for the team ranked #11, and so on).
• Because of that structure, we think of teams that are going to finish in the 12-15 range as “on the bubble”. Teams’ prospects are dependent not only on their final ranking, but also on how many lower ranked teams wins conference tournaments. Bubble teams’ chances for an at-large bid increase as slots are freed up by more conference tournaments being won by teams that would have made the NCAA tournament at-large.

These guys seem in

#1 North Dakota
#2 Quinnipiac
#3 St Cloud St
#4 Providence
#5 Boston College
#6 Denver
#7 Michigan
#8 Mass.-Lowell
#9 Boston University

Can make it at-large

The percentages are the share of scenarios in which each listed team can make the tournament based on the described outcome.

#10 Yale (idle, in 99%)
#11 Harvard (73% if they lose, 98% if they win 1)
#12 Notre Dame (idle, in 93%)
#13 Minnesota-Duluth (17% if they win none, 50% if they win 1)
#14 Northeastern (15% if they lose, 30% if they win 1)
#15 Michigan Tech (1% if they lose, 14% if they win 1)
#16 Cornell (idle, in 1%)

Can make it by winning their conference tournament

#17 Minnesota
#19 Robert Morris
#20 St. Lawrence
#21 Dartmouth
#22 Penn State
#24 Minnesota St
#27 Bowling Green
#28 Air Force
#30 Ferris State
#31 Ohio State
#37 RIT
#40 Wisconsin
#41 Army
#43 Michigan State

How the “can make it at-large teams” can make it

The winner of Atlantic Hockey will be a team that would not get an at-large bid, taking away one spot. That leaves at most 15 spots for top PWR teams.

For each conference tournament won by a top PWR team, an additional at-large team can make it. So, the at-large group wants the conference tournaments to be won by the following:

Big Ten – Michigan
ECAC – Quinnipiac
Hockey East – Boston College, Providence, Mass.-Lowell
NCHC – North Dakota, St. Cloud St, Denver

Though Michigan Tech could make it at-large, it only does so if other at-large candidates stumble and clear the way, so there’s not much point to cheering for Michigan Tech to win the WCHA.

The at-large group are competing with each other for ranking position, so generally want the other at-large candidates to lose.

I ran all 3,145,728 remaining possible outcomes, and here’s a first pass on the percentage of remaining scenarios each team makes the NCAA tournament.

The same data is also available in a horizontal table that doesn’t fit as well in a blog post:
PWR possibilities

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%.

There are a few oddities in this year’s tournament outlook and structure that have been the subject of numerous comments—

• The .500 rule (teams must have a record of at least .500 to get an at-large bid)
• The tie possibility (the NCHC consolation game, unlike all the other tournament games, can end in a tie)
• The consolation game (the NCHC consolation game is now the only one of its kind)

I examined the effects of each of these on the possible scenarios and found that none of them are a very big deal. While each can, of course, result in a different team making the tournament in some situations, none distort the outcomes in particularly unusual or undesirable ways.

The .500 rule will keep one otherwise eligible team out of the tournament in a handful of scenarios, the tie possibility will give its participants the opportunity for an outcome a bit better than a loss (but a bit worse than a win), and the consolation game will give an additional opportunity for some movement to two teams that would be done playing without it.

On the .500 rule

For the first time in recent memory, it’s possible for a team with an under .500 record to be in PWR position for an at-large bid. St Cloud St could lose two games to earn an 18-19-1 record, but still be ranked high enough for an at-large bid.

I ran the scenarios a second time, tweaking the rules to let SCSU into the tournament from that position despite the <.500 record to see how much that rule changed things. While it will clearly be a big deal to the teams affected if it happens, the overall impact is pretty small. Without the .500 requirement, SCSU would make the tournament in about 21% of its win 0 scenarios (which include the possibility of a consolation game tie), compared to 19% with the .500 requirement in place. So, absent that rule, SCSU would make the tournament at-large in about 4% of its two loss scenarios and bump another team. The potential victims of that bump would be other bubble teams, primarily Minnesota, Harvard, Colgate, Mass.-Lowell, and Yale.

On the possibility of a tie in the NCHC consolation game

There is only one game in the remaining conference tournaments that can end in a tie — the NCHC consolation game. Though like any game it could definitely change who makes the tournament, it doesn’t throw a huge wrench into the process. Other than St Cloud St’s .500 situation described above, no team can achieve a different ranking this year due to the existence of the tie than they could achieve without it.

The possibility of a tie has the biggest obvious impact on SCSU, giving them an opportunity to go winless on the weekend on still make the NCAA tournament (with a loss and a tie).

Not surprisingly, each of the other three NCHC teams with a potential for a loss and a tie also fare slightly better in that scenario than they would with two losses—UND can finish #1 more frequently, Miami can finish #7 more frequently, and Denver has significantly more potential to finish #3-6 then the #7 they’d likely finish with two losses.

On the existence of the NCHC consolation game

Similarly, the existence of the NCHC consolation game doesn’t have any unusual effects on the field this year.

By giving an extra game to two teams that have lost, each will have an additional opportunity to either make up some of the lost ground or lose even more ground than if the consolation game weren’t played.

By virtue of being on the bubble, SCSU is again most affected. Without the consolation games, they would advance in a decent share (about 30%) of scenarios in which they lost in the semifinals. Forcing them to play another game after such a loss puts them back in control of their own destiny, facing certain elimination if they lose or a much improved tournament outlook if they win.

Let’s try something a little different this week — does anyone have any questions about rankings (PWR, probably being most interesting)?

The next two weeks are interesting because the schedules aren’t firm. Some conferences will begin conference tournaments, some have a week or two of regular season play left.

I’ll still try to make some regular posts later in the week, but this is your chance to find out what YOU really want to know.