Things could get really ugly in college hockey. The annual argument to reduce ties in the game has come up again, as noted by Larry Mahoney of the Bangor News in his recap of the AHCA meetings in Naples last week. 

According to the article, Hockey East coaches voted 8-1-1 to reduce ties. But they can’t agree on the how. Yet each league remains free to experiment with its own methods of tiebreaking. After the standard 5:00 overtime, possibilities include playing several additional minutes of 4-on-4 or even 3-on-3, as Larry suggests. Or a shootout.

So you could have one league breaking ties in one way (regular season league games), and another in a different way. A game could go into the record books as a league win but an overall tie (as viewed by the NCAA for official stats and tournament selection).

This has all the making of an enormous mess.

Why not apply the same principle here as we do with instant replay. Is there sufficient evidence to overturn the call? If not, don’t do anything. The call on the field stands.

Likewise, there’s no consensus on how to reduce or eliminate ties. Some coaches would like to do it, but there’s no agreement on how to do it. So there won’t be any changes to the official NCAA rules.

Until that happens, let’s not change anything. Just keep playing the games by the official rules. Experimentation to this degree only causes confusion, as we saw in the mid-1990s when Hockey East tested the shootout for two years — quickly ditching it. People still look back at the standings from those years and say, “Wh-What?” 88 points for the first place team? That’s because during those years rather than the standard two points for a win, one for a tie and none for a loss, you got *five* for an outright win, three for a shootout win, two for a shootout loss (and none for an outright loss).

Hockey East Standings: 1994-95 | 1995-96 (PDFs)

This came about because as the first shootout season got underway, people started to realize that some games were worth more than others. A game without a shootout was worth a total of two points. Either one team gets two and the other none, or it’s a tie and both get one. But with the original plan of awarding an extra point to the shootout winner, some games would be worth three points. One team wins the shootout and gets two, and the SO loser gets one. Plus, a shootout win becomes worth exactly as much as a regular win. That didn’t make sense either.

The alternative, as it turned out, really wasn’t much better either. I’ll admit that — and I suggested that five point system that was adopted back then.

In short, until all of the issues can be ironed out and a consensus reached on how to do it, leave the ties alone. As it is I don’t see the problem. Some games should be ties. That’s one of the great things about hockey. On some nights both teams deserve something.

In other news, Hockey East coaches voted 10-0 to implement replay in all league games — this will cost $16,000 per school. Nice to see the unanimous agreement there. Coaches voted 7-0-3 in favor of the stricter standards on holding, hooking, interference, etc. similar to the NHL. They also suggested faceoffs following a penalty be held in the offending team’s defensive zone, calling icing when a shorthanded team ices the puck, and continuing to move to the two referee system. 

I just recently started getting the NHL Network. First thing I noticed were these AMAZING promotional spots, featuring an old-school-style coach going on with numerous cliches. It’s hysterical, and a great dig at all those old cliches. There’s a number of spots. I tried to find them on YouTube, and I see I’m not alone. Here’s another guy’s blog about it.

http://jznole.blogspot.com/2008/03/nhl-network-commercials.html

Like him, I think the best one is the one he hasn’t found a video for yet. Which is too bad. But the text of the spot is at that page. If anyone finds the video, let us know.

Hate to agree with the Sioux fans — who seem to believe that if a UND player doesn’t win the Hobey every year, there’s a conspiracy against them — but J.P. Lamoureux, I figured, would’ve been in the top three. Thing people have to remember is, you’re not voted into the top 3, per se. The vote is taken among the 10 finalists. The three highest vote getters are then announced as the Hobey Hat Trick. Technically, the winner is already known — they just announce the three highest vote getters, and bring them to the Frozen Four for drama. The actual winner is kept secret. But there is no vote among the top three — the voting is already done.

Anyway, I thought Lamoureux would’ve gotten in over Gerbe. Gerbe’s great, but his antics turns people off. Jones is helped by his leadership and off-ice stuff. Anyway, Porter’s gonna win it. First time since BC defenseman Mike Mottau in 2001 that a WCHA player will not win the award.

Sioux fans have also been blasting us all day over not putting T.J. Oshie in our All-CHN team. Thing is, I was backing Oshie most of the year in the Hobey race. I love watching him play. I’m sure he’ll be a very good pro, and probably a better pro than some of the people who made the list. I’m sure of that. But that’s not what this is about. At the end of the day, we just thought that some players made a bigger impact on their team for this season.

But really, it’s just the opinion of our panel. Everyone thinks their guy should be in there. We made the call best we could. It’s just our stupid opinion, after all. There’s lots of great players out there. We enjoy watching them all. The stuff about ‘bias’ really just isn’t true — certainly not moreso than the bias of a rabid fan of your particular team. And that’s the way it should be.

Brad Schlossman, the beat writer for the Grand Forks Herald, has an excellent post/rant on the NCAA liveblog policy.

Like I said yesterday, the NCAA will eventually lose this one, or back down. It’s completely absurd epecially when you consider that ESPN is monopolizing the NCAA games. We’ve gone back 10 years with this tournament as a result. ESPN has the TV rights to all NCAA events. It bought them as a package. But in the last few years, they didn’t have a natural home for regionals, so it would offer them up to stations around the country. Now, with ESPN-U in existence, ESPN is hoarding the games there – which would be fine, if anyone could get ESPN-U. Mainly, it’s only people with the DirecTV sports pack. If you have Comcast Cable, forget it.

Funny thing is, I’ve worked for both Comcast and ESPN in the past, and I have absolutely no love for Comcast or cable providers in general. In fact, they are pretty evil. But even if ESPN is “right” in its fight with Comcast, it doesn’t make this situation right. Bottom line is, college hockey fans can’t see the games.  This is where the NCAA needs to jump in, but it hasn’t.  Instead, it invokes live blogging policies that has scared the be-jeezus from anyone wishing to live blog.

Note, by the way, that the NCAA’s marketing people also had the audacity to try to get the college hockey web sites to post their ad on our front page. What was the NCAA offering in return? I asked whether we could put a small ad in their program, or put out flyers at the NCAA events. We were turned down. But the NCAA/ESPN still wanted us to post their ad on our front page. I didn’t do it for a week … then I decided to do it simply because it’s good information for the fans. But I might have to re-think it. I don’t like battling the NCAA – As the little guy, we can’t afford to. And I like all the people there that I deal with. But I don’t get this one.

Again, the NCAA will eventually lose. This reminds me of 1997, when the NCAA tried to say it would not credential online media sources. It was mainly targeted at college basketball web sites, but the policy didn’t discriminate — it was going to ban everyone. I wrote something for the NCAA News saying that it was silly, with the way the Web was growing, to discriminate on the basis of the source of the medium. Whether you are Web or Print, you can still be a solid media organization, or a crappy one. If you are a legit media member, that’s all that should matter.

That policy didn’t last very long, and it’s obvious today that it really doesn’t matter.

Just like when the NBA lost its case against Motorola — when the NBA tried to stop Stats Inc. from sending out live in-game scoring updates via the ticker — the NCAA will eventually lose this.

After Shea Guthrie’s spectacular goal against St. Cloud State to give the Clarkson Golden Knights their first NCAA win in 12 years, New York Islanders general manager Garth Snow decided to sign Guthrie in the middle of the NCAA tournament. Guthrie was a third-round pick of the Islanders in 2005. Snow decided to leave Clarkson defenseman Tyrell Mason in school, pending his team’s performance in Saturday’s regional final. “If we want to bring him out today, we’ll bring him out today. If we don’t, we won’t,” Snow said. “George Roll will live with it. He’s no Shawn Walsh anyway.”

Believe it or not, I usually defend the NCAA. In fact, just to be nice, we posted one of their ads on the home page today. So that gives me leeway to rip them now, because they have instituted this asinine blogging policy that no one can make heads or tails of. They are limiting how reporters can “live blog,” apparently to three posts per period for hockey. That’s not terrible, but it’s unnecessarily restrictive. It’s also hard to decipher what exactly constitutes a blog post.

There also seems to be some fine print in this thing they make you sign where you have to tell the NCAA the URL of the place you’re blogging, and then put an NCAA logo on that blog as a “reciprocal link.” I guess your link will appear on NCAA Blog Central. But no one can figure out if this is only for when bloggers post live in-game action, or any time.

My guess is some big media organization will eventually sue the NCAA on free speech grounds, or freedom of press, or restraint of trade or some such thing — and I think that media organization will win. Unfortunately, unless someone wants to step up to fight this one gratis, that media organization won’t be us.

So we’ll tread carefully into live blogging this weekend until we can figure this all out.

Adam John just put together this fine article outlining the odds of winning the NCAA Hockey Tournament. Sure it uses the KRACH which I beat up on earlier because of limited amount of data, but come ON people. Who doesn’t like to see some odds thrown out there. It is a little disconcerting to see such a disparity between the #1 seeds and everyone else, but then again, they ARE the #1 seeds.

Still, I’m ready to throw down $10 on Clarkson and get my big payback. Here’s to seeing some Cinderellas move on today!

CHN 64 II

Like last year, I put together a fictional tournament for the blog here at CHN.

Using the KRACH rating, I compiled a 64-team NCAA hockey tournament (exactly what the basketball tourney uses). Where there are only 59 DI hockey teams, I used the Final Four DIII teams, as well as the next highest ranked DIII team in the final poll to complete the 64-team field.

I own the game Eastside Hockey Manager, distributed by Sega Games, it’s a hockey simulation program. I downloaded 2007/08 rosters (including college rosters), and simulate all of the games. Last year, we had two of the Frozen Four teams right, as well as BC in the final, which they were.

You can’t play as NCAA teams in the game, so I setup a tournament and sim all of the games that way. We also end up with SOG, goals by period, a lot of cool stuff. It’s a fun thing to check out and follow along with. Completely fictional, but fun if you’re team didn’t make the field of 16!

The dates, times, and locations next to the games mean nothing, I just had to put them in because of the program I’m using. The first round will be simulated throughout the day March 26, 27, and 28. The second round should be done March 29, 30, and 31. Then, I’ll update the schedule from there.

All of the results will be posted on the bracket and in this post. The link to the bracket is at the top and bottom of this post.

Enjoy!

First Round Results
(1) Michigan over (16) Manhattanville — 7-0

(1) Colorado College over (16) Norwich — 6-0

(9) Yale over (8) Alaska-Anchorage — 4-1

(9) Union over (8) Bowling Green — 3-2

(1) North Dakota over (16) Elmira — 9-1

(9) Niagara over (8) Quinnipiac — 2-1

(5) BU over (12) Brown — 5-0

(4) Michigan Tech over (13) W. Michigan — 3-1

(10) Colgate over (7) Maine — 1-0

(2) SCSU over (15) UConn — 7-3

(6) Northeastern over (11) Alaska — 5-3

(3) Minnesota over (14) Holy Cross — 2-1
—
(5) UMass over (12) RPI — 3-0
(4) Notre Dame over (13) Wayne State — 5-1
(6) NMU over (11) Robert Morris — 3-2 (OT)
(5) Princeton over (12) Air Force — 6-5 (OT)
(4) Duluth over (13) Mercyhurst — 3-0
(6) Lowell over (11) St. Lawrence — 7-0
(4) Minnesota State over (13) Huntsville — 3-2
(10) Bemidji over (7) UNO — 4-1
(2) Denver over (15) St. Norbert — 10-2
(12) RIT over (5) UVM — 2-1
(4) Clarkson over (13) Army — 3-1
(11) Ohio St over (6) Harvard — 3-2 (OT)
(3) BC over (14) Canisius — 8-0
(4) Cornell over (13) LSSU — 4-0
(2) Mich St over (15) Bentley — 5-3
(1) Miami over (16) Plattsburgh — 13-0
(9) Merrimack over (8) Ferris St — 4-1
(10) Dartmouth over (7) Providence — 7-5
(2) UNH over (15) AIC — 21-1

CHN 64 II

Just a reminder to everyone, the KRACH wouldn’t have really solved the problems of the Pairwise this year either. In fact the KRACH had TWO sub .500 teams in the tournament, Minnesota-Duluth and Wisconsin.

In all fairness I don’t believe the Pairwise or the KRACH is the problem per se. I believe what has happened this year is a SYMPTOM of a much bigger problem, and that’s an excess of conference games and dramatically unbalanced non-conference schedules that has become a mainstay of college hockey (and sports in general)

Because there are so few non-conference games and less common opponent comparisons, outliers such as the Nebraska-Omaha / Princeton series can dramatically swing comparisons. The excess of league games has been overlooked mainly because with the exception of the ECAC which only plays 22 games (probably due to the Ivies) this is the way it has always been. The issue is that these statistical systems are built around very impractical numbers when trying to compare teams against ALL of NCAA Hockey.

The BCS has the same problem because of the limited number of games played overall in college football. Somehow 11 or 12 games determine a champion between 100 plus teams, and guess who’s usually at the top? Teams from the power conferences.

In the short term, the likely fix to our Pairwise issues will be a band-aid fix. No teams below .500 in the tournament, road bonuses returning, who knows. But it doesn’t fix the problem. The data set is. The question is, how do we do it and can we? Or is this the best it will ever get?

I’ve written a new article about the Minnesota State-Wisconsin controversy, and a way the committee could’ve done it differently — looking back on the process from a historical perspective.  Check it out.

Later, I’m going to address colleague Mike Machnik’s blog post, where he criticizes the committee’s decision to protect Miami-Michigan, saying it broke precedent. I’ll take a deeper historical look that backs the committee.