Summary: there’s no significant change in the standings, a tiebreaker comes into play, some predicted 3-point weekends could turn the season, and the model is boring and goes for splitskies most of the time.  Oh, and UAH can play the spoiler.  That should be reason enough to stay tuned, Charger fans!

Okay, let’s not blow anything up this week, shall we?  There really isn’t any movement in the prediction save the changes resulting from Ferris and Mankato sweeping Northern and Bemidji; the model picked wins-and-ties for the sweepers.  This is admittedly a weakness in the model: it is going to land on 3-point weekends far more often than 4-point weekends. However, I think that this generally evens out, as a 3-point weekend can also be a 2-point weekend — in any regard, I’m bound for the rules that I made for the model.

No predictions for Weeks 21-24 changed, as the KRACH values didn’t change enough.  In fact, the gaps often narrowed, which is largely the result of the new comparisons being made against a league that mostly does the splits.  I don’t think that it’s likely to change too much, either, as things should generally regress to the mean.  What would change things?  Sweeps, for one, as the only sweeps picked by the model here on out involve UAH.  But sweeps also move KRACH, and that changes expected value calculations.  It’s entirely possible that a sweep will move the needle enough to make the model move.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a ready way to calculate KRACH week-over-week going forward or a Monte Carlo-based simulation that would give us answers like, “What’s the percentage chance that Mankato wins out and gets the #1 seed?”  These are things that I want going forward, and right now I’m in close to the right coursework to make that a possibility for next season.

All four possibilities involve Ferris State:

1. A Ferris sweep of Bemidji, combined with other machinations, might move the model to pick a BG win-and-tie in the final weekend.  The Falcons could use that, as they will be fighting for third with Tech and Northern, which isn’t admittedly a big change (more on that in a sec).
2. A Ferris sweep of Anchorage, which would push the Seawolves closer to 9th, although they start with a higher KRACH.
3. Ferris again at Fairbanks.  The Nanooks will have their season on the line, and Ferris might have their foot off of the gas just ever so little.  A Bulldog sweep would very likely end the home squad’s season.
4. A Ferris sweep of Lake State, which would put the Lakers into 8th and maybe out depending on what Alaska pulls off.

It’s obvious that there are four strata in the table: Ferris and Mankato fighting out for top spot; Tech, BG, and Northern fighting for home ice; Anchorage, Lake, Bemidji, and Fairbanks trying to not be the odd man out; and UAH kicking the can in the parking lot.

Below are the standings going into the 21st weekend of the season:

Games Left is still key: with four weeks left, 60% of the league has just six more chances to win points.  It’s not just how many, too: Northern and Lake State have series at UAH where they can probably pick up four points, but fans of both schools probably shudder thinking about it.  UAH has gone winless at home only once (2011-12), and you can be sure the kids in White, Black, and Blue won’t want to repeat that.  In fact, the Nanooks have to be looking at the table and gritting their teeth over getting just one shot at the Chargers, as the three teams below them still have one more crack at them.

Here are the final predicted standings:

If you want to look at the spreadsheet that powers all of this, it’s available on Google Drive.  Tiebreakers do come into play for 4/5 and 7/8, as Bemidji won the season series (1st tiebreaker) with the Lakers, 3-1, while the Falcons and Wildcats only play twice, leading Northern to get home ice with more league wins (2nd tiebreaker).

For fun and history, you can see where we were last week and when we started this adventure.

Update: I goofed!  I had Tech getting swept, and probably another error as well.  The GDocs has the week-by-week, but it radically changed the below.  Thanks to oldish husky on USCHO for finding the problem.  I regret the error.

It’s (past) time to revisit our methodology for predicting the 2014 WCHA Playoff Race.  Games haven’t gone as expected, as Ferris State has taken its lumps, UAH took a point off of Anchorage, and Michigan Tech swept BG this weekend.  Will Mankato be able to keep pace?  Who will miss out on the playoffs?  Below are the standings going into the 20th weekend of the season:

That Games Left bit is the key: with five weeks left, teams — like UAH — will be able to play ten more games, but as you can see, Bowling Green and Alaska have just six more chances to win points.  As we’ll see, this isn’t a big problem for Bowling Green, as the top three schools have separated from the rest of the pack, where 4-7 is going to be the dog’s breakfast broken by the Byzantine tiebreakers that the league has in place.  We’ll look into that as things get closer to fruition (i.e., Week 24).  Here are the final predicted standings

As you can see, the Nanooks suffer from two problems: 1) few games left to play, with all the teams around them having eight or ten left and 2) their remaining series being Tech on the road, Ferris at home, and Anchorage at home for the Governor’s Cup.  Compare that to all four teams below them playing UAH, and the fall is understandable.

If you want to look at the spreadsheet that powers all of this, it’s available on Google Drive.  One fun thing to note is that only three league teams are predicted to finish with losing records.  As UAH improves, this will prove to be an anomaly.

Remember when we posted right before the turn of the year about UAH’s presence in the KRACH ranking?  I looked at it again today because I wanted to create a predictive tool for the remainder of the 2013-14 WCHA regular season schedule.  As a reminder, the WCHA takes eight teams into the playoffs, with the top four team hosting the first round.  That leaves one other school out in the cold with our beloved Chargers.  Who will that team be?  Who will host the first round playoffs?  Will Ferris State remain undefeated in league play?  These are the questions that I sought to answer.

Let me note this: any comparison-based ranking system is rearward-facing.  If UAH knocks off Anchorage twice this weekend, the Chargers would jump in KRACH, probably all the way to 55th.  That’s because KRACH takes a look at what has already happened and does comparisons between common opponents.  I think that most sports fans are familiar with the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) method of ranking: your rank is affected by your strength-of-schedule (SOS) and your own winning percentage.

But what if we took those comparisons and used them as a sort of forward-looking predictive tool?  To do this, I used the following method:

Expected points = (My KRACH) / (My KRACH + Your KRACH) * 4

I computed these in a raw manner: of the four points available this weekend in Huntsville, this method garners 3.72 to Anchorage (132.5) and just 0.28 to the Chargers (9.861).  This obviously doesn’t work, as you don’t get points for winning a period.  In this comparison, Anchorage can be expected to win both games and go from 7-7-2 to 9-7-2, which jumps them from fifth to fourth in the standings (against all of my other comparison-based predictions for Week 17).

Now, I used my own judgments in making these calls.  For example: Alaska and Northern are 2.13 and 1.87 respectively in expected points this weekend.  You can argue that this should be a split, and I agree, especially because the Wildcats are at home.

Another example: next week, Tech hosts Ferris.  By KRACH, the Bulldogs should pick up 3.31 points.  Should they be given the sweep, or should they just head back to Big Rapids with a win and a tie?  I went with the latter because the Huskies are at home.

My third and final example: Anchorage hosts Northern next weekend, with expected points values of 2.36 and 1.64, respectively.  I gave the Seawolves a win and a tie as a home Alaska team, even though straight rounding would make it a split.

Here’s a summary of the results (playoff hosts, miss playoffs):

Note: I haven’t read the WCHA handbook to see how that tie would get settled.  I’m going to guess that it would be in head-to-head match ups as the first tiebreaker, but that matchup doesn’t occur until Week 21, where I’m picking a split.  I’m willing to bet that Shane Frederick or Jack Hittinger will be along to explain this to me.  (Would it be total goals?)

Updated: Matt Wellens of USCHO got me the data.  The tiebreakers are: a) head-to-head points, but only if you’ve played four contests against each other, b) higher number of conference wins, c) comparison of winning percentages against all teams above them, team-by-team down through the table.  I’d spend a lot of time looking at this, but I’d rather not do it unless it’s a reality.  It is important to note that conference wins isn’t the first tiebreaker, which is what I’d have thought it would be.

I’ll be updating this exercise every week, as two things are going to be changing: expected points will turn into real points, and those game results (as well as those non-conference tilts left) will affect KRACH.  I’ve got it up on Google Docs if you’re curious to read it week-over-week.  This is the document that I will update early each week.  I will probably make update posts here this week with a couple of tables (mainly, the summary tab of that spreadsheet) and a little commentary about any moves.

I fully expect that real life will have greater variability than these chalk predictions.  I’m curious to see how the predictive tool will hold up over time.  Will the Huskies come to Huntsville for early tee times?  Will Bemidji slide down and miss the playoffs entirely?  (Please say yes.)  We will see.

UAH is now just past the halfway point in the season, as we’ve played 20 games with 18 left.  It’s now instructional to spend a little time with KRACH to see how we measure up.  KRACH is a logistic regression method for looking at college hockey results.  If a team’s KRACH is twice as large as its opponents, you’d expect the team to win two games in three.  If the result were different, the regression would change.  It’s all very nerdy stuff, but we’re UAH people, so we’re equipped to noodling through it.  Google KRACH and you can get some pretty detailed information about it.

But let’s go look at the NCAA Division I Men’s KRACH on USCHO.com:

UAH isn’t in last!  That “honor” goes to the US Military Academy, who’ve won three games on the easiest Division I schedule to date; UAH’s one win comes on an 11th-best slate.  We have the second-toughest schedule in the league; unfortunately, we trail Bemidji in that one by 1.

Better, here’s who’s in a good place in the poll: our opponents!  WCHA members are in bold, teams we still have games with are in italics.

3 Ferris State, 4 St. Cloud State, 12 Wisconsin, 15 Notre Dame, 16 Minnesota State 19 Lake Superior State 21 Northeastern 27 Bowling Green 32 Western Michigan 33 Alaska 34 Alaska-Anchorage 35 Bemidji State 38 Michigan Tech 40 Northern Michigan

We’re the only WCHA team in the bottom-quarter of the KRACH rankings, which is a good thing for the league.  Also, the back half of our schedule consists of just one top-15 team (Notre Dame, who we’ll play the weekend after this), a Mankato trip that comes at the end of a Fairbanks-Houghton-Mankato swing, and the rest of our games against teams in the bottom half of the nation.  That won’t be easy, especially not that swing, but when it comes to the way that the rankings look right now, we’ve weathered the worst of the storm.

I don’t know, I guess I was just happy that UAH was 58th in KRACH.