Rankings Dec. 1: #13

[www.uscho.com]

Swapped down with Vermont, while Princeton fell to #9 and yet somehow picked up 2 first-place votes. Meanwhile Dartmouth improves to #16 and Yale garners more votes than Sucks.

I usually don't comment on the USCHO poll, mainly because it's not worth the paper it's not printed on, but this one is particularly instructive.

Compare to KRACH for giggles. (In this case, again, John's. )

Who exactly, for example, has BC beat? They beat Vermont, ranked below them (in the USCHO poll), and have been beaten by Northeastern (below), Maine (way below), and Notre Dame (more on that later). They've beaten, next up in the KRACH, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Dartmouth. Whoopee!

Then take a look at Notre Dame, which has played a pretty damn weak schedule, whether you look at the USCHO poll or KRACH. They lost to Miami (twice!) and Denver, both ranked below them by USCHO, and beat BC (see above). Whoopee! Other than that, they've had a slightly successful time beating up on the Western Michigans of the world. So, beat BC, beat up on some weak teams, and lose to others. By those criteria, Northeastern should be #1.

Most of this seems to arise from a serious undervaluing of Vermont, which has clearly created something scary up there in Burlington. Their only real faults seem to be losing to undervalued Northeastern and BC (see above). Go figure.

There's very little question that the voters still have hardons for the underperforming CCHA and everso average WCHA and not quite enough of one for Hockey East, probably because the wrong teams are winning. I can't help but think that the EZAC stigma has followed Vermont to Hockey East, and it's also not helping Princeton or us.

All that being said, I'm more than happy for us to fly under the radar.

As always polls are based to a great degree on expectations. Some voters haven't looked hard enough to see the things that you point out. Others are simply convinced that BC will turn out to be that good because... well, they're BC! And Notre Dame looked so good last season they must still be good.

In the second half of the season the poll will trend towards the Pairwsie, both because data will start to overwhlem the data and consciously or unconsciously voters will take their cues from the rankings.

and Princeton beat Northeastern 5-3 and outshot them 39-21. How good is this Princeton team?

One goal less good than us?

TimV
One goal less good than us?

Than "we"?

Nice, Tim.