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Discussions about the Cornell men's and women's hockey teams
Re: Weekend Playoff Predictions - 21 years ago
Where you went wrong: you expected something from the ECAC...by Keith K - Hockey
Secrets - 21 years ago
I can think of one "good" reason for keeping the bonus amounts secret. The selection show airs on TV, right? (ESPN2?) Maybe either the NC$$ or the network feels that they'll get better ratings if they add some uncertainty into the process. Seems like a stupid reason to cloud up the process and possibly piss people off later (why didn't my team get in?), but I can see why some beancouby Keith K - Hockey
Re: League play - 21 years ago
No! To elaborate, I like the travel partner setup. It's nice to see two different teams every week. More importantly, a balanced schedule is very desirable. I don't want teams competing for the same title playing different schedules. Why change a nice, balanced round-robin? The ECAC league schedule is probably the best in college hockey. The main reason the WCHA wants two game sets is thatby Keith K - Hockey
Number 1? - 21 years ago
I for one would love to see a #1 ranking. We all know polls don't mean much compared to trophies, but being able to say that you were the top ranked team in the nation at the end of a season has to be a help in recruiting (and for school and league pride anyway). I doubt it would add any more pressure over the current #2 vote and #3 ranking. That said, it's going to take more than a split withby Keith K - Hockey
Who do we want to play - 21 years ago
Does anyone really think that this team shouldn't be able to beat any of the bottom five teams in the conference? I don't think it's woofing to say that, if this team is really a national contender, it should put away any of those five. The first two of the four wins needed should come regardless of who we have to play. No counting your chickens and all that, but I'd still rather see Colgate cby Keith K - Hockey
Re: Most likely upset this weekend - 21 years ago
I don't nkow if there wil be any upsets but please, I hope not. Below are the current RPIStr numbers for the five teams we can play in the second round: Colgate .4729 33 Vermont .4234 44 St. Lawrence .4001 48 RPI .3728 51 Princeton .2593 60 Having to play two more games against Princeton could seriously hurt our RPI numbers.by Keith K - Hockey
Re: Sunday PWR: Big Doin's - 21 years ago
Both Dartmouth and Harvard are long shots though. I don't think either can get in without help from one of the bubble teams. Conference tourneys could provide this help, but it won't be easy. Harvard screwed themselves by losing all five of their decent non-conf matchups. If they'd just won one or two they'd be solidly in the tourney right now. (At one point I think their loss to Northern Miby Keith K - Hockey
Re: Stupid Selection Committee Tricks? - 21 years ago
USCHO is reporting on the stupid committee tricks: Sounds like a poorly thought out idea to me. Adding a very crude modifier like "good road wins" and "bad home losses" is dumb. This criterion may be "objective" in the sense that the rules for applying it are cut and dried, but they're not telling anyone how it works so it might as well be back room subjectivitby Keith K - Hockey
Re: USCHO Poll 2/24 - 21 years ago
More likely they just spend waaaay too much time checking to see if the polls are up and try to post it the moment they see it. You guys need more real work to do! (he says, typing this from work... )by Keith K - Hockey
Why oh why do we care? - 21 years ago
To be honest I started trying to figure this out 'cuz I was bored at work. And I find solving mathematical problems - particularly those involving meaningless things like hockey polls - to be strangely intersting and fun. But hey, PhD rocket scientists are supposed to be geeks, right?by Keith K - Hockey
Would it be best if we lost? - 21 years ago
No, we'd be better off just running the table through April... Talking about whether we'd be better off losing is silly. We'll take the matchup we get. If we win out we have a not so terrible chance of getting matched up with a CHA/MAAC team anyway.by Keith K - Hockey
Re: Ryan O'Byrne - 21 years ago
I don't think the team could recruit a decent goalie while Lenny is around. I mean, if he stays then a new kid would be all but guaranteed to ride the pine for two years. Plus, with possibly four goalies around finding practice time for all of them would be difficult. If Lenny does decide to leave we may be in a bind, but there's not much that can be done about it.by Keith K - Hockey
Re: USCHO.com poll, 2/17 - 21 years ago
Simultaneous equations are easy to solve. Unfortunately we have far more variables (15 per team, or 14 since we know first place votes) than equations. So it's an underconstrained problem and not directly solvable.by Keith K - Hockey
Re: solving for votes - 21 years ago
Naah. We're sharper than that (a little anyway). The point would be to put together a computer code that would solve for the votes given all the known data. I'm not sure it's really possible and I'm not really putting anymore time into it, but that was my original thought (aside from killing some time).by Keith K - Hockey
Re: hockey only conference - 21 years ago
I disagree. Something can be well written and well argued and still not be convincing. You can dispute the facts, disagree with the assesment of the current situation and with the expected benefits of the proposal. Just because an argument is logical and consistent doesn't make it right. The assumptions matter too. I don't think Adam presented many arguments in this piece about why he feels tby Keith K - Hockey
solving for votes - 21 years ago
Actually, you have 21 more equations, since each team can only have a up to 40 votes. Unfortunately, these are pretty much inequalities since we don't know how many votes each team received. You can set this up as a least squares problem and get a solution. But since it's underconstrained, the linear LS answer doesn't necessarily give you the right answer. In fact the chances of picking the rby Keith K - Hockey
Re: hockey only conference - 21 years ago
I hadn't ever thought about the autobid issue. It would seem pretty stupid to not give a bid to the ECHA though. After all, it wouldn't really be a new conference, just a new administration. Seems to me the only justification for doing this would be to support the existing ECAC structure.by Keith K - Hockey
Re: If the Season Ended Today: Thoughts on Regional Pairings - 21 years ago
Well clearly the solution is to shaft the #5 teams from the HE and WCHA. After all, does Hockey East really need more than half their teams in the tourney? If you can't get home ice why should you play the national championship, criteria be damned. This really is less fun when there are few HE/WCHA fans on this board...by Keith K - Hockey
Re: regressions - 21 years ago
Well, I've managed to get part of the problem set up as a regression problem. But it doesn't quite work right (no surprise there): my results currently say that Dartmouth received -183.667 first place votes, which counter their 40 votes for each of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7-9th and 12-14th places. Dartmouth is really popular! (Haven't quite figured out how to mathematically restrict each team to one voby Keith K - Hockey
Re: If the Season Ended Today: Thoughts on Regional Pairings - 21 years ago
We don't really have any good idea how they will seed the 16 team tournament. What you can say with some certainty is that the top 4 teams in the PWC will get #1 regional seeds. This will be done without concern for region, except that if one region has more than two #1 seeds, the lowest ranked one should be sent to the other region. This is consistent with the way byes were handled (recentlyby Keith K - Hockey
Re: Post-Harvard musing I: Giving $ to Cornell Hockey - 21 years ago
We've beaten this horse to death. Felix is right - folks here have largely made up their minds on this issue. I can definitely say that I enjoyed last season more than this one. Yes, it's great to have the #2 team in the nation. I hope the hockey gods don't find any complaints in this. But last year I was able to listen to all of the games broadcast by the Cornell announcers and was able to wby Keith K - Hockey
Re: USCHO.com poll, 2/17 - 21 years ago
Some further thought about the numbers leads me to guess that we had more second place votes than 13, with fewer 3rd's and some 4th's to balance out. Wish I could easily back out the vote numbers. Unfortunatley I'm not sure you can solve the Ax=b system for A given x and b, even knowing a constraint u'A=c (given u and c). There might be a regression type approach that would work, but it doesn'tby Keith K - Hockey
Re: USCHO.com poll, 2/17 - 21 years ago
40 voters. 15 points for 1st place vote, 14 for 2nd, 13 for 3rd, etc.by Keith K - Hockey
Re: USCHO.com poll, 2/17 - 21 years ago
Likely vote distribution: Team 1st 2nd 3rd Points CC 30 9 1 589 Cornell 10 13 17 553 I think that's the only way for CC to get 589 with 40 votes. There are other combinations for our ranking and maybe it's likely that we had some lower votes. But every #4 vote would have to be compensated for by an additional #2. No point in speculating much as you go furtheby Keith K - Hockey
Re: Ivy Title & Cleary Cup - 21 years ago
All we need to clinch the Ivy Title is one point lost by Dartmouth on either Friday or Saturday (or gained by us the following weekend). There are no Ivy tiebreakers so that point point would clinch a share of the title. I think we have two shared Ivt Titles (without looking). Winning outright needs two points with Dartmouth and one with Brown. We need five points to clinch the RS title, eithby Keith K - Hockey
Re: How good is Lenny? WJC defense - 21 years ago
The Canadian WJC team certainly had better talent than Cornell (or at least I assume so). But since defense is a team thing, is it clear that they had a better overall defense after two weeks together?by Keith K - Hockey
Re: Personal Attacks on Players - 21 years ago
The best way to respond to "Iggulden = useless" type posts is to simply state the rational argument against (or for) this (he's been hurt, is a role player, etc.) and drop it. The chorus of complaints about personal attacks, censorship, etc. is pointless.by Keith K - Hockey
Re: When was the last time.... - 21 years ago
Yeah, but 61 shots in Houston field house is not really 61 shots...by Keith K - Hockey
Re: Interesting: WCHA and CHA auto berths - 21 years ago
Typical example of hockey being very much a special case in the NC$$. When you try to shoehorn the basketball rules on to hockey it just doesn't work. The thought of the WCHA, the oldest conference in hockey, losing its autobid on a meaningless technicality is ludicrous. Though it would be funny to see the wailing in Minnesota.by Keith K - Hockey