Cornell at Yale 2/15

[upprdeck]

Running the limited PWR its hard to find a path to a bid

But its not hard to find a path that gets us ahead of PSU/Minn St/Quin/Ariz st

and you can find paths for UNH/Mass to be ahead of us but under .500 as well

Mich is locked in

have to find a way to 13 that includes losing to Quin I suspect, if one exists.

[Give My Regards]

Just to help Trotsky from believing - Cornell has no shot at an at-large bid.

Good.  Now I can concentrate again.

Aww, no more pictures?

[Dafatone]

Just to help Trotsky from believing - Cornell has no shot at an at-large bid. It's fairly clear even before running "The Matrix" - which FWIW, puts the chances at 0.1%

You can see clearly that between 20 and 30 in the Pairwise, the teams are separated by about 100 RPI basis points. There's constant movement in there up and down. But the gap from 20 to 13 is almost 300 basis points. It's very difficult to crack the bubble. In fact, I'd say Penn State at 16 basically has no shot either.  It's just not going to happen. ... Everyone here would be better off not worrying about it, and just enjoy each game for what it is, and shoot for that bye. Although my personal opinion is that it wouldn't be terrible from a team building standpoint to play two gimme home games before getting to the meatier quarterfinals. So if they're playing well, but fall short of 4th, it's not so bad.

0.1%? So you're saying there's a chance.

[Trotsky]

Just to help Trotsky from believing - Cornell has no shot at an at-large bid.

Good.  Now I can concentrate again.

Aww, no more pictures?

Never said that.

[adamw]

Just to help Trotsky from believing - Cornell has no shot at an at-large bid. It's fairly clear even before running "The Matrix" - which FWIW, puts the chances at 0.1%

You can see clearly that between 20 and 30 in the Pairwise, the teams are separated by about 100 RPI basis points. There's constant movement in there up and down. But the gap from 20 to 13 is almost 300 basis points. It's very difficult to crack the bubble. In fact, I'd say Penn State at 16 basically has no shot either.  It's just not going to happen. ... Everyone here would be better off not worrying about it, and just enjoy each game for what it is, and shoot for that bye. Although my personal opinion is that it wouldn't be terrible from a team building standpoint to play two gimme home games before getting to the meatier quarterfinals. So if they're playing well, but fall short of 4th, it's not so bad.

Burning the midnight oil just to crush our dreams? lol but I agree with you, believing that we can get an at large will do us more harm than good now. Regarding the ECAC tournament, the first round is just one game now right? So it is a pretty big deal still to get a bye because you don't want to be in a spot where one bad game or good day from a goalie ends your season.

True - sorry - I keep forgetting about the 1-game dumbness.

[marty]

Just to help Trotsky from believing - Cornell has no shot at an at-large bid. It's fairly clear even before running "The Matrix" - which FWIW, puts the chances at 0.1%

You can see clearly that between 20 and 30 in the Pairwise, the teams are separated by about 100 RPI basis points. There's constant movement in there up and down. But the gap from 20 to 13 is almost 300 basis points. It's very difficult to crack the bubble. In fact, I'd say Penn State at 16 basically has no shot either.  It's just not going to happen. ... Everyone here would be better off not worrying about it, and just enjoy each game for what it is, and shoot for that bye. Although my personal opinion is that it wouldn't be terrible from a team building standpoint to play two gimme home games before getting to the meatier quarterfinals. So if they're playing well, but fall short of 4th, it's not so bad.

Burning the midnight oil just to crush our dreams? lol but I agree with you, believing that we can get an at large will do us more harm than good now. Regarding the ECAC tournament, the first round is just one game now right? So it is a pretty big deal still to get a bye because you don't want to be in a spot where one bad game or good day from a goalie ends your season.

True - sorry - I keep forgetting about the 1-game dumbness.

I don't feel so bad wishing that the first round wasn't one game.  One of my favorite series was Colgate visiting RPI - I think in the Fridgen era.  Our seats were next to a Colgate alum and his wife.  He clapped politely and I don't think raised his voice once during the games.  You can hear him clapping after the game winning series ending goal on one of my Youtube videos.  I met him years later at a party and was able to ID him due to his profession and demeanor.  I didn't remember his face.  I think I proved how insane some of us are in our appreciation of college hockey.

There was also the 2002 series at Lynah vs. Yale.  We would have missed that year - the only Schafer era miss - except that my son who was entering Yale in the fall suggested we visit.  It was his college visits that had prevented our annual pilgrimmage to Lynah.  I then learned that "Yale is in New Haven".

[billhoward]

True - sorry - I keep forgetting about the 1-game dumbness.

The advantage to a one-game playoff to make the quarterfinal round of 8 is:
* Less wear and tear on the four 5-12 playoff winners who advance
* The higher-ranked team usually wins
* There are upsets in the best-of-three quarterfinals as well

Last year there was a big upset run: #7 RS St. Lawrence: winning the first-round over #10 Yale, beating #3 St. Lawrence 3-2OT and 3-2 at Colgate, then in Lake Placid SLU goalie Ben Kraws (and his, ah, really vocal dad in the stands) shutting out #1 Quinnipiac in the semis, before falling to #2 Cornell 3-1 for the ECAC tournament title, Cornell's first in 14 years.

[Al DeFlorio]

True - sorry - I keep forgetting about the 1-game dumbness.

The advantage to a one-game playoff to make the quarterfinal round of 8 is:
* Less wear and tear on the four 5-12 playoff winners who advance
* The higher-ranked team usually wins
* There are upsets in the best-of-three quarterfinals as well

Last year there was a big upset run: #7 RS St. Lawrence: winning the first-round over #10 Yale, beating #3 St. Lawrence 3-2OT and 3-2 at Colgate, then in Lake Placid SLU goalie Ben Kraws (and his, ah, really vocal dad in the stands) shutting out #1 Quinnipiac in the semis, before falling to #2 Cornell 3-1 for the ECAC tournament title, Cornell's first in 14 years.

If the NCAA tournament games are single elimination, and the ECAC semifinals and final are, too, why shouldn't the ECAC first round and quarterfinals be the same?  Is determining the winners, for some unknown reason, more important?  Are there two-out-of-three series in basketball, or lacrosse, or football tournaments?

[billhoward]

College baseball world series is a combination of double-elimination brackets (2 losses in your bracket grouping and you're out) and best 2-of-3 including in the championship round. I can see that making sense for baseball where a hot pitcher could knock a better that has more good but not single great pitcher. Plus they play a lot of games. Tennessee won the College World Series in game 73 of the 2024 season. Right now they've played 3 games in 2025 while a couple D1 lax teams have played 3 also but they stop playing in the high teens.

[pjd8]

True - sorry - I keep forgetting about the 1-game dumbness.

The advantage to a one-game playoff to make the quarterfinal round of 8 is:
* Less wear and tear on the four 5-12 playoff winners who advance
* The higher-ranked team usually wins
* There are upsets in the best-of-three quarterfinals as well

Last year there was a big upset run: #7 RS St. Lawrence: winning the first-round over #10 Yale, beating #3 St. Lawrence 3-2OT and 3-2 at Colgate, then in Lake Placid SLU goalie Ben Kraws (and his, ah, really vocal dad in the stands) shutting out #1 Quinnipiac in the semis, before falling to #2 Cornell 3-1 for the ECAC tournament title, Cornell's first in 14 years.

If the NCAA tournament games are single elimination, and the ECAC semifinals and final are, too, why shouldn't the ECAC first round and quarterfinals be the same?  Is determining the winners, for some unknown reason, more important?  Are there two-out-of-three series in basketball, or lacrosse, or football tournaments?

I think there were at least three possible reasons for the best-of-three format:

1. You want the advantage to go to the upper seed. While upsets can happen, fewer will happen in the multi-game format. The strategic advantage for the ECAC is that, if they're only going to send one team to the NCAA tourney, they really don't want their best teams getting knocked out of a chance for the autobid due to one fluke game.

Only HE doesn't do a multigame format, and they don't need to. Even if last-place UNH got the autobid, they would have a good showing in the national tournament. And if they didn't, the other six teams that would get at large bids from the conference would hold up HE's honor.

2. It's a way to increase the number of games in a season while still holding to the cap the ECAC puts on regular season games.

3. You can end your regular season a week earlier than HE and keep the teams playing, particularly in a playoff mindset, instead of sitting idle. I do think this helps Cornell. It's an opportunity to do some fine tuning of playoff strategy under relatively low stakes conditions.

[adamw]

True - sorry - I keep forgetting about the 1-game dumbness.

The advantage to a one-game playoff to make the quarterfinal round of 8 is:
* Less wear and tear on the four 5-12 playoff winners who advance
* The higher-ranked team usually wins
* There are upsets in the best-of-three quarterfinals as well

Last year there was a big upset run: #7 RS St. Lawrence: winning the first-round over #10 Yale, beating #3 St. Lawrence 3-2OT and 3-2 at Colgate, then in Lake Placid SLU goalie Ben Kraws (and his, ah, really vocal dad in the stands) shutting out #1 Quinnipiac in the semis, before falling to #2 Cornell 3-1 for the ECAC tournament title, Cornell's first in 14 years.

If the NCAA tournament games are single elimination, and the ECAC semifinals and final are, too, why shouldn't the ECAC first round and quarterfinals be the same?  Is determining the winners, for some unknown reason, more important?  Are there two-out-of-three series in basketball, or lacrosse, or football tournaments?

I think there were at least three possible reasons for the best-of-three format:

1. You want the advantage to go to the upper seed. While upsets can happen, fewer will happen in the multi-game format. The strategic advantage for the ECAC is that, if they're only going to send one team to the NCAA tourney, they really don't want their best teams getting knocked out of a chance for the autobid due to one fluke game.

Only HE doesn't do a multigame format, and they don't need to. Even if last-place UNH got the autobid, they would have a good showing in the national tournament. And if they didn't, the other six teams that would get at large bids from the conference would hold up HE's honor.

2. It's a way to increase the number of games in a season while still holding to the cap the ECAC puts on regular season games.

3. You can end your regular season a week earlier than HE and keep the teams playing, particularly in a playoff mindset, instead of sitting idle. I do think this helps Cornell. It's an opportunity to do some fine tuning of playoff strategy under relatively low stakes conditions.

Hockey East only recently made that change. The change for HEA and ECAC was based more on economics than anything else. I think the philosophy behind best-of-3 was originally because it's much easier, so to speak, in hockey for a lower seed to steal a win because of goaltending, and coaches didn't want that.  The issue for both of the first two rounds is in trying to get fewer flukes. At least if a team will pull an upset, make it harder. No different than the reason the NHL went to all best-of-7s. Not that it's a bulletproof "solution" by any means.

Single game in the NCAA Tournament was not always the case either. They changed things in order to mimic college basketball as much as possible. The difference is that in conference tournaments, you can get upsets by teams that went 6-16 or something. At least in the NCAAs, everyone is over .500 to start with.