Making The ECAC Quarterfinals 38 Of 41 Years

[andyw2100]

I just saw a headline in my news feed from "The Harvard Crimson" that read:

"Men's Hockey Downs St. Lawrence 4-3 in OT, Advances to 10th-Straight ECAC Quarterfinal"

That made me wonder how long it's been since Cornell did not reach at least the ECAC quarterfinals. Off the top of my head I could not remember a year we missed.

I turned to TBRW (thanks, Greg) and with only minimal digging discovered that the last time we did not reach the quarterfinals was 2015, when we lost to Union in the first round.

However...

Looking further back, that year (2015), along with 1987 and 1993, are the only years we didn't make at least the quarterfinals since 1984! So starting in 1985, through this year, Cornell has made the ECAC quarterfinals every year but three! (COVID years excluded, of course, though we had reached the quarters when the 2019-2020 season was abruptly ended.)

I think that is an absolutely amazing stat, considering that currently 1/3 of the league does not make the quarterfinals every year.

I tried to plug that into AI, as I don't trust my statistical abilities. If I did that correctly, and with each year being independent of the others (so no weighting for having a strong or a weak team), and without accounting for anything other than a twelve team league, making exactly 38 of 41 quarterfinals, with a 66.66% likelihood of success was 1 in 9260. If I allow for 38, 39, 40 or 41 of 41, (so "at least" 38 of 41) the likelihood goes up to 1 in 7900.

Happy to have a statistics wonk tell me where I went wrong. If I didn't, this is an absolutely incredible accomplishment!

[andyw2100]

I just attempted to take this a step further.

Using the same set of assumptions as before, and assuming I tabulated things correctly, we hosted the quarterfinal series (meaning we finished top 4 in the league in the regular season) 28 of those 41 seasons. (I'm counting 2019-2020.) Plugging that into AI, the chances of us finishing top 4 in a 12 team league at least 28 out of 41 seasons is 1 in about 198,000.

[BearLover]

I know you already did this in your first post, but in the second post I think the relevant question is "odds of 28 or more times in 41 tries," not "exactly 28 times."

[andyw2100]

I know you already did this in your first post, but in the second post I think the relevant question is "odds of 28 or more times in 41 tries," not "exactly 28 times."

Actually the number is correct, and I had attempted to edit my post (above) just after posting to add "at least." I'm not sure what happened to that edit but I'll attempt to make that edit again now.

Thanks for catching that.

[Trotsky]

Another way of looking at this is we are 46-8 .852 in our first ECAC playoff series of each season.

http://www.tbrw.info/?/cornell_History/cornell_Bargraph_ECAC_Playoff.html

[jtwcornell91]

Things are somewhat complicated by the fact that for a few years there were five quintafinal series rather than four quarterfinals.