Sunday PWR: Big Doin's

[Greg Berge]

Some movement in the PWR with consequences for Cornell.  Minnesota moves into #4 ahead of the Hockey East contingent, and Ferris State jumps up to #6.  Obviously, if the rankings stayed that way there is no way Cornell would go west.

As of today the top 14 arranged by grouping are:

1 CC
2 Maine
3 Cornell
4 Minnesota
---
5 UNH
6 Ferris
7 BC tied with BU
---
9 Michigan
10 NoDak
11 Mankato
12 St. Cloud tied with Providence
14 Denver tied with Ohio State

[ugarte]

If Providence finishes at 12, we would avoid a first round matchup with the Friars, right?  Maybe we want them to beat BU after all. . .

[Greg Berge]

Well, if the bottom 4 were: MAAC, CHA, St. Cloud, Denver and the top 4 were: CC, Maine, Cornell, Minnesota, that would leave us with a guaranteed matchup against the MAAC or CHA team.

[Robb]

Greg - how do you figure that?  If 2 of the top 4 are WCHA, and 2 of the bottom 4 are WCHA, wouldn't the top WCHA teams get non-WCHA bottom teams, leaving us with SCSU or DU?  I'm confused....

[Greg Berge]

Yep, of course you're right.  Can't beat those 1 am posts.  ;-)

But hey, it is deterministic!  Just in the opposite fashion.

[DeltaOne81]

Excluding the MAAC game today, which I can't possibly see affecting stuff much, her are the new seeds after the UND loss, by my count:

West:
1. Minn
2. UNH
3. SCSU
4. CHA champ

Midwest:
1. CC
2. BC
3. Mich
4. MAAC champ

Northeast:
1. Cornell
2. BU
3. MSU-Mankato
4. UND

East:
1. Maine
2. Ferris
3. Prov
4. Denver

MSU-Man and SCSU are pretty much interchangeable, as are Denver-UND, though this lineup is closer to the 1-16, 2-15, etc ideal .  I could also see them flipping us and Maine, but I'm hoping they'd let us be slightly closer to home, thereby avoiding the Providence region.

[RedAR]

I saw that Dartmouth jumped Harvard in PWR.  If Dartmouth wins out from this point on, but doesn't win the ECAC Championship, could they get an at-large bid?

[Chris 02]

North Dakota continues to fall....They lost to Minnesota-Duluth today.

[atb9]

They're actually tanking so they can face us in the first round...  :-)

[gwm3]

Tanking or not, I don't think that's a team any top seed would be too happy to draw in the first round  ::worry::

[ZooeyDog]

That's a good question:

Would you rather play North Dakota in a first-round, neutral-site game, or Providence on the road?


ZD

[Greg Berge]

The way NoDak's playing right now?  No contest.

[CrazyLarry]

RedAR makes a good point.  The way I see it, winning out (without a Conf Championship) has a pretty decent chance of getting Dartmouth into the tourney.  They win a few comparisons against the other bubble teams.  I think their chances are better than Harvard's, actually.

[Keith K]

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 Michigan was actually keeping them out...)

Dartmouth screwed themselves by being unable to win on the road.

[CrazyLarry]

Remember, a lot of those teams on the bubble have to play each other in the playoffs.  Some of them will lose because someone has to.  So, just the fact these games are played should provide the help the Big Green will need.  If Dartmouth wins 3 games in the ECAC tourney, their non-conference wins set them up well in the PWR.  And a game against Cornell would help their RPI quite a bit.  Harvard is a much longer shot because they didn't win any of their key nc games.