2025-26 schedule

[BearLover]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

My pairwise take is that home/away is overweighted and the best way to hack RPI is to play a lot of road games.

Has anybody studied this? Shouldn't be too hard to figure out the "true" advantage of home ice.

I feel like Adam had numbers proving me wrong last time I said this.

But it feels true, and this is the internet, so I am sticking with it.

Well I'd hope there is some science behind it rather than someone picking .8 out of a hat.

Anyway, holding all else equal, weaker ECAC—>no difference in Pairwise + higher likelihood of winning ECAC tournament. Sounds good to me.

[pjd8]

Has anybody studied this? Shouldn't be too hard to figure out the "true" advantage of home ice.

I recently read an article (which I can't find quickly now) that talked about what we learned from Covid, and one of the lessons was that home game advantage was real - but only if you were used to playing in front of a loud crowd. Programs without that didn't lose any advantage when fans were kept away.

The other observation from that NBA season was how much not traveling over multiple time zones helped teams. And that's been a big discussion in Big Ten football this year. Penn State is feeling the travel burden (just getting onto a direct flight to USC adds a two hour bus ride to a bigger airport), and West Coast schools have seen their performance drop with jet lag.

As that becomes more obvious to sports in general, it make get harder to get western teams to come to Lynah, especially when it's easier to travel to a Boston campus if you're willing to take the time zone hit.

As I'm watching today's game, maybe we should try to entice Penn State to Lynah.

[adamw]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

My pairwise take is that home/away is overweighted and the best way to hack RPI is to play a lot of road games.

Has anybody studied this? Shouldn't be too hard to figure out the "true" advantage of home ice.

I feel like Adam had numbers proving me wrong last time I said this.

But it feels true, and this is the internet, so I am sticking with it.

Well I'd hope there is some science behind it rather than someone picking .8 out of a hat.

Anyway, holding all else equal, weaker ECAC—>no difference in Pairwise + higher likelihood of winning ECAC tournament. Sounds good to me.

I wouldn't call it a hat, but .8 is certainly more than the home-ice advantage actually is. The intention, however, wasn't straight math - but rather to incentivize top teams to schedule road games. There is a proposal being discussed that would eliminate, or lessen, that edge for playoff games, since you did earn home ice for your playoffs.

[adamw]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

Cornell has proven that they can beat tough teams and lose to non-tough teams. I don't think there's a huge risk to our win percentage by scheduling all tough teams. I think injuries, how the team is gelling, maturity and headspace of individual athletes, etc, have a bigger influence on how each game will go on a given day.

What scheduling a tough team over a non-tough team does for you is that it gives you an opportunity to win a game that has a potential for winning a pairwise comparison with another team that's on the bubble. Non of the teams right above us in pairwise played Sacred Heart, so we didn't get a H2H comparison benefit from those games.

If we had beaten ASU, we would have won that comparison, and if we had played Mankato instead of Sacred Heart and won, we would have won that comparison. That's without an improvement in RPI in other case. The subsequent RPI improvement might have picked up another comparison, putting us on the right side of the bubble.

True enough - though it's hard to cherrypick a schedule like that. How do you know which teams will be the exact teams on the bubble near you? So - outside of 2 or 3 teams - it doesn't matter. Since there's only 3 criteria, and RPI is the tiebreaker. Usually teams a few more rungs up the ladder have better common opponents and RPI - which means you'd need to beat them 3 times without a loss for H2H to matter. It just so happens there are limited COPs with MinnSt/ASU this year, so the 1 H2H win in your example would've mattered.

[Dafatone]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

My pairwise take is that home/away is overweighted and the best way to hack RPI is to play a lot of road games.

Has anybody studied this? Shouldn't be too hard to figure out the "true" advantage of home ice.

I feel like Adam had numbers proving me wrong last time I said this.

But it feels true, and this is the internet, so I am sticking with it.

Well I'd hope there is some science behind it rather than someone picking .8 out of a hat.

Anyway, holding all else equal, weaker ECAC—>no difference in Pairwise + higher likelihood of winning ECAC tournament. Sounds good to me.

I wouldn't call it a hat, but .8 is certainly more than the home-ice advantage actually is. The intention, however, wasn't straight math - but rather to incentivize top teams to schedule road games. There is a proposal being discussed that would eliminate, or lessen, that edge for playoff games, since you did earn home ice for your playoffs.

Interesting proposal!

0.8 doesn't sound like a ton at first glance, but it means a road win is 1.2, so a road win is worth 1.5x as much as a home win.  Which is a lot.

[BearLover]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

My pairwise take is that home/away is overweighted and the best way to hack RPI is to play a lot of road games.

Has anybody studied this? Shouldn't be too hard to figure out the "true" advantage of home ice.

I feel like Adam had numbers proving me wrong last time I said this.

But it feels true, and this is the internet, so I am sticking with it.

Well I'd hope there is some science behind it rather than someone picking .8 out of a hat.

Anyway, holding all else equal, weaker ECAC—>no difference in Pairwise + higher likelihood of winning ECAC tournament. Sounds good to me.

I wouldn't call it a hat, but .8 is certainly more than the home-ice advantage actually is. The intention, however, wasn't straight math - but rather to incentivize top teams to schedule road games. There is a proposal being discussed that would eliminate, or lessen, that edge for playoff games, since you did earn home ice for your playoffs.

Interesting proposal!

0.8 doesn't sound like a ton at first glance, but it means a road win is 1.2, so a road win is worth 1.5x as much as a home win.  Which is a lot.

If every team schedules the same ratio of home/away games it all comes out in the wash, right? The exception would be a school like Alaska who benefits from playing most of their games on the road.

[pjd8]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

Cornell has proven that they can beat tough teams and lose to non-tough teams. I don't think there's a huge risk to our win percentage by scheduling all tough teams. I think injuries, how the team is gelling, maturity and headspace of individual athletes, etc, have a bigger influence on how each game will go on a given day.

What scheduling a tough team over a non-tough team does for you is that it gives you an opportunity to win a game that has a potential for winning a pairwise comparison with another team that's on the bubble. Non of the teams right above us in pairwise played Sacred Heart, so we didn't get a H2H comparison benefit from those games.

If we had beaten ASU, we would have won that comparison, and if we had played Mankato instead of Sacred Heart and won, we would have won that comparison. That's without an improvement in RPI in other case. The subsequent RPI improvement might have picked up another comparison, putting us on the right side of the bubble.

True enough - though it's hard to cherrypick a schedule like that. How do you know which teams will be the exact teams on the bubble near you? So - outside of 2 or 3 teams - it doesn't matter. Since there's only 3 criteria, and RPI is the tiebreaker. Usually teams a few more rungs up the ladder have better common opponents and RPI - which means you'd need to beat them 3 times without a loss for H2H to matter. It just so happens there are limited COPs with MinnSt/ASU this year, so the 1 H2H win in your example would've mattered.

Yes, I used those examples because a one game win would flip the comparison. That's not always going to happen, but every once in a while it will.

I agree with you that it's hard to cherry pick for those situations when scheduling is done long before you know who the bubble teams will be. But over years of scheduling, you know you're far more likely to hit that situation by scheduling teams like Northeastern/UNH/Mankato than you are scheduling Sacred Heart. Plus, scheduling another HE/Big Ten/NCHC team will nudge your RPI a bit.

But I think the bigger advantage (and better argument) is the experience of playing with the "big boys" more. I think playing UND was a better challenge to get the guys to elevate their game. We're not going to get a morale boost from beating an AHL team. We're just going to ask why we didn't sweep them.

[Al DeFlorio]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

Cornell has proven that they can beat tough teams and lose to non-tough teams. I don't think there's a huge risk to our win percentage by scheduling all tough teams. I think injuries, how the team is gelling, maturity and headspace of individual athletes, etc, have a bigger influence on how each game will go on a given day.

What scheduling a tough team over a non-tough team does for you is that it gives you an opportunity to win a game that has a potential for winning a pairwise comparison with another team that's on the bubble. Non of the teams right above us in pairwise played Sacred Heart, so we didn't get a H2H comparison benefit from those games.

If we had beaten ASU, we would have won that comparison, and if we had played Mankato instead of Sacred Heart and won, we would have won that comparison. That's without an improvement in RPI in other case. The subsequent RPI improvement might have picked up another comparison, putting us on the right side of the bubble.

True enough - though it's hard to cherrypick a schedule like that. How do you know which teams will be the exact teams on the bubble near you? So - outside of 2 or 3 teams - it doesn't matter. Since there's only 3 criteria, and RPI is the tiebreaker. Usually teams a few more rungs up the ladder have better common opponents and RPI - which means you'd need to beat them 3 times without a loss for H2H to matter. It just so happens there are limited COPs with MinnSt/ASU this year, so the 1 H2H win in your example would've mattered.

Yes, I used those examples because a one game win would flip the comparison. That's not always going to happen, but every once in a while it will.

I agree with you that it's hard to cherry pick for those situations when scheduling is done long before you know who the bubble teams will be. But over years of scheduling, you know you're far more likely to hit that situation by scheduling teams like Northeastern/UNH/Mankato than you are scheduling Sacred Heart. Plus, scheduling another HE/Big Ten/NCHC team will nudge your RPI a bit.

But I think the bigger advantage (and better argument) is the experience of playing with the "big boys" more. I think playing UND was a better challenge to get the guys to elevate their game. We're not going to get a morale boost from beating an AHL team. We're just going to ask why we didn't sweep them.

Should be a plus for recruiting.  Blue chippahs would rather hone their skills against the
BCs than the Browns.

[Swampy]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

Cornell has proven that they can beat tough teams and lose to non-tough teams. I don't think there's a huge risk to our win percentage by scheduling all tough teams. I think injuries, how the team is gelling, maturity and headspace of individual athletes, etc, have a bigger influence on how each game will go on a given day.

What scheduling a tough team over a non-tough team does for you is that it gives you an opportunity to win a game that has a potential for winning a pairwise comparison with another team that's on the bubble. Non of the teams right above us in pairwise played Sacred Heart, so we didn't get a H2H comparison benefit from those games.

If we had beaten ASU, we would have won that comparison, and if we had played Mankato instead of Sacred Heart and won, we would have won that comparison. That's without an improvement in RPI in other case. The subsequent RPI improvement might have picked up another comparison, putting us on the right side of the bubble.

True enough - though it's hard to cherrypick a schedule like that. How do you know which teams will be the exact teams on the bubble near you? So - outside of 2 or 3 teams - it doesn't matter. Since there's only 3 criteria, and RPI is the tiebreaker. Usually teams a few more rungs up the ladder have better common opponents and RPI - which means you'd need to beat them 3 times without a loss for H2H to matter. It just so happens there are limited COPs with MinnSt/ASU this year, so the 1 H2H win in your example would've mattered.

Yes, I used those examples because a one game win would flip the comparison. That's not always going to happen, but every once in a while it will.

I agree with you that it's hard to cherry pick for those situations when scheduling is done long before you know who the bubble teams will be. But over years of scheduling, you know you're far more likely to hit that situation by scheduling teams like Northeastern/UNH/Mankato than you are scheduling Sacred Heart. Plus, scheduling another HE/Big Ten/NCHC team will nudge your RPI a bit.

But I think the bigger advantage (and better argument) is the experience of playing with the "big boys" more. I think playing UND was a better challenge to get the guys to elevate their game. We're not going to get a morale boost from beating an AHL team. We're just going to ask why we didn't sweep them.

Should be a plus for recruiting.  Blue chippahs would rather hone their skills against the
BCs than the Browns.

Also, that Cornell is "big-league" in hockey compared to SH, just as Cornell is "big-league" in academics compared to virtually all but a few other highly selective institutions. (As the ad says, "A very high level athletically and academically.")

[jtwcornell91]

Anyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

My pairwise take is that home/away is overweighted and the best way to hack RPI is to play a lot of road games.

Has anybody studied this? Shouldn't be too hard to figure out the "true" advantage of home ice.

I feel like Adam had numbers proving me wrong last time I said this.

But it feels true, and this is the internet, so I am sticking with it.

Well I'd hope there is some science behind it rather than someone picking .8 out of a hat.

Anyway, holding all else equal, weaker ECAC—>no difference in Pairwise + higher likelihood of winning ECAC tournament. Sounds good to me.

I wouldn't call it a hat, but .8 is certainly more than the home-ice advantage actually is. The intention, however, wasn't straight math - but rather to incentivize top teams to schedule road games. There is a proposal being discussed that would eliminate, or lessen, that edge for playoff games, since you did earn home ice for your playoffs.

Does CHN still calculate KASA?  You could use the home advantage from that to figure out the expected RPI-adjusted winning percentage for home and road games.  Although it might depend on the ratio of team ratings; it's too late to get a pen and paper and do the calculation right now,

[Beeeej]

Maybe we're already doing the best we can with scheduling. But it really disappoints me when we play Q in MSG. I see zero benefit to scheduling them for an extra game. Could we really not entice a team like Northeastern, a school that obviously cares about how it is viewed nationally to potential students, to a stage like Madison Square Garden?

Whether or not we can entice the team to play in MSG is not the only consideration. The best Big Red Apple games have been sold out or nearly so because they were against opponents with large, devoted alumni populations in NYC - Michigan, Penn State, UConn, even UNH (and of course BU in the Red Hot Hockey years both has a large, devoted NYC-area following and the benefit of the historical Cornell rivalry). I don't think Northeastern really fits that bill. Of course neither does Quinny, but at a certain point I imagine Coach Schafer was running out of time and options and just picked up the phone hoping not to have to cancel entirely. I suspect that's how we ended up with Harvard in 2018-19, too - but at least they have a solid NYC footing.

[pjd8]

Maybe we're already doing the best we can with scheduling. But it really disappoints me when we play Q in MSG. I see zero benefit to scheduling them for an extra game. Could we really not entice a team like Northeastern, a school that obviously cares about how it is viewed nationally to potential students, to a stage like Madison Square Garden?

Whether or not we can entice the team to play in MSG is not the only consideration. The best Big Red Apple games have been sold out or nearly so because they were against opponents with large, devoted alumni populations in NYC - Michigan, Penn State, UConn, even UNH (and of course BU in the Red Hot Hockey years both has a large, devoted NYC-area following and the benefit of the historical Cornell rivalry). I don't think Northeastern really fits that bill. Of course neither does Quinny, but at a certain point I imagine Coach Schafer was running out of time and options and just picked up the phone hoping not to have to cancel entirely. I suspect that's how we ended up with Harvard in 2018-19, too - but at least they have a solid NYC footing.

I'd be a little surprised if UNH had a bigger base in NYC than Northeastern, but I have no real data to base that on. I've just always felt that NU was more closely aligned academically than UNH. That may be a private/public thing, as well as which disciplines the schools focus on.

But I'd take any of the schools you listed above over Q. Maybe Notre Dame would also be a good candidate. And yes, sometimes it comes down to who you can get to answer the phone and say yes. More schools will say that if we stay competitive, and more games like that on our schedule will help us stay competitive. I feel like we've lost some of that ground with covid rules.

[arugula]

We've had this debate for years.  There's a wish list and then there's logistics and reality. Notre Dame Cornell would likely sell out msg twice over. Michigan has already played. BC seems like an obvious choice but I wonder whether the Boston schools view msg as a Mecca when they play at the Gahden every year.  Wisconsin would be good.

[ugarte]

it's been so long since michigan was last here. one of the very few that i missed; i remember we wore camo. blech.

[Trotsky]

it's been so long since michigan was last here. one of the very few that i missed; i remember we wore camo. blech.

At this rate next time we'll wear arm bands.