Instead of doing a Power Rankings post, each week I am going to go over all the rankings.  (Note: All the rankings includes the USCHO Poll, SB Nation Poll, PairWise Rankings, my Power Rankings, and my ballot for the SB Nation Poll.)

Some thoughts on each of the ranking mechanisms:

  • USCHO Poll – Garbage.  Voters are lazy and (I suspect) don’t actually watch the games.
  • SB Nation Poll – We generally get it as right as biased humans can.
  • PairWise Rankings – Limited, but functional.
  • My Power Rankings – My rankings are built on ranking teams across 10 categories and then summing those categorical rankings.  Those categories are Winning Percentage, Goal Differential, Shooting Percentage, Save Percentage, Power Play, Penalty Kill (both *.333 as teams spend on average 1/3 of a game on special teams), Percentage of Shots Taken in Games, Percentage of Shots taken Relative to Opponent Quality, and the last two against teams that take more than 50% of shots in a game.  This is also limited, but is more well-rounded than the PairWise, which is based solely on wins and losses.  If Team A gets outshot 100-1 by Team B, but wins 1-0, I am more apt to reward Team B and think of them as a better team than Team A.  My rankings attempt to account for this with the limited data available.
  • My Ballot – The best, obviously.

The USCHO Poll:

A lot of the time we don’t really see the USCHO poll move since most of the site runners don’t really pay attention to women’s hockey.  Once they’ve arrived at a rough idea of the top ten, you’ll see little difference week to week.

The SB Nation Poll and My Ballot:

Honestly, I probably should have ranked Northeastern instead of Providence in the tenth spot.  As good as the win over Wisconsin was for the Huskies, it’s hard to ignore that Providence has two wins over their Hockey East rivals.  I had hoped the Friars might take a game from Cornell, but I think there’s a pretty sizable gap between the top five or six and everyone below.

The PairWise Rankings:

Not much has changed at the top, but one thing to keep an eye on is Robert Morris’s position in or out of the top eight.  The Colonials currently sit atop the CHA at 4-0-2, but Syracuse is right behind them at 3-0-1.  The teams have not played each other.  It’s conceivable that Syracuse wins the CHA tournament to secure the autobid and that Robert Morris does just enough to stay in the top eight and put two CHA teams in the NCAA tournament.

That would be an interesting scenario because it would lead to something like this:

  1. Wisconsin vs. 8. Syracuse
  2. Colgate vs. 7. Robert Morris
  3. Boston College vs. 6. Cornell
  4. Clarkson vs. 5. Ohio State

The team getting left out there is Minnesota, who hasn’t missed the NCAA tournament since the 2006-2007 season in which they went 23-12-1 and finished third in the WCHA.

Power Rankings:

Unlike the USCHO poll, my power rankings like to make minute adjustments to teams.  I don’t track games versus the Division II teams so Harvard’s loss to Holy Cross actually isn’t figured here.  They dropped eight spots largely because Cornell now takes 50%+ shots in games on average and dipped their shots percentage versus quality teams metric.  Their save percentage (.896, 30th) and penalty kill (73.7%, 34th) are terrible.

The penalty kill is interesting in the ECAC.  The conference holds six of the top seven spots with RPI, Cornell, Clarkson, Princeton, and Quinnipiac at one through five, and Colgate at seventh.  But the ECAC also holds five of the bottom six spots with Harvard, St. Lawrence, and Dartmouth making up the rear in reverse order, and Brown and Union just a cut better than Minnesota State.  Yale is tied for 10th for those interested.

I’m surprised Merrimack didn’t move more with it’s sweep of Princeton, but there’s usually a sizable gap between the bottom teams and the rest of the field.  Once you get into the negative teens or twenties in terms of goal differential and are behind by ten shots on average every game, even two wins won’t move you very much.

I’m very curious to see Union square off against Dartmouth and Harvard to see if they can perhaps make a legitimate run at the eighth ECAC tournament seed.