In this week's edition of "take these with a grain of salt" D3Hockey.com computer rankings, Williams and Amherst swap top spots after the Ephs defeated the Lord Jeffs 1-0 on Saturday. The biggest winners from this past weekend were Hamilton and Conn College. The Conts had the highest ranking jump in the country , courtesy of their victory over Middlebury and tie with Williams, while the Camels had the highest ratings bump in the nation thanks to winning their first game of the season against Bowdoin. We also learned that losing to last place Conn or Tufts is a no-no for the computers, as Bowdoin and Colby found out.
The NESCAC's small number of out-of-conference games makes their samples non-representative, which is to say you can't reliably compare their ratings to the rest of the schools that have two weeks of extra games under their belt. There's also the issues of how seriously different coaches take non-conference play (who's in net?), where you have played your games (Hamilton's only road game is against Amherst), etc. and so on.
It's easy to pick apart the computer rankings, especially at this point in the season. Sure the games are played on ice instead of circuit boards, but the statistical models are a fun tool, so why do you hate fun, haters? Plus, if they get some hockey players or fans to look up statistical terms like representative sample, we can claim they are educational. So there's that.
Below is the table with the current rankings (out of 79 DII-DIII schools) and rating for each NESCAC school this week. In parentheses is the change in ranking or rating from the first set of computer ratings that came out last week.
School
|
Computer Ranking (change from last
week’s ranking)
|
Computer rating (change from last
week’s score)
|
Williams
|
1 (+1)
|
706 (+3)
|
Amherst
|
2 (-1)
|
700 (-7)
|
Trinity
|
13 (-2)
|
595 (-13)
|
Hamilton
|
16 (+29)
|
585 (+23)
|
Wesleyan
|
21 (+5)
|
563 (+10)
|
Middlebury
|
27 (-15)
|
548 (-56)
|
Bowdoin
|
35 (-17)
|
530 (-50)
|
Colby
|
37 (-24)
|
529 (-73)
|
Tufts
|
59 (+7)
|
444 (+35)
|
Conn College
|
67 (+10)
|
404 (+109)
|
KRACH
One computer ranking model we have not talked about is "Ken's Ratings for American College Hockey" or KRACH. The KRACH applies the Bradley-Terry rating system, a statistical model for pairwise comparisons that is utilized in various computer ranking models including in D-I football by the BCS. Another thing for you to look up while you study for your stats final.
USCHO publishes KRACH and provides a little bit more of the raw data than D3H, including the strength of schedule rating/ranking based on the model. The same caveat of insular sampling in the NESCAC applies for this model like it does for D3H. With that said, below are the current KRACH overall rankings/ratings and Strength of Schedule (SOS) ranking/rating for each of the ten NESCAC schools. Unlike D3H, USCHO doesn't include the D-II schools in the KRACH, so the rankings are out of 73 schools. The exact national ranking is a bit different, but D3H and KRACH produce the same order or rankings for the 'Cac.
School
|
Ranking
|
Rating
|
SOS Rank
|
SOS Rating
|
Williams
|
3
|
771.7
|
4
|
178.1
|
Amherst
|
5
|
637.8
|
1
|
289.9
|
Trinity
|
8
|
508.9
|
26
|
117.4
|
Hamilton
|
17
|
248.7
|
2
|
248.7
|
Wesleyan
|
23
|
154.9
|
39
|
92.92
|
Middlebury
|
24
|
153.1
|
12
|
153.1
|
Bowdoin
|
31
|
108.8
|
53
|
75.33
|
Colby
|
36
|
98.85
|
46
|
80.88
|
Tufts
|
61
|
34.45
|
34
|
103.3
|
Conn College
|
66
|
25.41
|
17
|
144.0
|
Wish List for Santa
In Tim Costello's final NESCAC column of 2013 for USCHO, he goes through each team in the NESCAC and what he thinks they'll be asking Santa to bring them for the 2014 leg of the 2013-14 NESCAC season. Includes things like Middlebury asking for consistent goaltending and Williams asking for good weather at Frozen Fenway.
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