jimdahl

I understand your concern -- it's tough for the volunteer moderators to keep up in real time during extreme events like now, but we'll definitely be reviewing things.

You know, I saw those errors in the logs but wasn't sure what they meant and since the board appeared to be working didn't do much more. I'll look into it more tomorrow.

I haven't posted much this season because there's not much to say about the Caps, but then I found this delightful statistic: The Caps are 0-25-6 when they score two or fewer goals this season. Though it's still mathematically possible for them to make the playoffs as a wildcard, that stat plus their huge reliance on special teams is pretty much the prototype of a team that goes nowhere in the more defensive-oriented playoffs. I was thinking about them the other day in the context of the #firehak debate, that at least in the NHL there truly is a style of play that can win regular season games but not playoffs.

In short -- after some unusual downtime last weekend (we haven't really had capacity problems in something like half a decade now), I've made some server changes. Let me know if you see anything unusual. I'll try to keep an eye on things during the UND game(s), but I definitely won't be in front of a computer (hopefully at the game). In long/technical -- it took a while to diagnose based on logs because previous memory optimizations seem to continue to be sufficient and there were no indications that the server was memory constrained during its downtime. So, I think its processors were simply overloaded. That's a lot harder to fix than just throwing more memory at it as I've been able to do in the past. I cloned the web server and set up a load balancer in front of the two web servers. At a minimum that should double the capacity of the system. However, it's a completely different architecture as all forum requests are now going through the load balancer, so there's a chance of something being quirky or broken.

I have received more than one request from people asking if there's a way to view siouxsports while consuming less bandwidth for this very reason. I'll add -- you personally decided to have SiouxSports.com merchandise manufactured because it's the only way to get any (I think there are only two of us!)

Here's my (other) favorite April Fools from the web today

Frozen Four is set Still two perfect brackets, though they have different picks for for UND vs. Minnesota.

Sounds like something is getting a little out of sync between your browser and the server. The way modern web sites work these days is that even when you're not reloading the page, the page is in constant communication with the server sending back info and receiving updates (e.g. new posts in the thread you're replying to). It's the fact that when you hit submit nothing happens that makes me think that. If that's the case, then simply reloading the page should correct it. Anyone else seeing a problem like that with that frequency?

The righthand column is the "performance scoring" that we generally refer to. I suppose it should be first, since it's the one we care about.

Updated standings

Bracket leaders

Alright, it's not that hard to set it up each year. Just double-checking. Maybe I'll get off my @#$ next year and dig out some prizes for the SS.com 20th anniversary year.

I'll take 50, and the under Speaking of the USCHO bracket challenge -- when I started making brackets here 11 years ago, no one else did yet. Now that other people have big contests where you can make private groups but still participate in the pool at large, should we just migrate over there in future years?

Seems like the organized viewing parties have really dropped off / gone extinct in the last decade. (I know they stopped around here around 5 years ago, but am also commenting on the decreasing announcements from the alumni office). I guess it's a result of increased television + internet coverage.

Well THAT is me But, I'm not familiar with the article big sky's talking about. I honestly would've guessed that 50% was too high for 1 seeds -- would be interested in seeing the stats myself.

Those are nicely matched. That's an important point about the way to interpret the odds... one might think that because so many championships have gone to teams predicted at 2% and 7% teams means the predictions were wrong. But, teams with under a 7% chance add up to 44%, which means its almost even odds the winner will have had an under 7% chance.

Sounds good. Maybe I'll add a tie-breaker field next year.

My annual KRACH analysis: KRACH predicts the NCAA tournament

Performance scoring (the one that goes into the record books) gives equal credit to each round. So, each game is worth double each game from the previous round. Ties are surprisingly uncommon (because UND never wins it all). In case of a tie, the glory is shared equally and both names are memorialized in the bracket thread (now and then we have prizes, but I haven't done so yet this year).

Can you send me a PM and I'll send you a new password in a reply.

As always, soft launch here to make sure I got it all working right. Let me know if you run into any problems. Fill out your 2014 NCAA Ice Hockey Bracket Who will join this illustrious list of winners? Will we get our first ever repeat? Will the Sioux win it all, resulting in a 100-way tie? 2013 FSSD/Brainerd Sioux 2012 mj3und 2011 tho0505 2009 Big A HG 2008 willtippen 2007 seanpc03 2006 teamsioux 2005 mynameiscuomo 2004 paul62/BigGreyAnt41/brew003/UP2SKI

Thanks. Another new conference glitch. I think I've got it.

Not sure why it may look different now or if there are just technical issues, but here's what I thought UND needed as of this morning: Basically, Lowell winning was required and then one of two other things.

My runs seem to agree with what others have found in the thread. UND is in with: UND win, UML win and either (UW win) or (Canisius win, Miami win, Ferris St win) Now that we're down to the end, time for a reminder that you should have a little less faith than usual in these predictions this year. The selection process changed this year, and while the big guys all agree on a new PWR implementation, there's a noticeably larger than usual chance that something comes out of the committee other than what we expect.

Now we just need Penn St and OSU to lose tomorrow. Help UND or not, I'm pretty sure I can't cheer for Wisconsin over Penn St or Minnesota over OSU. We'll just need to make it some other way