jimdahl

Is the NCHC really slumping? How many teams will each conference place in the NCAA tournament? Sneak peek:

Yep. Until we see the tournament picks exactly match the rankings, I'm not completely confident that the transparency we're all accustomed to has continued. We'll see.

Nah, it's you guys' board. Creating new forums is no effort whatsoever. Volleyball is probably next in line for its own sport conference. The only reason we don't do it automatically for all sports is that having its own forum can improve discussion about a sport by letting a sport thread break up into multiple threads, but can also kill it by reducing traffic. Recent success has definitely helped volleyball, so this is probably the peak time in the past decade. If anyone else has comments, feel free to pipe up.

Ok, I think it's working: NCHC Standings What If It was a major redo (the old version still had the 2005 SiouxSports banner!), so there could be some quirks. Just let me know if anything seems wrong.

The memo USCHO posted didn't say anything about treating conference games differently, but I don't know anything more than what I pieced together from that and CHN's article. Neither USCHO nor I treat conference games differently in our current PWR tables; but, there's no way to be sure any of us have it right until we see what matches up with the actual selections.

And the new wrinkle -- RPI now cares where you win/lose. So, it still doesn't matter who you beat, it matters who you play against (stronger opponents are better) and it matters how much and where you win. Though it is already factored into the PWR forecast I posted earlier, I will try to put together some more detailed "what can happen to RPI" stats in coming weeks on the RPI details pages (which I used to have there, but have yet to redo with the new formulas).

Ok, I have forecasts, including the important "what does UND need to do for the rest of the season": UND's PWR -- A look ahead

Here's a first forecast for the season... here's what is likely to happen to UND's PWR this weekend. The main takeaway is that pretty big moves are possible.

As I mentioned in the other thread, discussions of moderation policy don't belong in hockey threads. We're always happy to discuss, but please take it to the siouxsports/admin forum.

That's what my post was -- a nudge to more than one person in the thread that it was drifting into becoming personal rather than on topic. If you want to discuss moderation policies more, I'd urge you to move it to the the SiouxSports/admin forum.

We're straying a bit, please get back to "Al Pearson's upcoming road trip buses".

Two part answer: For RPI, non-conference doesn't really matter, but home/road does. So, the road game at Bemidji is actually twice as important to our weighted win% as the home game vs. Bemidji. For PWR, the impact to RPI will affect our comparison to teams close to us, but the comparison with Bemidji St isn't really in jeopardy. With only three criteria in the new PWR, each comparison comes down to RPI except when there are head-to-head match ups. Looking at UND's PWR comparisons, UND currently takes both RPI and COP (by a huge margin). If Bemidji took both head-to-head games, that would result in a 2-2 tie, so the comparison would still go to UND on the basis of RPI. If Bemidji took both head-to-head games and eventually took RPI or COP, UND would lose the comparison. But, unless Bemidji goes an amazing surge, that would mean UND had fallen so far it wouldn't matter much anyway.

CHN does not appear to be using the new formula yet. USCHO, Reilly Hamilton (on the USCHO forums), and I arrived at pretty much identical (Reilly has one slight difference) tables through independent development based on the NCAA's memo. It's possible that we all misinterpreted something, but USCHO generally has reasonably good connections to the committee, which increases my confidence.

Without labeling them as such, they're putting in the traditional record (e.g. each W, L, or T is 1 point) but the weighted win percentage (home wins/road losses worth .8, home losses/road wins worth 1.2). You can see the weighted records (along with lots of other info behind the calculations of the new RPI) on the RPI team details pages here: North Dakota RPI details Those are still works in progress, given all the changes.

Yeah, will do soon. Having the new point system the same year as a new RPI meant I spent the Fall getting the basic standings/RPI up-to-date. Am slowly getting the calculators and such working now.

I'll just leave this here...

Or if you're on a computer (as most readers still are): fightingsioux.com gfherald.com espn.com sportsillustrated.com etc.... believe it or not, when I started this site none of those places were reliable sources for any UND scores (nor yet was USCHO for hockey). Not to mention facebook, twitter, etc... Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to drive people away or say I'm not interested in continuing to try to meet the demand for scores. I get the appeal of one stop (scores, news, forums, etc...) shopping for UND sports info. I just want to make sure that I can do it right before I do it.

See quite a discussion on this topic earlier. However, the extent to which this question has been recurring the last year or two certainly makes me realize the demand is higher than I thought. I'm a little surprised, in that there are so many other good sources for scores (at one point I was even considering dropping scores from the next home page design altogether!)

Now that USCHO has joined the party (USCHO publishing a PWR ranking identical to SiouxSports' marks the first known identical implementations of the new rules, which increases my confidence we're getting it right), time for the thread. Pairwise Rankings USCHO has also started doing bracketology posts. While I get caring who the top 16 are (because they're a decent predictor of the final top 16), I've never understand the interest in laying out regionals as if the season ended today. But, for those who enjoy it: USCHO bracketology blog I do have the simulator up with the new PWR/RPI formula so hope to get a forecast up after this weekend's games.

This has the potential to be a big deal: Agency rejects trademark of ‘Redskins Hog Rinds,’ calling term ‘derogatory’ If the PTO similarly finds that Redskins is a derogatory slang term in a football team's name (and why would its finding differ there vs. pork rinds?), the Washington Redskins could lose their trademark. That could open the floodgates to unapproved Redskins merchandise, and thus the revenue normally associated with licensing fees. Given that Snyder seems to care a fair bit about money, that could lead to an interesting dilemma as to what's costing him more -- having a team name that he can't license, or infuriating the loyal fans of his decidedly mediocre football team. Of course, a PTO finding against the football team's trademark would bring a lot more publicity and political pressure than the one for pork rinds, so one could imagine some higher up intervening.

Whew - I was losing sleep.

Couldn't tell you, but he's still here: http://forum.siouxsports.com/user/1001-cratter/

The call was charging (and an ejection for misconduct). Good call, IMHO. Having just seen the play once on TV, I too was surprised at the lack of additional suspension, but Shanahan's explanation made it pretty clear why it's not boarding: http://video.nhl.com/videocenter/console?id=515461 The NHL rule on Boarding includes the important disclaimer you alluded to: (emphasis mine) If you're facing the play but then turn away with the purpose of avoiding a hit, but then get hit into the boards from the side/behind, it is by definition not boarding. Still, scary hit that should be eliminated by rule to the maximum extent possible.

Stop with the personal attacks people. Disagree with people's posts by debating them, not by attacking them personally. Comments on a public broadcast are probably on topic, but I'll give the same advice I do when anonymous posters start to get personal about players, coaches, etc... -- remember that these are real people who read, and whose friends and families read, what you wrote. It's possible to be critical while not being cruel.