jimdahl

Thanks John. Nice timing...

Stolen from myself (Non-UND PWR Possibilities), here are the possible final PWR outcomes I'm getting: Denver 1-3 Miami 1-3 UW 1-5 UND 3-6 SCSU 4-11 Boston College 3-9 UMD 5-19 Northern Michigan 6-19 Ferris State 5-18 CC 18-25 New Hampshire 10-18 UMN 20-25 Bemidji State 5-11 Alaska 10-18 Vermont 6-19 Michigan 10-25 Michigan State 12-21 Nebraska-Omaha 18-24 Cornell 5-19 Maine 11-25 Boston University 12-25 Mass.-Lowell 18-25 Ohio State 24-N/TUC Yale 7-13 Northeastern 25-N/TUC Massachusetts 16-20 or N/TUC Union 11-N/TUC St. Lawrence 23-N/TUC RIT 20-N/TUC Let me know if anyone has found anything outside these ranges

It has always been kind of weird seeing a big Redwings fan hate the league's biggest stars just for being too big. That's how the rest of us felt about the Redwings for the last decade As to the play... I actually like that the NHL takes into account player reputation and injury. In a physical game with contact, accidents happen. If you're a clean player, they take that into account and write it off as the accident it was, unless it resulted in a severe injury. Once upon a time Ovi had that rep and got that leeway. However, when you're involved in an open ice knee-to-knee, a CFB into the boards, and a questionable push too near the boards, you don't have to ponder intent to injure -- there's a pattern that the player's playing too close to the edge and risking harm to fellow players, so the league sends a message. I really don't think it's a conscious strategy that it's a good tradeoff to have Ovi take out opposing players and serve suspensions -- I would think Boudreau could find a more dispensable goon. I personally hope he gets the message, because I think he does himself a disservice and plays into the haters' hands by playing up the "bad boy" rep; he's a great skill player who doesn't need to get sucked into the evil Russian vs. good kid from Canada drama.

I don't know, I'm not sure you could enforce a "no politics" rule Plus, you have your own blog! I'd be a great moderator for the comments over there

Notice how I politely didn't mention that CHN had the wrong scores up for most of last night None of us are infallible , but I am pretty sympathetic to John -- USCHO is pretty much just trying to keep alive a tool Whelan wrote, and they do seem to struggle a bit more on the big stuff (e.g. the first season the no negative games rule hit RPI).

I always try to send them to you guys. It seems USCHO gets PWR wrong at least a couple times a year and always leaves me scrambling to prove that the error is on their side (because people naturally assume they've got it right and we've got it wrong). Having CHN and slack.net out there helps a lot.

All we've got so far is Brad's blog post, but when we see anything more... http://wiki.siouxsports.com/doku.php/2010-11_schedule

By request... I didn't bother with the in-between scenarios:

The gatherings were held at Grand Slam Hyatt for a long time because Loren Schields, UND alum, is involved with the Grand Slam in some way. That meant he also usually got it on a TV or two for events like this. Family obligations have kept me away the past couple years since The Penn Quarter Sports Tavern came on the scene, so I can't comment on that. My one warning there is that there is a Caps game at the Verizon Center tonight. The Crystal City Sports Pub was always good for showing any game they could get on satellite. I usually watched most of the NCAA hockey tournament there, and occasionally requested a regular season game. If I don't make it in the Caps game, I may be roaming around, so keep an eye out

It obviously would've been nice to see more of a college/sports bar move into that space so it could draw the University crowd during the week and be a destination on game day. However, I suppose (as mentioned above) that rent is such that the space going upscale is the only legitimate option. There are ways to avoid the "turn" problems on gamedays (like Nitty Gritty that only lets you take a table for 30 mins on game day but is still packed SRO) but that well serve the neighborhood on all other days. I would think that a BW3 or Brothers or Grandmas or State St Brats would better fit that neighborhood than an upscale steak and seafood place, but I guess G.F. is small enough geographically that it doesn't really matter.

Another big deal about tournament time and its impact on PWR is that it's hard to fall too far because only winners keep playing. Once you lose one or two, you're done, so it's really hard to string together a big set of harmful losses. Given that those games tend to be against top competition, a serious dive in ranking is somewhat uncommon (though definitely possible).

Actually, Schlossman retweeted Ciskie's tweet about a new post on his (Ciskie's) blog. Following the links to the original source gets you: Source: Marvin Suspension Initally Longer Before Appeal

USCHO was wrong, UND is #6. See this thread.

It's not immediately obvious what, but there's something wrong with USCHO. SiouxSports.com PWR UND #6 CollegeHockeyNews PWR UND #6 Whelan PWR UND #6 Update -- USCHO pwr has been changed to agree with the rest of us around 8:35am CT. I have a printout of their incorrect rankings from earlier because I was trying to figure out what why they differed -- USCHO was incorrectly giving AA the win over Alaska, which (as readers of this thread know) would have been a big help to UND.

And not a single team in the top 9 moved last night. UND did shore up the Maine comparison a little bit, and Yale is still very much up for grabs tonight, which is UND's most obvious opportunity to move up (though there are always dozens of less obvious ways).

Weekend PWR forecast From the article... Follow along on UND PWR Details if you'd like...The first place to explore why Alaska is important is in its comparison to UND, which Alaska leads 2-1. COP doesn't seem up for grabs yet -- UND is 1-0-2 (.667) and the best Alaska could finish with a sweep is 4-2-2 (.625). Alaska's RPI is only supposed to be able to rise to about .535 with a sweep, which may be enough to overtake UND's RPI if swept. However, that doesn't seem adequate to explain the importance of this game, particularly since the net effect is higher than 1. Alaska losing must flip some other teams' comparisons in a way that helps UND. I really don't know. Yale is easy, we can take them on RPI and flip the comparison, if they lose. The Maine comparison is up for grabs this weekend. The comparison currently at 1-1, UND and Maine both have perfect COP records and both are playing two games against COPs. UNH is another easy one, UND currently has the comparison because of a very tenuous RPI lead. If UNH outperforms UND this weekend, RPI could flip and give UNH the comparison.

It's definitely a goal to expand the scope beyond football and men's hockey. The challenge is reliably acquiring and storing the scores. I'm hoping to add men's/women's basketball by about the end of the transition, but there's a lot to do to make that happen.

This was inappropriate. Please keep the discussion about the topic at hand (a potential UND vs NDSU game).

I agree that this season is shaping up to come down to the conference tournament. Once upon a time, I used to run charts of the possible final conference standings, but it's a lot harder than it sounds and people really quite caring as much about conference standings predictions once PWR became better understood. I don't know what it would take to dust off that old calculator, but some quick playing with whatif and looking at upcoming weekends is interesting: * To overtake UMD, UND needs to gain 8 points on them. Even if UND swept out its last 4 and UMD got swept out its last 4, UND would still need at least 2 this weekend to catch UMD. * To overtake CC, UND only needs to gain 4 on them. Once again, the head-to-head with CC is going to be the real driver. Assume a UND sweep there, to be generous, and UND still needs to play at least as well vs. UMD and Michigan Tech as CC will against Minnesota and Denver. Overtaking Wisconsin is also possible by gaining 8 on them, but with no head-to-head, that's less in UND's control. UND has to get some points at home this weekend to stay in control of its own destiny.

IMHO, same as the Vikings game, the team with more talented individual players was seriously outcoached. Way to go Saints. Great game, and no question as to who deserved the win. I, too, hope Favre comes back. His 2020 commercial was one of the best.

I noticed Bemidji St's interesting position for the first time today while looking at UND's comparison. Bemidji PWR Comparison Details It's not clear that TUC is ever going to come into play for them, with only 7 games vs current TUCs and none scheduled (a shame, too, because they've got a great TUC record). Because of that, about half their comparisons are on the basis of RPI only. They need to win at least 6 of their remaining 8 to end the regular season without a noticeable drop in RPI (Bemidji RPI details). If they went just under .500, they could drop about 10 spots and out of the field. Of course, their remaining schedule isn't exactly a bear...

Ask and ye shall receive. One more bye week and the Sioux could have a #1 seed. In all seriousness, looking back at the games to watch from the blog post, literally everything went UND's way: * Northern Michigan took 3 of 4 from Ferris St * Alaska took 3 from Michigan St * Wisconsin beat Michigan * Denver/CC swept Mercyhurst/Air Force

You're falling into the same statistical trap as Detroit In all seriousness, I usually ignore the conspiracy theories because they're a waste of time to refute, but they also usually come from far less reputable circles... so, I will take this opportunity to refute the implied nickname-based litmus test (as redwing well knows ).

I actually enjoy the bye week quite a bit -- it's much easier to see the effects of other teams' games on UND when UND isn't playing. Blog post -- PWR Forecast (includes season's first attempt at "games to watch")

Sorry, though we have communicated with the people involved, we probably should have made a general post because a lot of people have noticed that some posts have been removed from this thread. Posts that are defaming in regard to people's private lives (even for public figures) are not permitted. nodak is absolutely right that whatever personal issues anyone has with some public figures is not a suitable topic for discussion.