B1G Hockey Roundup - Regular Season Final Standings

Weekend Review

Minnesota swept its way to a second Conference Championship thanks to the Michigan Schools splitting on the weekend.  Minnesota's senior class becomes the first in the modern era to win 4 straight Conference Championships (The final 2 WCHA with one shared and the first two B1G outright).  The senior shined in 5-0 and 6-2 wins.  Michigan went into Munn Arena on Friday and came away with a big road win to temporarily gain first place but the Spartans returned the favor at Yost on Saturday, opening the door for a Minnesota championship.  We had our first Shootout in about a month in Madison with OSU taking the second point.  OSU shut out the Badgers on Saturday 2-0 to take 5 points on the weekend.  UNO was swept by Saint Cloud in the opening weeknd of the NCHC Playoffs.  The sweep costs the Mavericks a chance at  a one seed but they should maintain a 2 or a 3 after all of the Conference Tourneys are over.

Conference Standings

An overtime loss counts as a loss and no points are earned. If both teams are tied after the five minute OT period, the game goes down as a tie and both teams earn a point. A shootout follows a tie with the winner earning a second point. A shootout "win" counts as a tie, not a win in the standings and for NCAA Tournament seeding purposes. Total wins are used as the primary tie-breaker.  If teams have the same number of wins, head to head winning % is used (Ties equal half a win and half a loss, shootout ignored).

KRACH Ratings, KRACH Rank, Pairwise Rank

Update on 3/15/2015 @ 10:30 PM CST

There are 59 teams in college hockey. The pairwise is an approximation of the selection process for the NCAA tournament (click link for explanation). The top 16 teams are selected for the tourney. Conference tournament champions get auto-bids so teams rated near 16 can be displaced if a lower ranked team wins it's conference tournament.

Conference Table

Pts earned by team on the left are shown in the boxes

2014-2015

Minnesota was the only team to not lose a series this year which is why they are your champion.  We had two cases of lower teams taking series against higher teams.  Michigan failing to at least split with Penn State cost them a share of the title while Penn State would have needed to take 6 more points from OSU to gain a bye.  Wisconsin narrowly avoided tying Penn State for least points in a season by earning 1 point the last weekend. No team dominated this year as Minnesota and MSU had sluggish starts and strong finishes.  Penn State and Michigan jumped out to early leads but couldn't maintain their paces as the season wore on.  OSU wasn't healthy until late in the season but made the top three sweat each week once at full strength.  Last year's table is below:

2013-2014

Green boxes mean that the team in the row is ahead of the team in the column. Red means the team in the column is ahead. Blue means the teams have split points. Once a season series is completed, the color will be darker, the points will be bold, and the box will have a thicker border. Column on the right shows the points gained by a team. Row on the bottom shows the points lost by a team.

KRACH Projection Review

Here is the final review of the KRACH Projections for conference games:

MSU was the only team to outperform the KRACH projections.  That should show everyone why Jake Hildebrand will be B1G POY and Goaltender of the year.  Clutch and grab, slow it down hockey is boring as hell to watch but MSU paired it with an elite goaltender to earn a first round bye in the conference tourney.  Minnesota performed the worst when compared to its projection thanks to a December through January swoon and losing 4 points to Wisconsin.  KRACH can be used to predict winning percentages and shootouts throw a wrench into using it for point projections so discrepancies could also be due to shootouts not being accounted for in the projections.

Home and Away Splits

Here are the updated home/away/neutral/overall splits for this season. I ahve included last season, as well as the overall table for comparisons.  The team with the best record in each category has a bold box around its percentage of points earned.

Shading Key for H/A splits

Home teams performed slightly better this year, while the shootouts were more even.  Interestingly, road teams have won shootouts at about the same clip that home teams have earned points.  There were 9 less shootouts this year so maybe teams are being more aggressive this year at the end of games and in OT to prevent OTs and Shootouts.  Minnesota and Penn State continue to be the only teams that have not won a shootout in B1G play.