You can tighten these up a little bit by going beyond a "min-max
possibilities" comparison.  For example, CC couldn't actually finish
5th, because UND and Mankato can't both have the perfect scenario that
lets them pass CC because they have to play each other (both teams
can't get 4 pts from that same series).  Similarly, UMD plays UND and
UMN.

I wrote a program earlier in the season that tries to identify those
interactions between teams and calculates possible finishes.  It
currently comes up with this:
CC      37   8 (4) 1st-T3rd
Mankato 31   8 (4) 1st-7th
UMN     29  12 (6) 1st-7th
UND     28  12 (6) 1st-7th
UMD     25  12 (6) T1st-8th
Denver  23  12 (6) 2nd-8th
SCSU    23  12 (6) 2nd-8th
MTech   15  12 (6) 5th-9th
UW      11  12 (6) T6th-9th
AA       6   4 (2) 10th-10th

Assuming that it's working correctly, it managed to tighten up the
possibilities for CC, Denver, and SCSU beyond the simple min-max
analysis.  Note also that I'm talking about ranking, not tournament
seeding.  CC can enter into a 3-way tie for second (T2nd), which could
theoretically allow them to be seeded as low as 4th if they lost
tiebreakers (which I haven't bothered to figure out).

I'm not quite ready to stake big bucks on these results because the
program is somewhat complex, but I haven't found a glaring error yet.
I've been posting the results of its runs weekly at
http://siouxsports.com/hockey/wchapossibilities.php

Jim

--- Charlie Shub <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>         team            games   to play points  can get place range
>
> 1       cc              24      4       37      45      1-5
> 2       mankato         24      4       31      39      1-7
> 3       minnesota       22      6       29      41      1-7
> 4       north dakota    22      6       28      40      1-7
> 5       duluth          22      6       25      37      1-8
> 6       st cloud        22      6       23      35      2-9
> 7       denver          22      6       23      35      2-9
> 8       tech            22      6       15      27      5-9
> 9       wisconsin       22      6       11      23      6-9
> 10      anchorage       26      2        6      10      10


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