I know this is the moment you've all been waiting for, the crowning of the
Demigod of Prognostication for the 1994-95 Regular Season. But, like a
true lover of suspense, I'll keep you waiting for a few lines or so.
First, let me thank all of those who entered. I wasn't sure how well this
was going to work when I started it. It seems to have worked quite well (I
haven't had too many complaints, but the amount of work has been enormous).
I've enjoyed being able to provide this outlet for prognosticating tendencies
that some of you (like myself) may have. (Of course, now we're REALLY into
the gambler's junkie season, the NCAA tournaments, both for hockey and for
putuitary-freak sports.)
Second, let me thank a few people who made my job a little easier. Glen
Keeney and Mike Machnik for keeping the scores updated (Mike with the
complete schedule list and Glen for the "h2h" posts); Mike, Bill Fenwick,
Jeff Weiss, and Erik Biever (the now infamous Erik Biever) for the various
conference standings that are religiously updated; and finally Bill and
Glen for their rather painstaking effort throughout the years to keep the
conference tiebreakers straight.
Now, to the final conference standings that were used to determine our
Demigod:
HE ECAC CCHA WCHA
1. Maine Clarkson Michigan Colorado Coll.
2. Boston U. Brown Bowling Green Wisconsin
3. New Hampshire Harvard Michigan St. Denver
4. Northeastern Colgate Lake Superior Minnesota
5. Mass Lowell Vermont Miami St. Cloud St.
6. Providence RPI Ferris St. North Dakota
7. Merrimack Princeton Western Michigan Minnesota-Duluth
8. Boston Coll. St. Lawrence Illinois-Chicago Michigan Tech
9. Mass Amherst Cornell Notre Dame Northern Michigan
10. Union Ohio State Alaska-Anchorage
11. Dartmouth
12. Yale
(Tiebreakers have already pretty much been discussed here as for each conferenceso I will not go into them.)
By and large, the scores came down dramatically, as teams tended to end up in
their "more natural" positions (I use that loosely). The lowest scores, as
one would tend to figure since there are fewer teams in this conference, are
in HE. The higher scores tended to be in the WCHA, mainly due to a couple of
teams, Denver and Northern Michigan, who finished fairly far from where many
expected them to be. The CCHA pretty much fell into form, saving BG's higher
than expected finish and Lake Superior's slight fall from grace. The ECAC,
as usual, was a mess.
That having been said, the Demigod of Prognostication for the 1994-95 Regular
Season staged a rather brilliant comeback over the last month of the season
to reclaim the leadership after falling from grace after Christmas. Our
champion is
LANCE HARRY
who finished with an unbelieveably low total of 48 points. Considering that
there were only 41 teams, that gives less than 1.2 points per team. He only
picked one team to be 4 places away from where they actually finished (Maine)
and very few to be 3 places off. (It was actually disgusting to tabulate it
;-)).
Each tie for the various point totals are further divided by our famous tie-
breaker. Since I didn't specify that lower would beat higher or vice-versa,
I had planned to use the number of teams correctly placed as a second tie-
breaker. Fortunately, no two people who had the same point total were the
same distance away from the tiebreaker value. (For those who may have for-
gotten, the tiebreaker was the total of the conference points for Providence,
St. Cloud, Illinois-Chicago, and Vermont, using the older formula [since HE
changed mid-season] of 2 points for a win, 1 for a tie or shootout loss. That
turned out to be 97.) Only one person actually hit the tiebreaker on the nose.
That was Bruce Spencer, who finished in 8th. Many others (myself included)
missed it by one.
Anyway, the final overall standings:
Last Last Number
Rk Rk Total Correct HE ECAC CCHA WCHA Total Tie
______________________________________________________________________________
1 2 Lance Harry 64 8 12 8 10 18 48 +1
2 5 Bob Constantine 76 12 6 22 8 20 56 +28
3 1 Steve Kapetanakis 62 14 10 24 4 20 58 -2
4 4 Tony Buffa 74 8 10 26 6 24 66 +16
5 14 J. Jodzis 84 8 10 20 12 26 68 +14
6 7 Brian Morris 78 9 14 26 10 18 68 +16
7 8 Jeff Bowen 80 5 10 20 16 22 68 +20
8 12 Bruce Spencer 82 4 14 22 14 20 70 0
8 12 Steve Wesifeldt 82 7 14 22 12 22 70 +3
(Wait, skip that last one. Sorry, Steve. That's what you get for
bugging me so much about it. :-) :-) )
9 12 Steve Weisfeldt 82 7 14 22 12 22 70 +3
10 3 Eric Robinson 68 10 6 26 12 26 70 +6
-- -- USA TODAY -- 8 10 18 16 26 70 --
11 8 G. M. Finniss 80 5 10 28 12 22 72 -1
12 20 Mike Sheehan 86 4 10 22 12 28 72 +8
13 8 David Wang 80 6 14 20 14 24 72 +11
-- -- HOCKEY-L CONSENSUS -- 7 10 26 12 24 72 --
14 8 Russell Jaslow 80 10 10 26 10 28 74 -1
15 14 Brian Gentry 84 7 14 18 18 24 74 +3
16 14 Andrew Frisch 84 9 4 30 18 22 74 -7
17 29 Ross Bracco 90 8 12 28 12 22 74 +11
18 24 Mark Johnson 88 8 12 20 18 24 74 -32
19 46 Eric Hoffman 98 8 10 20 14 22 76 -1
20 14 Robin Lock 84 6 14 28 12 22 76 -6
21 14 Brian Roberts 84 6 10 30 16 20 76 +7
22 5 Tim Newman 76 5 10 30 12 24 76 -20
23 29 I. R. Rutks 90 9 4 28 20 24 76 +36
24 29 Dave Nicolai 90 6 10 26 16 24 76 +57
25 37 Chris Paine 92 9 10 22 14 32 78 -1
26 29 Ron Fraser 90 5 12 28 16 22 78 -37
-- -- THE HOCKEY NEWS -- 6 12 22 16 28 78 --
27 29 Mike Machnik 90 4 16 26 12 26 80 +3
28 29 John Forsyth 90 6 12 28 14 26 80 -6
(John, this is the corrected one, BTW, just in case you were wondering.)
29 49 Beth Darrah 100 9 8 32 12 28 80 +10
30 20 Rich Boehme 86 5 10 28 12 30 80 +39
-- -- DROP THE PUCK -- 9 4 28 18 30 80 --
31 24 Glenn Gale 88 5 10 32 14 26 82 +5
32 37 Sean Pickett 92 9 16 28 14 28 82 -8
33 49 Bill Fenwick 100 8 8 28 16 30 82 +12
34 29 Steve Phillips 90 10 10 34 14 24 82 -13
35 24 Eric Maiwald 88 8 14 28 12 28 82 +16
36 20 Dave Hendrickson 86 8 10 32 16 24 82 -21
37 24 Andrew Peed 88 4 16 24 16 28 84 +1
38 46 Roger Feeley 98 4 10 32 22 20 84 +3
39 57 Scott Biggar 108 10 10 30 18 26 84 +29
40 40 Lloyd Hsu 94 7 10 30 16 30 86 -1
41 46 Troy Thiele 98 5 10 34 14 28 86 +10
42 24 Dave Kaufman 88 5 12 28 16 30 86 +15
43 20 Tark McMains 86 6 16 32 10 28 86 -19
44 29 Andrew Weise 90 6 16 32 18 20 86 -42
45 37 Nate Webster 92 7 10 34 12 30 86 --
46 54 Jeff Kelly 104 6 18 32 14 24 88 +1
47 51 Jayson Moy 102 8 14 28 16 30 88 +4
48 44 Andrew Samwick 96 4 12 36 14 26 88 +6
49 54 Willis Lam 104 8 14 28 18 28 88 +23
50 14 Kristen Robinson 84 5 24 34 10 22 90 -4
51 51 Steve Moerland 102 3 12 28 18 32 90 -6
-- -- BLUE ICE (sorry, John) -- 6 14 36 16 26 92 --
52 40 Joe Brownson 94 6 18 42 12 22 94 -5
53 59 Greg Williams 112 8 16 30 16 32 94 +40
54 40 William Krebs 94 5 14 32 18 32 96 -5
55 54 Curt Nelson 104 8 12 38 18 28 96 +21
56 44 Robb Dunn 96 6 14 38 14 30 96 -61
57 40 Peter Knapp 94 5 18 34 20 26 98 -13
58 58 Anthony Frolik 110 6 30 34 14 24 102 +7
59 51 Don Demick 102 5 22 38 18 30 108 -2
60 60 John McCumiskey 124 6 14 44 28 42 128 -18
61 61 Jeffrey Anbinder 140 1 22 44 40 30 136 -15
_____________________________________________________________________________
+/- in "tie" column indicates how far off entrant was from actual value. A +5,
for example, would mean a guess of 102.
A few more bookkeeping notes:
Most number of correct placements: Steve Kapetanakis, 14
Lowest score for each conference: HE- Andrew Frisch, 4
I. R. Rutks, 4
ECAC- Lance Harry, 8
CCHA- Steve Kapetanakis, 4
WCHA- Lance Harry, 18
Brian Morris, 18
Lowest score for each region of the country: EAST- Lance Harry, 20
WEST- Steve Kapetanakis, 24
Media entrants were placed in the standings, but did not affect the overall
rankings. Unfortunately, I didn't keep a copy of the stadings Glen sent out
at one point which included the coaches' picks for how the conference races
would turn out. If he still has it, he may want to post how the coaches
would have done. (As for me, I still can't believe that the USA TODAY beat
me. Oh, well, even blind squirrels find acorns occasionally...)
That concludes this contest for this year. I hope all have enjoyed it as much
as I've enjoyed bringing it to you, and I hope everybody takes it in the
spirit of competition (which means I do not give anyone permission to write to
anybody they finished higher than and go "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!")
Provided everything goes according to plan, I should be doing this again next
year, unless the world blows up or the dollar falls any further.
"Odds" for the weekend games in the HE playoffs and the first-round series in
the other three conferences should be out tomorrow, as well as a list of the
55 mental patients (and me, of course, the Lunatic Director) who threw darts
at the wall to get our picks.
Congratulations, once again, to our Demigod of Prognostication, Lance Harry!
G. M. Finniss
Michigan State University 17-7-3, 22-10-3
WVU '87, UTenn '92, MSU who the hell knows when?
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