Let's play some what-if games with TCHCR. The purpose is to see if we can
find some answers to the question of the day:
Why is the average Western team rated higher than the average Eastern team?
We will be looking at the average ranking of the teams in the 4 conferences.
I have selected 4 scenarios, each of increasing radical-ness, and applied
TCHCR to each one separately. The 5th scenario is a what-if all 4 scenarios
happened at the same time. The scenarios only deal with improving the ECAC's
performance in non-conference games, for consistency. I didn't deal with
another possibility: what-if HEA played a tougher non-league schedule.
In each scenario, the results of the games were changed by simply reversing
the scores.
Scenario #1: Clarkson beats OSU, 4-3, a 2-goal swing.
Scenario #2: Yale beats Wisconsin 6-1, a 10-goal swing.
Scenario #3: Harvard wins both games at the GLI, beating Michigan and Michigan
State 3-1. (I did not change the pairings.) A 2-game change.
Scenario #4: Brown wins its 5 games against the independents: 7-5 & 6-4 over
UAH, 8-3 over UAF, 5-2 & 6-3 over UAA. A 5-game change.
Scenario #5: All of the above. A 9-game change.
The baseline is the 1/21 TCHCR (which most of you haven't seen, btw).
Here are the numbers (again, average rank of teams in that conference):
League Base S#1 S#2 S#3 S#4 S#5
ECAC 30.4 29.6 28.9 28.3 26.7 22.2
HEA 21.5 21.1 20.9 21.1 21.8 20.8
CCHA 14.0 15.0 14.0 16.3 14.6 18.9
WCHA 13.9 14.3 16.3 14.8 15.6 18.2
Notice that from left to right, the ECAC average ranking keeps improving, as
expected.
Notes
Throughout the first 4 scenarios, 6 teams did not change rankings: #32
Vermont,
#33 RPI, #42 Union, #43 Dartmouth, #44 Air Force, #45 Army.
With S#5, the bottom 4 STILL did not move. There is no budging these guys!
Harvard becomes the #1 ranked team in scenario #5. Clarkson is #7 and Yale
#8.
Maine never gets ranked better than #4 throughout all 5 scenarios.
Michigan Tech still has the #1 schedule in scenario #5. UMass-Lowell has the
best East schedule at #10 (up from #19 in the baseline).
The ECAC is 4-1 vs. the West in S#5 and over .500 in inter-conference/
independent games.
Conclusions
The single games vs. OSU and Wisconsin affect the ECAC's ranking, but neither
result "fixes" the East-West un-alignment. In fact, the 9 game change of S#5 has
not yet explained it all--there must be more results out there to explain the
difference.
HEA's ranking did not change much, which is not surprising since I did not
manipulate any of their games. Since how the ECAC fares does not seem to explain
why HEA is ranked below the West (and why Maine is ranked lower than expected),
there must again be something else going on.
Final conclusion
The poor performance of the ECAC in inter-league games (both in key games
with
western teams and overall) is one reason why the West is rated higher than the
East. It is not the only reason, though.
Keith
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