Just some additional notes on Mike Machnik's ECAC quarterfinal stats:
>1962-82: single elimination q-finals
>Visitor won 18 of 84 series, or 21.4%.
>3 visitors winning q-final won tournament.
>
>1983-91: two-game/minigame q-finals
>Visitor won 6 of 36 series, or 16.7%.
>No visitor winning q-final won tournament.
>No visitor winning q-final lost the first game (5-0-1).
>[Following stats are 1983-89 since I don't have 90-91 here and can't
>remember the specifics of each series.]
>*Visitors winning the first game won 5 of 6 series.*
>*No visitor losing the first game won the series (0-20).*
No visitor won the first game of any ECAC quarterfinal series in '90 or '91.
Since the visitors won six first games before that, and there were three
ties, this makes the series record of those visiting teams who lost the
first game a sterling 0-27. One other note: although no visiting team that
won its quarterfinal series went on to win the whole tournament, three of
the six did make it to the championship game. Interestingly, they all did
so by beating Harvard in the semis.
I hear people say that the multiple-game series is supposed to benefit the
favored team and make upsets less likely, but in the ECAC at least, it
appears to have helped only the top two seeds. In the single-elimination
quarterfinals between 1962 and 1982, the first and second seeds had a record
of 35-7 (83.3%) against the eighth and seventh seeds, while numbers 3 and 4
went 31-11 (73.8%) against 6 and 5. It's certainly no surprise that the top
two seeds did somewhat better than the third and fourth seeds, since they
were better teams facing weaker competition. However, consider what
happened in the two-game quarterfinals over the last nine years. The #1 and
#2 teams advanced 17 out of 18 times, a winning rate of 94.4%, which is sig-
nificantly better than their performance in the single-elimination games.
The third and fourth seeds went 13-5 (72.2%), about the same as before. In
overall quarterfinal games (minigames included) during that period, the top
two teams went 35-3 (92.1%), while the next two were 21-10-9 (63.8%).
It seems that quite a bit of the opposition to the single-game quarter-
final centers around the potential for upsets, as if the underdog actually
WINNING were a situation to be avoided at all costs. The teams which
perform better during the regular season do deserve to have some advantage
like home ice in the quarterfinals, but what is so wrong with a few upsets
along the way? Northeastern's shocker over Boston College in the Hockey
East quarterfinals last year was one of the best stories in college sports
(outside of Chestnut Hill, anyway :-) and probably made a lot of fans forget
that the Huskies won only seven other games during the season.
Using a longer series to "ensure that the better team wins" (which works out
to protecting the favorites) may even tend to cheapen the achievement of the
higher seeds when they do advance to the semis. In each of the last two
seasons, the top four ECAC teams have won their quarterfinals with, in
general, not a whole lot of drama (last year's St. Lawrence-Vermont series
is a notable exception). Big deal -- home ice coupled with a two-game, no-
overtime setup gives the favorite quite an advantage. A full-fledged best-
of-three series might be better, but that's a moot point because the ECAC
wouldn't even consider it -- especially in this day and age, when the NCAA
is doing its best to cut down the number of games (in SOME sports, anyway)
and the amount of time the student-athlete needs to spend on his or her
chosen sport.
It is also not always justifiable, at least in the ECAC, to give the higher-
seeded teams a lot of pampering in the quarterfinals, because sometimes they
are not that much better than the underdogs. The top two seeds usually have
far better records than the bottom two, but the distinction between numbers
3, 4, 5, and 6 is often not quite so clear. Last season, only five points
separated #3 St. Lawrence from #6 Vermont, and the year before that, there
were only two points between #3 Cornell and #6 Harvard. If a quarter-
finalist is indeed "better" than its opponent, it ought to be able to win a
single game on home ice against them. There is certainly more of a chance
of an underdog catching a lucky break and stealing a victory in a single
quarterfinal game than in a series, but good teams should be able to guard
against such things. In short, while I would prefer to see more games,
single-elimination is far from being the end of the world.
--
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86
LET'S GO RED!!
"One woman broke up with me because, she told me, I was insecure. I thought,
'Great, THIS is gonna help.'"
-- Jeff Stilson
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