Adam Wodon writes (about my critique of Paula Weston's article on USCHO):
 
> Paula's comments are hers and USCHO is not in the business of censoring
> opinions.  Even if the entire rest of the USCHO staff disagreed with her,
> we'd still defend her right to her opinion.
 
I would as well.  To make it clear, I never meant to imply that she
wasn't entitled to write the article, just that I was disappointed at
what I considered an inaccurate (and deceptive, given the red herring
about Niagara) analysis of the situation.  (I also think that the
"ignorant fans" I mentioned are entitled to rant that RPI got screwed;
I just think their argument is baseless.)
 
> I'm not sure what John Painter and Keith Instone have to do with this --
> since it's really just opinion.  Doing an overly technical analysis of her
> column is really rather pointless.
 
Since the article was in part about the shortcomings of the current
selection criteria, I figured Keith, who has interest in the detailed
workings of the system, would find my analysis worth reading.  JohnP I
have CCed on a number of analyses of the selection procedure over the
years.  (Aren't you curious what my mother has to do with this, as
well? ;-))  The column did imply that the criteria's shortcomings were
somehow relevant to with Michigan and Michigan State's seeds, and I
thought that was worth rebutting statistically.
 
A couple of URLs relevant to this discussion that I've been meaning to
post for the last few days:
 
http://www.ccha.com/news/releases/michwins.htm
        The CCHA press release containing the original statements
about whether conference champions (in particular those with 26 or 27
wins) have received low seeds in the past), as well as some statistics
on past tournament performaces.
 
http://www.uscollegehockey.com/news/2000/03/25_balance.html
        Dave Hendrickson's article critiquing Mason and Berenson's
statements.
                                          John Whelan, Cornell '91
                                                 [log in to unmask]
                                     http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/
 
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