I just finished reading Jayson Moy's article http://www.uscollegehockey.com/news/2000/02/01_argument.html on the continuing dissatisfaction over the ECAC's decision to rank its final standings by winning percentage. It seems to me like a lot of people are over-reacting. Given that 1) The only difference in teams' schedule will be the presence of absence of one game against Vermont, and 2) Vermont was a middle-of-the-pack team before they folded, there will actually be very little imbalance in strength of schedule, certainly less than in the WCHA and CCHA. The ECAC's solution, while somewhat unexpected, was really the fairest of the simple methods. In the end, ranking the teams in the final standings comes down to comparing pairs of teams. There are three different possible situations: 1) neither team has played UVM, 2) both teams have played UVM and 3) one teams has played UVM and the other has not. In the first case, any conceivable method will give the same results; the team with the better won-lost-tied record is better. In the second case, the question is whether to compare records including the teams' respective results against Vermont or not. Since the teams thought at the time that their Vermont games would count, and obtained their results in good faith, it is reasonable to insist that they get credit for their results, and thus compare their records against their entire schedules. (The one subtlety would be whether to account for the fact that some teams got to play UVM at home, and others on the road.) This brings us to the third situation, which is the trickiest one. One might argue that since the team not playing Vermont never had an opportunity to obtain a result, the league should ignore the other team's game as well. But considering UVM games when comparing teams that both played them and ignoring them otherwise would get very complicated, and once again there is the counterargument that the team that actually played UVM should get credit for their result. So in effect the league needs to project a would-be result for the unplayed game against Vermont and compare the two teams after a 21-game schedule (real in once case, hypothetical in the other). Forfeiting Vermont's unplayed games would have been a logical matter of protocol, but would have effectively assigned two points to those unplayed games, which seems as unfair as assigning them no points (the result if point totals had been used). Nothing should be considered certain, in either direction. Going by winning percentage projects that teams not playing UVM would have gotten the same proportion of the points in the unplayed games as the rest of the league. Again, since UVM was 3-2-2, that's not a bad projection. Also, since it's only one game, all that matters is whether the projection is more or less than one point (having argued it must be less than two and more than zero). The only other straightforward option would be to project one point for each unplayed game (assuming effectively that anyone would have tied the extra game), which hurts teams with winning records and benefits those with losing records. This method would be the same as ranking the standings by wins-minus-losses. So, if you want to give teams credit for all the games they've played, the only simple options are winning percentage or wins-minus-losses, and the former gives a better picture of what a team would have done with that unplayed game. Kevin Sneddon complains that the league didn't provide the coaches with possible scenarios. Well, there are not that many scenarios possible. If a team plays one more game and finishes with two more points, they will finish higher in the standings. (They effectively played an extra game and won it.) If they play one more and finish with the same number of points, they will finish lower. (They played one more game and lost it.) If a teams finishes with one more point in one more game than another, they effectively played an extra game and tied it. If the teams in question have winning records, that was a worse-than-average result and the team with the extra game finishes below. If they have losing records, the opposite is true. People complain about being edged out of playoff spots by percentage points, which I think bothers them because they're not used to seeing things that way. In a full 22-game season, each point in the standings corresponds to .023 worth of winning percentage. The closest two teams can end up in winning percentage this year is if they are each one game above (or below) .500 and play different numbers of games. A team with 21 points in 20 games has a winning percentage of .525, while one with 22 points in 42 games has one of .524, for a difference of .001 (actually around .0012). So that is indeed a considerably smaller difference, but consider that a one-point difference in a 70-game NHL season amounts to only a difference of .007 in winning percentage, and I don't see anyone complaining that that is too close to call. It is actually possible (although phenomenally unlikely) for this 21/20 vs 22/21 situation to arise in the battle for the regular season title and associated NCAA bid, but a more reasonable question is how close that could be in winning percentage if one of the teams with an extra game ended up with an extra win. The answer is if RPI ends up with 33 points and a .786 winning percentage, and SLU or Colgate with 31 points and a .775 percentage, in which case the difference will be .011, or about half a point's worth in an ordinary season. At any rate, I'm amazed that anyone would talk about the league re-opening this issue once the decision has already been made. It was unfortunate enough that the decision had to be made in the middle of the season, when decisions could be influenced by which teams had beaten UVM and which hadn't, but to try and revise the decisions late in the season, when it's clear who benefits from what details, not to mention to rescind a decision already made, would really reflect poorly on the league. (I'd like to see the league drop the Final Five, but I'd be opposed to their making that decision in the middle of the season.) John Whelan, Cornell '91 [log in to unmask] http://www.amurgsval.org/joe/ It's playoff possibilities time! http://www.slack.net/~whelan/cgi-bin/tbrw.cgi?ecac.cgi HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.