> >17 is a bit excessive; you're best of looking at the top 14 or 15 (at most) >teams. That's good for 12 teams making the tournament and 2 or 3 "bubble" >teams. > >DISCLAIMER: "The tournament committee does not use opinion polls to >determine tournament teams and/or seeding." > >Not much can be said about receiving one point, except for the possible >speculation that the coach put in a vote for their own team. > >If there's anything that can be read from the poll about the inclusion of 6 >ECAC teams it's the fact that they're ranked between 9th and 16th, which >would tend to point out three things about the feelings of the voters this >week: > >1. There's some good teams in the ECAC, but nobody has proven themselves >good enough to belong in the top half. > >2. The ECAC is not considered a tough conference by the voters in the poll. >Why else would Princeton and Rensselaer, with records of 11-4-1 and 12-5-1 >be voted so low? The three teams above them -- Boston College (.600), >Colorado College (.682), and Notre Dame (.600)-- all have lower winning >percentages than Princeton (.733). Heck, Maine (#3) has a record of 14-2-4 >(.700), also lower than Princeton. > >3. Princeton is considered by a significant margin to be the strongest team >in the ECAC, with nearly double the points of Rensselaer. Moreover, given >the margin in points between Princeton (56) and Colorado College (143), >they've got a long way to go to impress the critics. Losing 9-1 to BU >earlier in the season may just have been the "poll-killer" for Princeton. > > >greenie I see the ECAC having several inconsistant teams, including Colgate, Cornell, RPI, and Princeton. While Princeton has a SLIGHTLY better record than RPI, you have to take into consideration the fact that: a)RPI defeated Princeton. b)RPI has lost to quality opposition(Lowell, Niagra, New Hampshire), all of those being non-conference games. New Hampshire is already ranked ahead of them, Niagra is not too bad this year, and Lowell defeated Clarkson, St. Lawrence, and UMD. I know that this isn't great evidence of one team being better than the other, but I still have to go with Rennsselaer considering they beat Princeton one-on-one. Kyle Smith [log in to unmask] GO RPI!!! ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.