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Before the NCAA Hockey Tournament started I presented my college hockey rankings which eschew wins to focus more on a method of regressing shooting rates for and against. Since fewer and fewer teams play once the tournament rolls around, the rankings don't change that much. Of teams ranked inside my previous top 20 linked above, only four squads moved up or down more than one spot -- and each of them only shifted a maximum of two spots. Only two teams in the top ten moved in the rankings at all -- Providence moving up one slot to ninth and Union moving two spots up to tenth -- so I won't be presenting the full rankings until after the Frozen Four is finished.
For now, here's a table of how I rate the Frozen Four competitors:
| Rk | LW | Change | Team | KRACH | Pyth% | SOS | SOS Rk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 0 | Minnesota | 1 | 0.910 | 0.548 | 16 |
| 2 | 2 | 0 | Boston College | 3 | 0.876 | 0.568 | 9 |
| 10 | 12 | 2 | Union | 2 | 0.733 | 0.508 | 36 |
| 22 | 22 | 0 | North Dakota | 14 | 0.590 | 0.525 | 31 |
Kudos to the KRACH Rankings, which are housed over at College Hockey News, for having it's top three squads -- Minnesota, Boston College and Union -- advance to the Frozen Four. Using these rankings, I can re-run the odds calculations I presented prior to the opening round. These are created using the Log 5 method for odds calculations, which you can read up on here. They're similar to what Ken Pomeroy presented before the NCAA Basketball Tournament, only he ran thousands (millions?) of simulations which I did not.
| Team | Finals | Championship | 1 in… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minnesota | 0.875 | 0.563 | 2 |
| North Dakota | 0.125 | 0.027 | 37 |
| Boston College | 0.720 | 0.334 | 3 |
| Union | 0.280 | 0.076 | 13 |
My system puts Minnesota or Boston College as the statistical favorites to win the tournament, but that's hardly stepping out on the limb given they're the top two seeds in the tournament. Union's odds are possibly understated since they're likely a better team than their tenth place ranking in my system. Just the eye test of watching them play in the first two rounds was enough to see they are very capable of walking out of the Frozen Four with the hardware.
I have the most likely match up being Minnesota-BC, which is about a 63 percent chance of happening. The second most likely finals would be Minnesota-Union, which is about 24 percent. North Dakota-BC is given nine percent chance of occurring while NoDak-Union is a hefty 3.5 percent chance.
As is customary around SBN College Hockey, our great team of writers have already broken down what each team needs to do to carry the National Title back home to their respective campuses, and those are all contained within the Frozen Four story stream, or individually here for Minnesota, North Dakota, Boston College, and Union.