Sunday, February 26, 2012

Tourney Prediction Feb 26

The regular season is done in the ECAC, CCHA, and Atlantic Hockey, with the bottom teams kicking off the tournaments next week for each. Hockey East and the WCHA all have one more week of regular season hockey to set up their conference tournaments, but that's all fine and dandy because ladies and gentlemen, TOURNAMENT TIME is here BABY!!!

Here is this week's predicted tourney bracket, with two changes from the straight pairwise rankings. I swapped Merrimack with Denver to avoid a HE first round matchup but to still keep Merrimack out east. I then swapped Minnesota and Miami to put the Gophers in St Paul (where they are required to be as hosts). After that, it seems like attendance is as good as possible everywhere, as the eastern regionals are tough to make strong attendance-wise due to only 6 eastern-based teams making the tourney as of today.

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

4 Ferris St 15 Merrimack

5 BU 12 Northern Michigan

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

1 UMD 16 Air Force

7 Minnesota 9 Union

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

3 Michigan 14 North Dakota

6 UMass Lowell 11 Michigan St

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

2 BC 13 Denver

8 Miami 10 Maine

Monday, February 20, 2012

Tourney Prediction Feb 20

With one week left in the regular season for a couple conferences, here's my latest NCAA Tourney prediction:

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

3 UMass Lowell 13 Ohio State

6 BU 12 Denver

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

2 Michigan 15 Cornell

8 Minnesota 10 Michigan St

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

4 Ferris St 14 North Dakota

5 UMD 11 Miami

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

1 BC 16 Air Force

7 Union 9 Maine

Thursday, February 9, 2012

How to Make Our Hot Wings Better

The Wings are scary good right now, doing it all while Hank and Dats are struggling MIGHTILY. I wrote about this over at Talk Sports/Drink Beer, but I'll say it again, the Wings are a contender for the Cup this year. At the same time, I can honestly say, at this point in time, that there are no prohibitive favorites to win it all as there are a good amount of strong teams and it'll truly come down to who's playing at the top of their games come May.

On that note, that brings up the main point of this stream of thought: the Wings need to make a move or two at the deadline to increase their cushion to make errors, solidify those weak points in the lineup. After watching this team a lot the past few weeks, I've come to a few conclusions:
  • The power play is struggling not from the players on the PP, but the fact that those players are in a slump. The puck is still moving as crisply and cleanly as ever, and the Wings are getting their opportunities, they just don't have puck luck right now. With Mule connecting on the PP the last couple games, I truly believe all these calls for making a move for a player based on the PP is short-sighted.
  • Speaking of slumps, Dats, Hank and Franzen are the three best offensive players on the Wings, hands-down. They also were the three players struggling the most to find the net recently. The past six games, the Wings have scored 17 goals, eight of which have come from Jiri Hudler and Drew Miller. The next six are spread among such game-changers as Cory Emmerton, Danny Cleary, Todd Bertuzzi, and Valtteri Filppula. Out of those 17, only three come from the Big Three, and those goals came as two on the power play by Franzen and Hank's gift goal last night. This is the big area I believe the Wings need to solidify. While it's great right now, that's because Emmerton, Hudler and Miller are playing well. We can't rely on those boys carrying the offense.
  • Finally, I'm very impressed by the play of the defense this year. Lidstrom is proving once again why he's the Norris T-1136, a cyborg sent back to protect the Wings' Cup hopes from annihilation by Skynet...err, the Western Conference. His pairing with Ian White have played as good as any in the league this year, a strong statement considering they play in the same division as the vaunted Weber-Suter combo. The second pairing of Kronwall and Stuart has been strong all year and continues to provide a great second pairing to send out against a deep opponent. Finally, the pairing of Kindl and Ericsson scared the bejeezus out of me earlier this year, but now I honestly can breathe most of the time they are on the ice. The defense isn't a dire need to be fixed.
So what areas should the Wings address at the trade deadline? I think the Wings should go after a top-6 forward, someone who can take the pressure off the Big Three and give the Detroit offense a little cushion for error when the Big Three are slumping. Preferably, get somebody who can step into Homer's role on the top two lines and push Homer down to the third line. While that would be a great addition, it's a piece that isn't necessary and overpaying is not necessary, when the Wings are set up to go into this offseason with enough cap space to sign a replacement for Nick AND a forward. The necessary addition, in my opinion, would be a second pairing defenseman who can join the third pairing, for the inevitable time when Ericsson or Kindl implodes. This would make the defense that much stronger and should be much cheaper to acquire. I believe that this alone would be the key move of the deadline and a way for the Wings to make themselves as strong as possible.

In the end, if the Wings makes no moves at the deadline, I will not be greatly disappointed. While I believe a move is recommended, I don't believe it's necessary and should not be a reason for blame if the Wings flame out in the playoffs this season.

Monday, February 6, 2012

NCAA Hockey Tourney Prediction Feb 6

On the day that the most famous in-season tournament gets underway (the Beanpot), my first look at the end of the season tournament in two weeks presents some intriguing tourney match ups and regionals.

Northeast Regional (Worcester - 12,239)

1 BU 13 Michigan St

8 Merrimack 10 Notre Dame

West Regional (St Paul - 18,064)

2 Michigan 15 North Dakota

7 Minnesota 9 Maine

East Regional (Bridgeport - 8,412)

3 UMass Lowell 14 Northern Michigan

6 BC 11 Union

Midwest Regional (Green Bay - 8,709)

4 Ferris State 16 Air Force

5 UMD 12 Ohio State

Now the explanation for how I came to these regionals:

I began by putting the four one seeds in the regionals, with BU to Worcester, Michigan to St Paul, Lowell to Bridgeport and Ferris to Green Bay. I followed that with the two seeds, with the host school Minnesota going to St Paul, Duluth to Green Bay, BC to Bridgeport, and Merrimack to Worcester. Through the first two lines of seeds, the tournament is looking great, with all 8 schools as close to home as their seeding allows.

The next two lines were subsequently matched up and resulted in two interconference matchups: Ferris St-Michigan St and Merrimack-Maine, one on each line. The first solution is the easiest, as attendance issues were a non-factor in that decision. Maine couldn't be switched with Union (would just create another interconference matchup), so either way a western team was going east and an eastern team going west. The choice was to keep bracket integrity as close as possible, thus Notre Dame to Worcester and Maine to St Paul (it doesn't hurt sending Notre Dame to the Boston area, either).

The next was the tougher decision because trying to keep bracket integrity in this situation was near impossible. Moving MSU off the Ferris game had only one other option and that was swapping with the 16 seeded Air Force. Unfortunately that means the top team in the tourney gets stuck with the toughest four seed. The only other solution I could come up with was sending Northern to Worcester, MSU to Bridgeport, and Air Force to Green Bay. But does that make the bracket integrity better? I decided it did not, so instead I did solely a MSU/Air Force swap, and voila, there's this week's bracket.

Time to start getting excited folks, conference tournaments start in less than a month!