Winning and losing in college hockey

Cornell lost its second game of the season Friday night, a 4-3 decision to Yale.

This wasn't particularly surprising, and I agreed with USCHO's prediction of a Yale victory. Cornell, then at 13-1-3, was sitting atop the pairwise rankings, giving it a huge target on its back. Yale had been having a good season, but ran into trouble last weekend with a one-point weekend at home. With Yale looking to rebound and everyone waiting for Cornell to falter, conditions were perfect for a Cornell loss.

In fact, the game really wasn't close. Yale outplayed the Big Red the entire game, with an aggressive neutral zone trap and strong defense near the net. Cornell had some defensive problems, particularly since they only skated 5 d-men after Justin Krueger's first-period injury. And Ben Scrivens didn't have his best game.

Still, there is little reason to be concerned as a Cornell fan. I used to get much more hung up about losses. But really, it's not that big of a deal. Even if we assume that on an average night Cornell has an 80% chance to win, meaning that if the teams played five games we'd expect them to go 4-1-0 or 3-0-2 or something, then in 19 games Cornell's chances of going undefeated are only (.8)^19, or ~1%. With an actual record of 14-2-3, there's no reason to be disappointed about how the season has gone.

More important than won-loss records are the pairwise rankings, which determine seedings for the NCAA tournament. If the season ended today, Cornell would receive a #1 seed and would probably be sent to the Bridgeport, Conn., regional, a convenient location for the fan base. (Assuming BU is placed in Manchester, Notre Dame to Grand Rapids, and Minnesota to...wait for it...Minneapolis).

The challenge for Cornell will be to continue to win with the target on their backs. Barring a monumental collapse they should finish the regular season in the top 4 of the ECAC, earning themselves a bye-week and a relatively easy home quarterfinal series. If they make it to Albany, that should be good enough for an NCAA at-large bid.

The team (and me) is on the road 3 of the next 5 weekends, so the chances are pretty good that they'll lose some more games. But this is still shaping up to be a great season and hopefully Saturday's easy rebound victory over Brown will get us back on track.