The men’s hockey team could drop out of the rankings, and it wouldn’t mean a thing to me.
That’s not because I don’t care about them. I do. Some might argue too much.
It’s because the rankings mean less than presidential term limits in Venezuela. They mean less than the latest news on Chris Brown and Rihanna. They mean less than my practice SAT scores.
Northeastern may have dropped from second to fourth and third to fifth in the USA Today and USCHO.com polls, respectively, but they are now tied with Michigan for second place in the only poll that really matters:’ ‘ the PairWise Rankings.
Better known as PWR, the PairWise Rankings accurately reflect the process employed by the NCAA selection committee to whittle down the group of Teams Under Consideration (also known as TUC’s) to a field of 16 for the men’s hockey tournament in March.
Each of the 25 Teams Under Consideration are compared against one another on the basis of record against other TUC’s, record against common opponents, Ratings Percentage Index (a weighted win percentage that accounts for strength of schedule) and head-to-head record (if applicable). The team that wins 24 comparisons will be No. 1, the No. 2 team will have taken 23 comparisons and so it will continue until we reach the team that has won zero comparisons and is therefore No. 25.
There are 58 Division I men’s college hockey teams distributed throughout six conferences. With the exception of the College Hockey America conference, postseason conference tournament champions are guaranteed a spot in the national tournament. The remaining 11 bids are doled out to the teams ranked highest in PWR who have yet to garner an invitation to the tournament.
Thus, there are no college hockey ‘bracketologists’ ‘- ‘experts’ who predict the NCAA men’s basketball tournament pairings about as accurately as meteorologists predict the weather. Nor is there a BCS, where two teams are selected by a combination of computer and human polls to play for a national championship, and everyone else is left wondering what might have been.
There is one standardized formula used to determine who has a chance to reach the Frozen Four and who does not, and everyone, from fans to players to coaches, is privy to it.
So we can argue the accuracy of PWR. Some say it does not account for the variance in strength of schedule, derived in large part from the inequity of the conferences in college hockey. That is why the KRACH ratings system was introduced, which uses a different formula to circumvent the flaws in PWR, but has not yet been adopted by the NCAA.
If we must, we can even discuss the USCHO.com and USA Today Polls from October to January, when the PWR comparisons are made available online at USCHO.com.
But as much as I love hearing and taking part in a discussion on college hockey, once the PWR rankings are released, there is just no good reason to even think about what the USA Today and USCHO.com pollsters think about the sport.
Although it would be nice if Northeastern could get at least one first place vote.

‘- Jared Sugerman can be reached’
at [email protected].