Review of last week’s forecast
The Feb. 22 forecast predicted that with a sweep the Sioux would most likely be 7th or 8th (a 25-30% chance of each). The Sioux are currently #8 in PWR.
Look at next week
This is actually a pretty interesting chart. The split and sweep scenarios have very tall spikes, meaning there’s a pretty narrow range in which UND is likely to fall in those scenarios. If UND gets swept, however, the Sioux are just as likely to be #10 as #16 — it really depends what else happens around the league.
Games to watch
Here are the non-Sioux games that could have the most influence on UND’s PWR after this weekend. The very different shapes of the UND PWR curves this week might affect how you interpret this list — since there is much higher variance on the swept curve, games that most affect the Sioux if UND gets swept probably dominate this list.
AA over Alaska (sweep helps 1.6, split 1.16)
Princeton/Quinnipiac over Yale (sweep helps .99, one win .54)
Merrimack over Maine (sweep helps .79)
Northeastern over UNH (sweep helps .55)
Two week (end of regular season) forecast
With only four games remaining in the regular season, this forecast demonstrates just how volatile PWR is. UND stands a modest chance (~5%) of finishing the regular season with a 1-seed PWR ranking (#3 or #4) with two sweeps. On the back side, getting swept out would almost certainly knock UND out of the field, with only a ~5% chance of finishing #16 or higher.
More likely scenarios lead to more middling outcomes, though winning 2 or more leaves UND quite likely to be in the tournament field as of the end of the regular season. Then, of course, the WCHA tournament should provide similar opportunity to rise or fall.