Everyone’s favorite college hockey ranking system, KRACH, has the nice feature that it can be used to assign probabilities to potential matchups.
Here’s what KRACH’s forecast for the odds for each team emerging as the winner of each round the NCAA Ice Hockey tournament:
| KRACH | Game 1 | Game 2 (Region Champ) |
Game 3 (Frozen four semifinal) |
Game 4 (National Champ) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| West | |||||
| 100 | 1. North Dakota | 52.74% | 28.36% | 13.03% | 6.89% |
| 89.6042 | 4. Western Michigan | 47.26% | 24.12% | 10.45% | 5.24% |
| 84.9926 | 2. Minnesota | 49.43% | 23.35% | 9.82% | 4.79% |
| 86.9526 | 3. Boston U. | 50.57% | 24.17% | 10.30% | 5.09% |
| Northeast | |||||
| 154.831 | 1. Boston College | 87.67% | 55.51% | 35.01% | 22.18% |
| 21.7819 | 4. Air Force | 12.33% | 2.41% | 0.47% | 0.09% |
| 91.1404 | 2. Minn. Duluth | 50.81% | 21.56% | 10.81% | 5.47% |
| 88.2171 | 3. Maine | 49.19% | 20.52% | 10.12% | 5.03% |
| East | |||||
| 71.9621 | 1. Union | 47.27% | 21.03% | 9.29% | 3.72% |
| 80.2812 | 4. Michigan St | 52.73% | 24.89% | 11.65% | 4.97% |
| 97.2908 | 2. Miami (OH) | 54.35% | 30.47% | 15.71% | 7.43% |
| 81.7069 | 3. Mass.-Lowell | 45.65% | 23.61% | 11.16% | 4.81% |
| Midwest | |||||
| 114.097 | 1. Michigan | 70.06% | 39.72% | 22.92% | 11.74% |
| 48.7625 | 4. Cornell | 29.94% | 10.74% | 3.96% | 1.24% |
| 91.2115 | 2. Ferris St. | 52.39% | 26.53% | 13.84% | 6.33% |
| 82.9009 | 3. Denver | 47.61% | 23.01% | 11.46% | 4.98% |
A few observations:
* UND’s predicted 53% chance of winning the opening round game is lower than any 1 seed in the previous 4 years I’ve been doing this
* Union is even worse off, not even favored to win its 1 vs 4 matchup
* Similarly, 2 seed Minnesota is an underdog to Boston University
* The largest line in any 2 vs 3 matchup is 54%-46%, Miami over Mass.-Lowell
One more observation — the West really is the region of death. The odds of coming out for each team are, in order of seeding: 28%, 23%, 24%, 24%.