Big Ten Hockey Tournament Scenarios (Part II)



In part two of my route to the tournament analysis I’ll look into scenarios where Penn State’s games in Minnesota result in shootouts. Shootouts can absolutely throw a monkey wrench into all of my analyses. A shootout win isn’t really a win. It goes into the record book as a tie. Each team earns a point toward their league standing with the shootout victor picking up an extra point. The shootout winner does not get credit for a win which is very important because wins are used as the first tiebreaking criteria.

As well see in a moment, things can get pretty screwy when it comes to breaking ties involving shootouts.

Once we start adding the shootouts to the game results the scenarios get wildly more variable. Including them creates as many as 100 different scenarios coming out of this weekends games. I’m certainly not going to try to list them all but will focus on the ones that makes a critical difference to Penn State.

Penn State loses two in Minnesota

First of all, lets get the easy ones out of the way. As I said yesterday, two losses ensures that we will finish fourth. That doesn’t change if either, or both, of those losses are in shootouts. The only time we would even have to go to a tiebreaker would be if we had two shootout losses AND Michigan State swept Michigan. In that case, both PSU and Michigan would be tied with 33 points but Michigan would claim the third seed because they would have one more win than us.

PSU 2 SOL MSU 2 Sweep



Penn State wins two in Minnesota, one by shootout

If you remember yesterday, I said that if we win two in Minnesota, we want to root for Michigan and Michigan State to split their games because in that case we’d be the conference champs. Well here’s where things start to get screwy. If one of our wins in Minneapolis happened to be by a shootout and UM/MSU split wins, we’d drop all the way to third. Here’s what that scenario would look like:

PSU 1 SOW MSU UM split

We’d be tied with Michigan on points at 36 but would again lose the tie breaker because they would have more wins than we did.

Every other one regular win, one shootout win scenario winds up with us in second place behind either Michigan or Michigan State. The one scenario that is interesting would be if Michigan and Michigan State both win shootout games this weekend. In that case, the standings would look like this.

PSU 1 SOW MSU UM split SOWs

The point totals would be exactly the same as they would have been had the teams split the games via regular wins. In one case, the teams earn three points via a win each, while, in the other, they each earn three points via the shootout route, i.e. one shootout loss and one shootout win. The difference is huge. While we are tied with Michigan in points in each case, if Michigan earns them via a win, then they will win the tie breaker (total points), However, if Michigan earns them via the shootout route, then they will lose the tie breaker with us (we’d be tied in Big Ten wins but we’d have a better head-to-head record).

PSU wins two in Minnesota, both via shootouts

This scenario creates a couple of interesting situations. We’re currently two points behind Minnesota in the Big Ten standings. If we win two games by shootouts against them, we will pick up four points and they will pick up two, and we’d be tied with 35 points. So who would win the tiebreaker? The first tiebreaker is B10 wins – and we’d both have 10. The next tiebreaker would be head-to-head – and we’d each have one win, one loss, two ties. So we’d be down to the third tiebreaker, which is record against the conference champion.

Our record against Michigan is 3-1-0, Minnesota’s is 2-2. Our record against Michigan State is 1-2-1, Minnesota’s is 2-1-1. So we would own the tiebreaker against Minnesota and claim second if Michigan claims the regular season title. On the other hand, if Michigan State were to win the title, Minnesota would own the tiebreaker and would claim second – with one exception.

That one exception would be if Michigan State beats Michigan in one game, but loses a shutout to them in another. Michigan State would still win the championship but there would be a log jam for second. The standings would look like this.

PSU 2 SO MSU W UM SOW

In this case, there would be a three way tie for second. Since wins are the first tiebreaker, Michigan would get the second seed, leaving PSU and Minnesota tied for third. Since MSU would be the champion, Minnesota would win the tiebreaker and PSU would fall to the fourth seed.

I think this should pretty much cover the scenarios that will affect Penn State. If you think I’ve forgotten one, let me know and I’ll figure it out.

We’ll certainly know a lot more after Friday and I’ll update things then.