Badger Hockey puts one foot in grave

Home ice would've been nice. The Badgers went on the road and were shut out by St. Cloud State tonight, 3-0. This marked the first postseason shutout for the Badgers since 1997. 88% of teams who win the first game of a WCHA postseason series wind up advancing to the Final Five, so the Badgers have their work cut out for them. Just a couple items here from Minnesota-Duluth radio dude Bruce Ciskie:

Wisconsin needs to win this series to get in the NCAAs in all likelihood, as they are firmly on the bubble right now. With Boston University, UMD, and Notre Dame - among others - knocking on the door, Bucky better find a way to win two games this weekend, or the Kohl Center may end up being mighty empty in two weeks.

...

If you're a UMD fan, root for ... SCSU [to beat] Wisconsin. A sweep and a UMD sweep likely would swing the UMD/UW PWR comparison for UMD.

Uh oh.

Friday night WCHA hockey recap: Oh crap

The final weekend of WCHA play is a bye week for the Badgers, which means their point total in the conference stays at 27. Tonight they were probably sitting at home, feverishly clicking refresh at USCHO.com or watching the GameTracker or trying to tune the AM radio to pick up the St. Cloud State game in order to figure out who they'll be playing in the conference playoffs and where. Or maybe that was just me, and the hockey team was out doing whatever it is that popular, well-conditioned athletes do on Friday nights. Like maybe hang out with girls or something.

Be that as it may, the Badgers had to have their eyes on three teams this weekend: Minnesota State, St. Cloud State, and Minnesota. All three were within striking distance of the Badgers going into Friday's games, and wins by Michigan Tech, North Dakota, and Minnesota-Duluth, respectively, would've gone a long way to soothing the Badgers' troubles (thus allowing them to enjoy Saturday night, which I also have to imagine would've been spent out and with girls.) You see, to get home ice for the WCHA playoffs, the Badgers need to stay in fifth place, with the fourth place standing that they held coming into the weekend being a bonus if it held up.

But tonight, if it could go wrong for the Badgers, it pretty much did. Michigan Tech is the ninth-place team in the league and apparently played like it tonight, as they lost 5-2 to Minnesota State. That game Minnesota State points 27 and 28 on the season; they'll finish the year in no worse than fifth place and they're currently fourth in the conference. The only team that can unseat them is St. Cloud State, which managed a tie with #1 (in the conference and the nation) North Dakota, picking up a huge point in the process. Their total on the year? 27. Now, if they lose tomorrow night, their total will remain at 27, and since the Badgers own a 3-1-0 head-to-head record with the Huskies, Wisconsin wins the tiebreaker. Anything other than a loss tomorrow for St. Cloud means the Badgers go on the road.

Of less concern is the fact that Minnesota won in their game against Duluth. According to their official site, the Gophers would've needed St. Cloud State to be swept by North Dakota in order to get home ice. Even though the Gophers could tie the Badgers in the point total with a win tomorrow, they'd lose the second tiebreaker -- the Badgers have 11 wins in the conference, while the Gophers would max out at 10. (Wisconsin and Minnesota went 1-1-2 head-to-head this season, making the first tiebreaker a tie.) If I'm not misunderstanding something, the Gophers are completely, utterly guaranteed to be a road team this postseason -- albeit a road team that's hitting its stride right now and as such is really dangerous. If Wisconsin, Minnesota, and St. Cloud State all wind up with 27 points, the Badgers win that three-way tiebreaker, too.

At this point, it only makes sense to hope for a North Dakota win tomorrow. Anything else and Kohl Center is done hosting men's hockey until the NCAA tournament rolls around in three weeks and Wisconsin will have to skate at St. Cloud or Minnesota State.

Of course, if you're a Michigan fan, this is the time where you start burning incense as an offering to whatever deity is in charge of fixing college hockey games in order to avoid being a #1 seed that has to play a #4 with home ice advantage:

I have a bad feeling that if Wisconsin is a four seed, we're going to play them in the first round no matter what ... Wisconsin is about one slot away from being out of the tourney altogether, which is the best option for Michigan.

Badger Hockey is playing itself out of contention

With two full weekends to play before the conference tournament, the Badgers had one task in front of them: get a couple points from the faltering Gophers in order to improve upon or maintain their twelfth-place ranking in the PairWise Rankings.

Sadly, the Gophers found their offense again this weekend and blasted home four goals on Friday and on Saturday. The Badgers only managed a pair of goals on Friday (WWWWWW and $nake of Down With Goldy were at the game), but didn't walk away completely empty-handed, coming back from a one-goal deficit four times on Saturday night to force a 4-4 tie. In the end, the Gophers gained three prized points and the Badgers only picked up one.

This is bad not just because it's the Gophers but because, as of this very moment, the Badgers are in a tie for 14th place in the PairWise Rankings with Notre Dame and the Gophers. By scoring that final, game-tying goal, Patrick Johnson kept Wisconsin's PWR advantage over Minnesota alive; had the Gophers won the game, the 2-2 tie in the PairWise would've been broken by RPI, which might've swung things in Minnesota's favor. Incidentally, the RPI tiebreaker is keeping Notre Dame ahead of the Badgers as we speak.

The upshot is that when you're in a tie for 14th place, if you're not the primus inter pares you're out of the NCAA field. The fifteenth and sixteenth slots are currently occupied by the conference leaders from Atlantic Hockey and the CHA (currently Army and Bemidji State, respectively), which means that if the season was over with right now, Wisconsin would be the best team in the nation to watch the NCAA tournament from their couch. (You know, on their laptop via GameTracker. Not on TV, don't be silly; this is college hockey after all.)

The good and bad news is that next weekend's series is at St. Cloud State. The good news is that the Badgers are 2-0-0 against St. Cloud State this year, and since Wisconsin is well behind St. Cloud in the PairWise, a victory or two would go a long way to shuffling the Badgers back into the tournament field, especially with some help. The bad news is that although Wisconsin owns the head-to-head portion of the PWR, St. Cloud tops them in RPI, TUC, and record against common opponents, and all three of those numbers are out of reach for UW, so in order to wrest the PairWise comparison with St. Cloud State, a sweep will be necessary.

The end of the season is a crazy time with the odd mechanism the NCAA uses to include and exclude teams. The Badgers aren't in control of their own destiny, but every win will get them closer to a tournament berth and every loss will hurt more than the one that preceded it. And you can take consolation in the fact that even though this weekend was pretty miserable, the Badgers did just enough to keep Minnesota out of the postseason -- for the time being.