Down The Stretch They Come: Hockey Projections

First thing: More to come tomorrow on the ND series. Craig and I were in attendance at both games, so we've got a few words to say about that bit of awesome.

I've been looking at Michigan's schedule for the rest of the regular season in the CCHA and wondering what we can expect in the second half of conference play. The Wolverines have a tough road ahead, with series against Michigan State and Miami in the next few weeks after having just despatched Notre Dame. They've been on a torrid pace, but with the high-quality opponents left on their schedule, there's no way they can keep it up, right? So I've tried to use a little math to project how teams in the conference will fall at the end of the regular season.

I broke it down, game by game, and I decided that the difference in current winning percentage is the best barometer of the chance teams have of winning a game. Two teams with .500 records should have the same chance of winning a game, but a team with a .700 record should have a better chance than one stuck at .300.

Projected Points = 2*(Number of games)*((Team winning % - Opponent winning %)*0.5 + 0.5)

2 = 2*(2*(0.600-0.600)*0.5+0.5)
3 = 2*(2*(0.750-0.250)*0.5+0.5)
4 = 2*(2*(1.000-0.000)*0.5+0.5)

In a few weeks, Michigan will be playing Miami. Right now, the stats for that series project like this:

2*(2 games)*((0.9375 UM winning % - 0.8333 Miami winning %)*0.5+0.5) = 2.2038 pts projected for Michigan

It basically projects a split, with Michigan having a slightly better chance than Miami of getting a sweep or an additional point. Before last weekend's sweep, it was predicting about 2.4 pts for Michigan off Notre Dame, which seems fair enough, considering the number of chances each team had in the third period of Friday's game before Caporusso buried the game winner with 20.3 seconds left on the clock.

This is how the numbers fall for the entire CCHA for the rest of the year. I've included the pace that each team is on (which is solely based on its winning percentage) for comparison.

Team	GP	Winning %	Points	Projected	(Pace)
Alaska	18	0.3611	13	21.98	(20.2)
Bowling Green	16	0.5625	18	30.80	(31.5)
Ferris State	16	0.4688	15	26.12	(26.3)
Lake Superior	16	0.1563	5	13.88	(8.8)
Miami	18	0.8333	30	44.11	(46.7)
Michigan	16	0.9375	30	46.31	(52.5)
Michigan State	16	0.8125	26	40.90	(45.5)
Nebraska-Omaha	20	0.4750	19	26.83	(26.6)
Northern Michigan	18	0.3889	14	22.69	(21.8)
Notre Dame	18	0.6389	23	35.92	(35.8)
Ohio State	16	0.2188	7	15.52	(12.3)
Western Michigan	16	0.1250	4	10.96	(7.0)

As you can see, the Wolverines are on a pace for a 52.5-pt season, but the projection knocks them down to only 46.3 pts, which would have them going about 8-4 down the stretch. Considering that the team is 22-2-0 right now, at first glance this seems excessive. But consider that they're playing the two next best teams in the league a total of six times during that stretch and it's a little less unlikely. Each game we play is like a loaded coin flip; eventually it'll come up tails, even if we play bad teams. That's what happened in part with OSU earlier in the season. We ran up against a hot goalie when we weren't playing our best and we couldn't get a bounce to bail us out.

Here's a breakdown by series of the remainder of our schedule:

Opponent	Projected
(Current)	30.00
MSU	2.25
Northern	3.10
Miami	2.21
LSSU	3.56
MSU	2.25
Ferris	2.94
Total	46.31

Ferris, Northern, and Lake State are mediocre-to-bad teams, but they get six chances to run into us on a bad night. Still, I think the numbers are conservative; 9-3 is what I'd call a successful conclusion to the season. I think we split with Miami, and State wins at least one game off of us, probably two. And if the Spartans only win one, there's a good chance someone else steals a game. A 48-point regular season would be a magnificent achievement and position us well for the CCHA playoffs and the NCAA tournament. A 50-point season would be simply astonishing, and I can't even believe anything north of that is possible. Down this stretch run, I just want to see our guys keep playing sound hockey, take care of business against teams they shouldn't lose to, and make it to the tournament without injury. Let's see how this plays out.