Getting Back At It (Long Post)

I meant to add my first post after the long Thanksgiving weekend yesterday, but real life (i.e. work) got in the way. But that gives the chance to kick this off with some big news on the alumni front.

Szczechura Make The Show:

Earlier it was Pat Dwyer, now it's Paul Szczechura. "Chewy" has been recalled by the Tampa Bay Lightning today and will be available to make his NHL debut tonight against the Philadelphia Flyers. Szczechura leads the Norfolk Admirals of the AHL with 24 points in 23 games including 11 goals.

The call up isn't in direct response to any specific injury on the team, but seems to be more of a case of "shaking things up." The Lightning also called up physical forward Radek Smolenak. With the Lightning on a four game skid each player could bring something the team needs to turn things around. Szczechura, offense and smart play, and Smolenak a physical presence especially on defense.

Because this isn't an injury replacement and Szczechura's future send down isn't dependent on someone else getting healthy the length of his stay in the NHL is truly up in the air. If he can add a spark, and stays for any significant length of time it'll be interesting to see what the Lightning do long term.

Broncos Lose Szczechura Sweepstakes:

On to the other Szczechura, this time Alex, the younger brother. If you remember back to the end of October and this post I had then you remember that Ohio State was another school taking an interest in the young scoring machine. Well, in the end it was Ohio State that won the recruiting battle and will have Szczechura join the club in the fall of 2010.

Aside from tOSU and WMU, other teams pursuing Szczechura included Northern Michigan, Canisius, and Ferris State.

Dwyer Pops His Cherry:

In the midst of his second stint in the NHL with the Carolina Hurricanes, Pat Dwyer finally did the deed and scored his first goal in the NHL. Late in the second period of what became an overtime win over the Flyers, Dwyer tied the game 1-1 by deflecting a Joni Pitkanen shot.

More of the Same at Notre Dame:

The Broncos did not play particularly well in either game against the Irish this past weekend losing 4-1 on Friday and then tying 3-3 Saturday. Friday's game was simply a case of the better team winning. Saturday was different though. On the surface it can look like the Broncos played a much better game to earn the tie, but the unfortunate reality seems to be that the Irish got complacent and a combination of laziness and defensive lapses allowed the Broncos to crawl back from an early 2-0 deficit.

I still maintain that WMU is a better team then it was last year. There are fewer neutral zone turnovers and the potential for an explosive offense exists if the right line combinations can be found (and yes, I still think Ryan Watson should be on a scoring line and would be having a break out season if he were on a better line).

Confidence is going to continue to be hard to find for at least another week as Miami comes to town this weekend in the midst of a four game winning streak. The Redhawks are in first place in the CCHA and after a lapse against Ferris State earlier in the season know first hand the cost of not taking every opponent very seriously.

Rankings:

I find rankings to be fascinating. Yes, I guess that makes me a geek. Why I bring this up is because Air Force is currently the #1 team in all of college hockey according to computer ranking systems like the Pairwise (which is used at season's end to determine the NCAA tournament field) and the far better KRACH. Click this link if you'd like to read about why KRACH is a better computer ranking system.

Some people would argue that Air Force is overrated based on a weak schedule, but I think that is a poor way to judge a team when how well an athletic department schedules has nothing to do with how well a team is playing on the ice. Also, some would argue that Air Force doesn't deserve the respect of a high ranking until they've beaten a quality team, but I look at it the other way and say that they don't deserve to not be ranked high until they've lost to weak competition.

That all said I have done my own computer ranking system for my own curiosity (uber-geeky of me) and have decided to share that later this week. I started with KRACH and then made a couple "tweaks" to it. Those tweaks probably make my rankings inferior to KRACH and it's mathematical purity, but I thought they would be beneficial to look at how all teams compare to one another. The first tweak is to adjust for home ice advantage by weighting road wins greater then home wins and home loses greater then road loses by the same factor (per 2 games) as home teams win in the entirety of D1 college hockey. The second tweak is to "undo" the effect of the insular scheduling practices in NCAA hockey that I feel skew KRACH (through no fault of KRACH itself) to give preference to teams in strong conferences because most of their games come from within their conference. The second tweak is achieved by an inverse weighting of non-conference games compared to conference games for each team with the median between a factor of 1 and the factor of non-conference game to conference games.

Anyway, I should have those rankings posted either tomorrow or Thursday. I'll probably just post a top 15 and then where WMU falls at. And I place absolutely no importance on these rankings nor take them too seriously, I just enjoy tracking them throughout the season.

The End:

That's all for now. I tired of typing and need to get other things done. I i don't know if I should be thankful or feel sorry for you if you actually made it this far in reading this extra long post.