Trying to maintain a top 10 ranking with just five games left in the season was critical for the DCB hockey team. To ensure they hung on to their spot in the rankings the Jacks needed wins!
Facing a determined Concordia University Wisconsin team the Jacks got exactly what they needed, a pair of home wins. It didn't come easy though as they won in a shootout Friday night and in overtime Saturday afternoon at a cold Lumberdome.
Friday Feb. 8: The Jacks went to a shootout to determine the winner of this game! Neither team scored in the first round of the shootout. CUW missed in their second attempt while Jack Dunnell buried the Jacks second shootout attempt for a one goal advantage. With their third and final shot CUW missed and the Jacks celebrated a big home win!
Check out the boxscore for all the details: http://achahockey.org/view/achahockey/divisions/men-s-d2-1/stats-431?type=boxscore&level=game&id=3391511
Saturday Feb. 9: With 50 seconds left in the game the Jacks enjoyed a 4-3 lead and were on their way to their second win in as many nights. With the goalie pulled CUW tied the game with just 39 seconds left sending DCB to overtime for the 6th time this season. Just 2 seconds into the extra frame Tyrell Pompu blasted a slapshot form the high slot to give DCB a much deserved 5-4 win.
For the scorers check out the boxscore at http://achahockey.org/view/achahockey/divisions/men-s-d2-1/stats-431?type=boxscore&level=game&id=3391512
The Jacks will host the #6 ranked Williston State College Tetons on Tuesday February 12th at the Lumberdome. Game time is 7:30pm. The Jacks lost a week ago in Williston by a score of 4-2.
The Jacks will finish the season with a home and home against the West's top team the University of Mary. They will play in Bismarck Saturday February 16 at 7:00pm and at home the next day starting at 7:30pm.
Want to know how the ACHA rankings work? Are you good at math? Here is how the rankings work according to the ACHA website! Good luck!
The rankings are an average of two separate ranking algorithms. Each team starts the season with the same base rating of 7. The rating gets adjusted throughout the season based on a team's performance against every other team it plays, so strength of schedule builds and is adjusted throughout the season based on each team's interactions with every other team. The more data that the system intakes, the more accurate it becomes.
From the creator of the algorithms:
There are no weights per se used in the algorithm. It is purely predictive, and a team's rating is akin to their average game performance, where each game performance is simply opponent rating + goal differential (limited). Sounds simple, but the magic happens in the recursive nature of the algorithm as every team's rating depends on all of their opponents' ratings...plus goal differential. After thousands of iterations in which each teams rating is adjusted to minimize the initial error (that resulted from the initial assumption that all teams are equal) convergence is reached and the rankings lock in.
The second rating is done exactly the same except that the goal differential in each game is limited to 1, thereby emphasizing wins and losses rather than pure goal differential.
All ties in a ranking will be broken by determining which team has the highest ranking in the 1 goal differential ranking.