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My Hockey Rankings come out tomorrow. How accurate are they?


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I've gone from a heavy skeptic to somewhat of a believer in the rankings over the last 6 years or so.  But, it's important to understand them in order to get any value from them.  First off... strength of schedule IS taken into place in the formula.  However, it still does not benefit a team to play teams WAY worse than they are, because there is a cap on the the goal differential in the formula as well.   If PPE plays a team considerably worse than they are and beats them 12-1, they only get credit for a (iirc) 6 goal victory, so it would actually negatively impact their overall score.

Another thing that is important to understand is that the numerical RATING is far more useful than the RANKING.  The RATING can be used to predict the outcome of a matchup as follows:  A team with a 98.32 rating would be expected to beat a team with a 95.35 rating by 3 goals, with each ratings point equal to one goal differential.  Obviously, it does not always work out this way, BUT it can give an org. an idea of what teams *might* be a good matchup for them.  A team with a 97.00 rating would likely be wasting their time playing a team with an 83.00 rating.

All of this, of course, is highly dependent on cross-pollination of teams playing in tournaments against teams from other parts of the country.  An org. that has not played outside of its own "bubble" will have fairly inaccruate ratings until they play teams from another region. 

As long as it's used as a general litmus and not as the source of the parents' giant egos, i think it's a pretty valuable tool.

 

 

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Like any else it has the possibility to be incorrect. But I feel a lot can go in to that. Did the other team play poorly and have a bad game? Also tends to be an issue when a PA team say travels to NY. They view levels of play differently A Major vs A2 for example.  

That being said it can be pretty darn close and is the only system out there for gauging matchups and making sure when scheduling tournaments or scrimmages your team is competitive. 

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9 minutes ago, hockeyisgreat said:

Thanks, that did a great job of explaining it. Do they take into account last years rankings at all in determining a starting point for this year?  How many games do you need for an initial ranking?  This is all very interesting to this rookie!

I believe the new year starts all over. If I remember correctly, and I could be wrong, they have to play at least 5-7 games. I thought I remember reading that on the site. That is the sample size to begin the process. Last year before any teams had played the 7 games we did. So we were ranked in like the top 25 of the state. That obviously didn't last long as more teams played the games needed to number crunch.

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I don't believe that factor in prior year at all.  At team has to have at least 5 games logged in order to be ranked, but obviously the accuracy of the rankings increases considerably as more games are played.   A couple things to note:  

A team with an 88.00 rating might be a 91.00 with their starting goalie and a 85.00 with their backup goalie, but it is not tracked that granularly.  It's a huge factor.

Also- While leagues are shown to have separate rankings, all leagues under a given age group can be cross-reference by numerical rating.  For instance: 18U Tier I, Tier II, New England Prep, USA Independent Prep, Canada Midget AA, Canada Midget AAA, Minnesota HS, etc..... are all actually part of the same database.   A New England Prep team with a 96.00 rating should be equal to a 18U Tier I team with a 96.00 rating, even though they are listed in separate "Rankings"

 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, champeen said:

I don't believe that factor in prior year at all.  At team has to have at least 5 games logged in order to be ranked, but obviously the accuracy of the rankings increases considerably as more games are played.   A couple things to note:  

A team with an 88.00 rating might be a 91.00 with their starting goalie and a 85.00 with their backup goalie, but it is not tracked that granularly.  It's a huge factor.

Also- While leagues are shown to have separate rankings, all leagues under a given age group can be cross-reference by numerical rating.  For instance: 18U Tier I, Tier II, New England Prep, USA Independent Prep, Canada Midget AA, Canada Midget AAA, Minnesota HS, etc..... are all actually part of the same database.   A New England Prep team with a 96.00 rating should be equal to a 18U Tier I team with a 96.00 rating, even though they are listed in separate "Rankings"

 

 

 

All good points

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Very interesting. I am anxious to see how the rankings shake out in the first weeks. So if they don't have 5 games they get no ranking at all or until they get to five games?  I seem to remember that there was discussion here last year about making the top 6 in Tier 1 Midam to qualify for playoffs.  MidAm and USA Hockey use these Rankings for their tournaments?

Are there any competing Ranking services?

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I agree with everything said here.  The more games a team has played and the more outside their own league the more accurate the ratings are. In general they are a great guide from January on if you are still able to do scheduling. It can help to look at last year's rankings for scheduling this year as well but you have to be cautious because players can change from year to year obviously. 

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On 10/6/2020 at 9:34 AM, hockeyisgreat said:

From a novice to all of this. How accurate are the My Hockey rankings?  Can they be manipulated by strength of schedule? Is that why the PPE do not play any local Tier 1 teams?  I find it all very interesting.

Normally, they don’t get very accurate until late November. Add covid to the mix. 

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3 hours ago, Danner27 said:

Normally, they don’t get very accurate until late November. Add covid to the mix. 

Agreed.  By December they’re getting more relevant.  I used them mainly to gauge tourney matchups.  But all in all by the end of the season they’re pretty good in my judgement.

Not too useful for another 6 weeks though.

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1 hour ago, hockeyisgreat said:

Also is it true that the more games you play the less your ranking should be affected? I'm going to take snap shots of rankings every week to see what kind of movement occurs!

Just remember to focus more on the rating (as someone said above) than the ranking.  The rankings will change wildly because many many teams had not yet played the five game minimum to be included in week 1. 

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