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east hockey wrote:

HawkeyPower wrote:As a Hermantown fan I could care less where HSHW or any of the other polls have Hermantown. The only thing that matters is where you finish after the last game you play. I think if Hermantown played STA at State and won in OT HSHW would still have STA ahead of Hermantown somehow. One persons opinion is just that, a opinion. Or entertainment to pass along time until we get to where the season really matters.

You keep making sense like that, we might just have to invite you in as a moderator. Then they couldn't accuse us of being East-centric at the head of the table. They'd accuse us of being Duluth-area-centric, instead.

rainier wrote:“If you see something I am being inconsistent in, let me know, it is my hope not to be.” -HSHW

Your hope is about to be crushed, the inconsistency police are on the case.

Hermantown 5
Duluth Marshall 1

STA 4
Duluth Marshall 3 (OT)


Not sure about you, but this tells me that by Marshall's 14th game a good team was able to figure out that if you can control the one player who is involved in 59.5% (as of now) of the team's goals, they won't score much. This is also what people on here said who were at the game.

So Hermantown was the first “good” team to figure this out? So you’re saying that STA didn’t know they had to focus on Judd Peterson when they played? Come on HSHW, give your coaches some credit. Or is STA not a “good” team. Be consistent now.

As for the other stuff you said:
-There is room between 7/8 and 13/14, a couple spots actually.

The Hermantown team I saw beat GR looked better than the Breck team that lost to Moorhead, and I think Hermantown would beat Moorhead. Right after these two games happened, Hermantown moved ahead of Breck.

-One game doesn't make a season. They have played 18. Yes, if you only look at one game or two with the intention of drawing a particular conclusion, then it is easy to find it.

Inconsistency alert! You repeatedly bring up one game to make your conclusions (Herm-SCC or Breck-STA for example) And you’re right, it is easy to draw a conclusion from one game, especially when the conclusion is obvious, such as it was after the Herm-GR and Breck-Moorhead games. You want to use all 18 games? Okay, Hermantown is 18-0; Breck has two losses. No matter how you slice it, Hermantown comes out ahead of Breck. Now that’s consistency.

-Okay, so the DM/STA that happened months ago and was St Thomas' first game of the season is the "best evidence available" while Breck's first game of the season is not?

Do you dispute that the results against DM are the best evidence available to compare Herm and STA? If you have better evidence, I would love to see it. And yes, given that SCC was missing key players when they played Breck, I think the GR/Moorhead results are better evidence to compare Herm and Breck.

-A couple years ago, Morris/Benson was undefeated for a long time and no one had them ranked anywhere.

This is a false comparison and is the type of statement that strips away your already vanishing credibility. Hermantown is a unanimous top 3 A team, no matter what rankings you look at; Morris/Benson is not, never has been, and never will be. Come on now.

3 years ago when Little Falls got the #1 seed people on here were saying they didn't deserve it because of their schedule. They ended up the #5 Class A team in PageStat that year despite having only one loss; the loss was to the state champs.
So now we have a team that has a weaker schedule than others but the opposite logic is applied.

Considering Little Falls’ only loss was to the state champs, I’d say their seeding and human ranking wasn’t too far off. And the reason people are using “opposite logic” for Hermantown is because their schedule is not weak, it is comparable to the other top A teams, thus they deserve the higher ranking and/or seeding. It is consistent to believe that an undefeated team with a really weak schedule doesn’t deserve a high ranking as much as an undefeated team with a solid schedule does.


My opinion, which happens to be the same as both of the computer rankings, is that based on the final scores of the games these teams have been in, St Thomas has played the best through the season.

Inconsistency alert! Here you state that you base your opinion on “the final scores of the games these teams have been in” yet five sentences later you say “I also rarely look at margin of victory”. The final scores are the margin of victory! The only way to use final scores without considering margin of victory is to go by victories only, in which case Hermantown would be #1. If you actually were being consistent, you would be forced to put Hermantown at #1.

I try to be as consistent as I can week after week in the things I look for with teams and their schedule.

I give you this, you are being consistent–consistently biased!

I started the season with someone else's rankings and was accused of being a homer then. If you see something I am being inconsistent in, let me know, it is my hope not to be.

The biggest things I look at are/always have been who you play, ratio of goals scored, GA, GF and when you are behind. I rarely use shots to say much, aside from getting an idea of what happened and I also rarely look at margin of victory.

Inconsistency alert! You “rarely use shots to say much, aside from getting an ‘idea’ of what happened”? What else can you use shots for? You only use shots to get an idea of “what happened”? What else is there besides “what happened”? And yes, shots are not everything, but they are always a consideration. How do you get an accurate idea of what happened if you don’t consider shots and margin of victory? If you can’t watch the game yourself, these are two things that everyone else in the world would use to gauge teams, so what do you use? You say you use GF and GA, but isn’t that just a cumulative measure of margin of victory? The inconsistency alarm is starting to smoke! Abandon ship!

Those are my opinion of what is important to look at. Changing that up or using what I have seen in games I have watched, by definition, introduces bias.

HShockeywatcher wrote:

rainier wrote: Hermantown 5
Duluth Marshall 1

STA 4
Duluth Marshall 3 (OT)

That's the best evidence available to compare these two teams. What does it say to you?

Not sure about you, but this tells me that by Marshall's 14th game a good team was able to figure out that if you can control the one player who is involved in 59.5% (as of now) of the team's goals, they won't score much. This is also what people on here said who were at the game.

As for the other stuff you said:
-There is room between 7/8 and 13/14, a couple spots actually.

-One game doesn't make a season. They have played 18. Yes, if you only look at one game or two with the intention of drawing a particular conclusion, then it is easy to find it.

-Okay, so the DM/STA that happened months ago and was St Thomas' first game of the season is the "best evidence available" while Breck's first game of the season is not?

-A couple years ago, Morris/Benson was undefeated for a long time and no one had them ranked anywhere. 3 years ago when Little Falls got the #1 seed people on here were saying they didn't deserve it because of their schedule. They ended up the #5 Class A team in PageStat that year despite having only one loss; the loss was to the state champs.
So now we have a team that has a weaker schedule than others but the opposite logic is applied.


My opinion, which happens to be the same as both of the computer rankings, is that based on the final scores of the games these teams have been in, St Thomas has played the best through the season.

I try to be as consistent as I can week after week in the things I look for with teams and their schedule. I started the season with someone else's rankings and was accused of being a homer then. If you see something I am being inconsistent in, let me know, it is my hope not to be.

The biggest things I look at are/always have been who you play, ratio of goals scored, GA, GF and when you are behind. I rarely use shots to say much, aside from getting an idea of what happened and I also rarely look at margin of victory.

Those are my opinion of what is important to look at. Changing that up or using what I have seen in games I have watched, by definition, introduces bias.

warriors41 wrote: From Minnhock: STA strength of schedule is 17th, Breck is 43rd, and Hermantown is 53rd.

In the 2009 state tournament, the one which you are referring too where Little Falls recieved the #1 seed when they were undefeated with a weaker schedule, their schedule was ranked in the 80's I remember. The other part to that controversy was that the top three teams in most people's mind going into the tournament were Little Falls, SCC, and Warroad. Little Falls had beaten SCC, and SCC had beaten Warroad earlier that year. So while Little Falls played a weaker schedule, they still had a few quality opponents which were going to be seeded in the tournament. You couldn't logically put SCC in front of LF since they had lost to them. You couldn't possibly seed Warroad in front of SCC since they had lost to them. And Breck had few other losses on their record so no one thought to put them #1 either. Oh, plus LF had the most prolific scorer in the history of the state, just another interesting tidbit. This isn't apples to apples. Hermantown's schedule is stronger than LF's was in 2009. They have gotten 2nd in the state tournament the last two years. They have two state championships and have proven their program is more than just a benefactor of a "weak" schedule.

It looks like Hermantown played the best against Duluth Marshall, a common opponent for all three, and the fourth ranked team in the class A. The fact is that Breck does not have a win on their schedule with enough quality that should warrant them to be ahead of Hermantown. They just haven't beaten a good enough team you can point at and say "there, Hermantown would struggle or lose to that team." You can make an argument for STA which beat Breck but I would still give the nod to Hermantown for the top spot.

trev2k1 wrote: 1 Herm
2 STA
3 Breck

defense wrote:HSHW:
This ain't that big a deal, but I gotta know why a loss by Alexandria to evidently a much worse St. Cloud Apollo, combined with a loss to Fergus Falls still sees Alexandria at a close #2 in your section seed. I know that all three are 1-1 against each other, but the other two beat Apollo. In the vast majority of ranking wisdom, this would carry a bit of weight.
And I personally don't know if any 6a team should be in the rankings at this point, maybe LF needs to be on watch list....

HawkeyPower wrote:I don't know if I have been here long enough for that, but at some point common sense has to prevail. What I find most entertaining is that HSHW keeps telling everyone that these are his "opinion" and yet he takes it personal when everyone else gives their "opinion". I do appreciate the effort from HSHW, because I wouldn't want to do it. Its almost like being a Referee, everyone complains about them but someone has to do it.

rainier wrote:

HShockeywatcher wrote:rainer, you seem to misunderstand a lot of what I have said. I will do my best to clear a few things up for you and if you still have questions, let me know.

It is annoying how instead of quoting original posts with your rebuttals you make these new posts that float miles away from your original statements so you can wriggle your way out of being caught dead to rights in your inconsistency and inanity. That said, let's see what else I didn't "understand".

-I used the Breck/SCC game as an example to show that you cannot use one game for a direct comparison. Nothing more.

No, you used the Breck/SCC game to compare to the Herm/SCC game in order to justify ranking Breck ahead of them. And if you really believe you can't use one game to make a direct comparison, then does that mean you can't use the recent Breck-STA game to make a comparison between those two teams?


The only times I am only referring to one game are when I am analyzing the past week [for my rankings] and the team only played one game or there was only one game worth mentioning or if I am responding to a post about a specific game. I will almost never say, "team x beat team z like this and team y beat team z like this, so team x is better."

So these are the "only" times you use one game for your analysis? What else is left where you don't use one game? Not very much.

-An example of the difference between using margin of victory vs ratio of goals. Hermantown beat TG 7-3. EGF beat TG 5-2. If you simply used margin of victory, you'd say Herm won by 4, EGF won by 3, Herm won better. If you use ratio, you see that Herm scored 2.33 goals for every goal they allowed while EGF scored 2.5.

Your ratio, which is just simple division and doesn't significantly change anything, does nothing to convince me that Herm's victory over TG wasn't better than EGF's. The more a team scores, the more irrelevant your ratio becomes. If Hermantown goes is up 7-0 going into the third, they will call off the dogs at some point. And by using your ratio, STA's 4-3 win over Duluth Marshall is very unimpressive, unless you take into account shots-but you don't do that.

A classic extreme example is winning 10-8 vs winning 3-1. Both won by 2 goal margins, but most would say the 3-1 victory is much more impressive. As would I.

Really? So if East beats Tonka 3-1 its more impressive than if they beat them 10-8? How so? Its seems to me that the difference in how each team's offense and defense performed is exactly the same in both games. East defense was bad in one game, but good in the other, and vice versa for their offense. This is where something like shots would help immensely to figure out which of these wins was more impressive, but once again, you rarely use that.

I'm not by any means saying I can't subtract two numbers, but unless two teams play the exact same schedule, margin is tough to compare. I look at goals they scored compared to how other teams who played them did, same for GA and the ratio of goals.

So margin is tough to compare, but yet you look at "goals they scored compared to how other teams who played them did, GA, and the ratio of goals" So if Herm beats a team 8-0, and Breck beats that same team 8-7, you see that both teams scored 8, which tells you nothing. GA? Hermantown gave up 0 whereas Breck gave up 7. Ratio of goals? 8 to 1.1. Two of those measures tell you Hermantown was the better team, why not just skip the BS and go straight to margin of victory? You look at goals they scored and their GA. This is margin of victory! How do you not see this?

-SOG are interesting. Sometimes they tell the story, but generally speaking unless one team was dominant the whole game, they don't [necessarily] give a true account of what happened. They can do that, but to say that because shots were, for example, 8-8 in a 17 minute period to say that play was even is crazy. Many posters jump to shots, say one team outshot the other, so they dominated. I don't do that.

You think it's crazy to say that in a period where the shots were 8-8 that the play was even? Isn't it crazier to say that one team or the other had an edge in the period? If you're not at the game then I think the only sane conclusion you can draw from an 8-8 tie in shots is that the play was even. No one is saying that shots give the whole story, but it can be used to create a more complete story.

-The Morris/Benson and Little Falls examples were analogies. There is no where saying they are the exact same situation. They are not nor am I saying they were.

Thanks professor, but I know your Morris/Benson comment was an analogy, it is just that it is a terrible analogy. An analogy is using something else to make a similar comparison; the goal in using an analogy is to get very close to the same exact situation so that it can be understood from a different angle. Your analogy did the opposite of this, it took a situation (an undefeated bad team) and tried to equate it with a situation (an undefeated top 3 team) that was completely different. If you were not saying they were the same situation, then first of all you don't know what an analogy is, and second of all, why did you even bring Morris/Benson up?

Morris/Benson was no where on anyone's rankings and they didn't deserve to be. The point is their schedule is what kept them off the rankings. Hermantown, on the other hand, while they have the 10th most difficult schedule, is being ranked, as the deserve to be. But with the schedule they have, they are lower than if it were more difficult.
It will be interesting to see if it falls in the coming weeks as the Hawks' schedule seems to be pretty easy from here on out.

This is hilarious. This is not the point you were trying to make with your analogy in your previous post, but now that you get called out on it, your story completely changes so you can appear to be right. Nice try, but no dice.

If you want to point out how you were misunderstood, stick to your original posts instead of changing things up in a new, HSHW-friendly post.

Really?!!!!

Ranier...

If you don't like HSHW's ratings or comments, then don't read this thread.

I would love to have you do your own rating so we could rip it apart.
I'm sure it wouldn't be biased!!

Comments are certainly welcome, but..........Get a life!!!

rainier wrote:

HShockeywatcher wrote:rainer, you seem to misunderstand a lot of what I have said. I will do my best to clear a few things up for you and if you still have questions, let me know.

It is annoying how instead of quoting original posts with your rebuttals you make these new posts that float miles away from your original statements so you can wriggle your way out of being caught dead to rights in your inconsistency and inanity. That said, let's see what else I didn't "understand".

-I used the Breck/SCC game as an example to show that you cannot use one game for a direct comparison. Nothing more.

No, you used the Breck/SCC game to compare to the Herm/SCC game in order to justify ranking Breck ahead of them. And if you really believe you can't use one game to make a direct comparison, then does that mean you can't use the recent Breck-STA game to make a comparison between those two teams?


The only times I am only referring to one game are when I am analyzing the past week [for my rankings] and the team only played one game or there was only one game worth mentioning or if I am responding to a post about a specific game. I will almost never say, "team x beat team z like this and team y beat team z like this, so team x is better."

So these are the "only" times you use one game for your analysis? What else is left where you don't use one game? Not very much.

-An example of the difference between using margin of victory vs ratio of goals. Hermantown beat TG 7-3. EGF beat TG 5-2. If you simply used margin of victory, you'd say Herm won by 4, EGF won by 3, Herm won better. If you use ratio, you see that Herm scored 2.33 goals for every goal they allowed while EGF scored 2.5.

Your ratio, which is just simple division and doesn't significantly change anything, does nothing to convince me that Herm's victory over TG wasn't better than EGF's. The more a team scores, the more irrelevant your ratio becomes. If Hermantown goes is up 7-0 going into the third, they will call off the dogs at some point. And by using your ratio, STA's 4-3 win over Duluth Marshall is very unimpressive, unless you take into account shots-but you don't do that.

A classic extreme example is winning 10-8 vs winning 3-1. Both won by 2 goal margins, but most would say the 3-1 victory is much more impressive. As would I.

Really? So if East beats Tonka 3-1 its more impressive than if they beat them 10-8? How so? Its seems to me that the difference in how each team's offense and defense performed is exactly the same in both games. East defense was bad in one game, but good in the other, and vice versa for their offense. This is where something like shots would help immensely to figure out which of these wins was more impressive, but once again, you rarely use that.

I'm not by any means saying I can't subtract two numbers, but unless two teams play the exact same schedule, margin is tough to compare. I look at goals they scored compared to how other teams who played them did, same for GA and the ratio of goals.

So margin is tough to compare, but yet you look at "goals they scored compared to how other teams who played them did, GA, and the ratio of goals" So if Herm beats a team 8-0, and Breck beats that same team 8-7, you see that both teams scored 8, which tells you nothing. GA? Hermantown gave up 0 whereas Breck gave up 7. Ratio of goals? 8 to 1.1. Two of those measures tell you Hermantown was the better team, why not just skip the BS and go straight to margin of victory? You look at goals they scored and their GA. This is margin of victory! How do you not see this?

-SOG are interesting. Sometimes they tell the story, but generally speaking unless one team was dominant the whole game, they don't [necessarily] give a true account of what happened. They can do that, but to say that because shots were, for example, 8-8 in a 17 minute period to say that play was even is crazy. Many posters jump to shots, say one team outshot the other, so they dominated. I don't do that.

You think it's crazy to say that in a period where the shots were 8-8 that the play was even? Isn't it crazier to say that one team or the other had an edge in the period? If you're not at the game then I think the only sane conclusion you can draw from an 8-8 tie in shots is that the play was even. No one is saying that shots give the whole story, but it can be used to create a more complete story.

-The Morris/Benson and Little Falls examples were analogies. There is no where saying they are the exact same situation. They are not nor am I saying they were.

Thanks professor, but I know your Morris/Benson comment was an analogy, it is just that it is a terrible analogy. An analogy is using something else to make a similar comparison; the goal in using an analogy is to get very close to the same exact situation so that it can be understood from a different angle. Your analogy did the opposite of this, it took a situation (an undefeated bad team) and tried to equate it with a situation (an undefeated top 3 team) that was completely different. If you were not saying they were the same situation, then first of all you don't know what an analogy is, and second of all, why did you even bring Morris/Benson up?

Morris/Benson was no where on anyone's rankings and they didn't deserve to be. The point is their schedule is what kept them off the rankings. Hermantown, on the other hand, while they have the 10th most difficult schedule, is being ranked, as the deserve to be. But with the schedule they have, they are lower than if it were more difficult.
It will be interesting to see if it falls in the coming weeks as the Hawks' schedule seems to be pretty easy from here on out.

This is hilarious. This is not the point you were trying to make with your analogy in your previous post, but now that you get called out on it, your story completely changes so you can appear to be right. Nice try, but no dice.

If you want to point out how you were misunderstood, stick to your original posts instead of changing things up in a new, HSHW-friendly post.

HSHW has met his match in the rainierman!

rainier wrote:What bothers me is that rankings aren't purely someone's opinion, it is understood that a healthy dose of objectivity must be factored in. Look at Karl's recent AA rankings, he dropped East to #2 as it should be after the most recent results. Now, I'm willing to bet that Karl believes that when East gets healthy they are still the #1 team, but he is able to put that aside and adjust his rankings so they a run in a similar fashion to 99.99% of sports rankings out there. HSHW does not do this, and he deservingly gets savaged for it.

And my rankings would be the exact same as HSHW's except Hermantown at #2 and Breck at #3.

rainier wrote:HSHW specifically asked for people to tell him when he was being inconsistent and to ask questions.

What bothers me is that rankings aren't purely someone's opinion, it is understood that a healthy dose of objectivity must be factored in. Look at Karl's recent AA rankings, he dropped East to #2 as it should be after the most recent results. Now, I'm willing to bet that Karl believes that when East gets healthy they are still the #1 team, but he is able to put that aside and adjust his rankings so they a run in a similar fashion to 99.99% of sports rankings out there. HSHW does not do this, and he deservingly gets savaged for it.

I am having a lively debate with HSHW, if you don't like it, don't read it.

rainier wrote:Really?!!!!

Ranier...

If you don't like HSHW's ratings or comments, then don't read this thread.

I would love to have you do your own rating so we could rip it apart.
I'm sure it wouldn't be biased!!

Comments are certainly welcome, but..........Get a life!!!

therightstuff wrote:HSHW doesn't appear to be too far off with his bias in the past..

Class A State Champions
2011 - STA
2010 - Breck
2009 - Breck
2008 - STA

therightstuff wrote:HSHW doesn't appear to be too far off with his bias in the past..

Class A State Champions
2011 - STA
2010 - Breck
2009 - Breck
2008 - STA

rainier wrote:You just joined the message board today. You wouldn't happen to be HSHW using another log in would you?