The Rundown - Nationals Prep

Officially, the field has been set for the 2023 U SPORTS National Women's Hockey Championship starting Thursday in Montreal at the home of the Montreal Carabins in CEPSUM Arena. Two teams from each of the non-RSEQ conferences will arrive in Montreal this week while the two Montreal-based RSEQ representatives will begin to prepare for their opponents. Who will play whom? How do the final rankings shake out? Why is Team A not ranked higher? Let's dig into all these questions and more as we get set for the National Championship weekend on The Rundown!

The AUS Final

Last week, I had noted that StFX had a 1-0 series lead over the UNB Reds in their AUS championship series thanks to a win on Saturday night. Those teams met for Game Two on Monday where Alayna Wagstaff scored at 11:04 of the second period and Kendra Woodland stopped all 34 shots she saw in a 1-0 UNB victory to even the series at 1-1. That means we'd need a Game Three, and that was scheduled for Wednesday in Fredericton.

Wednesday's game was tied going into the third period, and neither team would score a deciding goal in that stanza. We'd go to the ten-minute overtime, but no lamps would be lit. We'd get into a second overtime where Frederike Cyr put her name in the AUS history books.
Cyr converted the Lillian George feed while shorthanded in double-overtime to give UNB the 3-2 victory and the AUS championship! Cyr had looked dangerous all night, and her jump into the race down the ice paid dividends as UBC captured their second-straight AUS title. Both teams advance to Montreal, but UNB will be a top-four seed.

The OUA Final

The McCaw Cup best-of-one game was played last night in Toronto at Varsity Arena. The Nipissing Lakers and the Toronto Varsity Blues met in the final, and the last time these teams met in the playoffs saw Nipissing upset Toronto last year. Would we see another upset by the Lakers this year to capture their first-ever OUA banner?

Nipissing led 1-0 into the third period thanks to a Lana Duriez power-play goal with six minutes to play in the second period. Chantelle Sandquist had been spectacular in the Nipissing net through two periods, stopping 39 shots through those 40 minutes of play. It looked as though the Lakers were going to steal another game from Toronto despite the disparity in shots, but Katy McKenna's forechecking forced a turnover in the Nipissing end. That led to this moment.
McKenna's goal tied the game at 1-1 with 3:43 to play, and it seemed to give the Varsity Blues some new life after having been stonewalled for the previous 56 minutes of play. With the game tied, though, we'd need a winner to see who would win the OUA this season!

If you were thinking overtime, you were like most other people watching the game. However, Toronto sniper Céline Frappier had different ideas about this game as she wanted it done in 60 minutes.
With the play happening around and behind the Nipissing net late in the game, it seems the Lakers' defence was puck-watching as Kaitlyn McKnight centered to Céline Frappier in the slot, and Frappier buried the game-winning goal with 28 seconds to play! Toronto wins the McCaw Cup with a stunning comeback by a 2-1 score over the Nipissing Lakers. Both teams advance to Montreal, but Toronto will be a top-four seed.

The Field

We now know who will go to Montreal as champions and who will go as finalists. That will determine the seedings in Montreal. As a reminder, here are the teams heading to Montreal with the teams on the left as conference champions and the teams on the right as conference finalists. Please note these are NOT the seedings.

The Rankings

The March 7, 2023 rankings are the last ones published before the seedings for the National Championship comes out. There will be some movement on these rankings thanks to Nipissing losing, StFX losing, and UNB winning, but the top-three teams in UBC, Toronto, and Concordia are likely your top-three seeds in Montreal when the tournament begins. UNB likely will occupy the fourth seed thanks to their winning the AUS championship, and then we get into the U SPORTS National Championship quirks that determine the rest of the field. Don't be surprised to see at least one team who currently sits ahead of another teams switch seedings as those above-mentioned quirks fill out the brackets in Montreal a little more fairly.

The Quirks

For those who may be experiencing a U SPORTS National Women's Hockey Championship for the first time, there are a few unwritten rules that U SPORTS invokes to make things a little more fair for all teams. You may disagree with the logic of these quirks, but the end result makes the tournament a truly national tournament.

U SPORTS ensures that no conference winner and finalist will meet one another until a final. That holds true for both the National Championship Final and the Consolation Final, but it prevents another game between two teams who know one another very well. Having no team able to play another team from its conference also ensures the "national" part of the tournament as teams who win the Golden Path Trophy will have had to defeat two teams from another conference at minimum to win.

In saying this, this means that the conference champion will be either in the top half or bottom of the bracket, and the conference finalists from the same conference will be in the opposite half of the bracket. Because of this, Mount Royal's ranking of eighth-overall right now will change because they can't play UBC first or be in UBC's half of the bracket. That means that Mount Royal will be ranked either sixth- or seventh-overall when the National Championship rankings come out despite playing no games in last week. Of course, that also assumes nothing changes dramatically in the rankings.

The Actual Bracket

There's no actual proof of this, but I'm now convinced that U SPORTS might be the worst thing about university women's hockey. These seedings make little to no sense, and they're a whole lot of garbage. I'm assuming these rankings are based on ELO scores - a system which I've proven to be so faulty that it fails most elementary math classes - so that explains how these brackets can be so flawed.

For example, UBC was ranked as the top team virtually all season long. They finished the Canada West playoffs as the top-ranked team in the nation. They withstood Toronto beating Guelph to maintain their top-seeded standing. Yet Toronto barely defeats Nipissing in a one-game-takes-all final, and they suddenly are the top-ranked team in the nation?

Montreal, ranked seventh-overall five days ago, is now the fifth-seeded team in the nation because Nipissing lost a game, and StFX lost two games? If Nipissing was 23-5-3 (.742 win percentage), StFX was 24-8-3 (.686), and Montreal was 20-7-4 (.645), why is the team with the lowest win percentaage of the three teams ranked the highest of the three? Montreal shouldn't even get a vote as the fifth-seeded team, yet they'll play UNB in the 4-vs-5 game.

It's absolutely astounding how poorly U SPORTS is at ranking their own teams, and it becomes obvious why: no one watches the games. The ELO ranking system was a mess to begin with, it's only gotten worse as time has marched on, and it will continue to produce inaccurate rankings because of how flawed the system is. This system needs to be fired into the sun as soon as possible.

The Logical Bracket

In a logical world, here's what the brackets should have been in Montreal. This is based on rankings and wins - two important factors.

As you can see, the top-three seeds are still in place, and that factored in when determining who plays whom in the opening games. Clearly, there's no logic involved when it comes to drawing up the brackets, though, so who cares what I think when it comes to how these brackets should look logically?

The Last Word

I'm angry.

I'm angry that UBC isn't ranked as the first-overall team after they put together a 28-win season against arguably better competition than what Toronto faced. If UBC needed something to rally around, this should fire them up because they did nothing to warrant their removal as the best team in the country. That makes me angry.

I'm angry that Montreal is the fifth-ranked team when they played against five other teams all season. Both Nipissing and StFX played against better competition throughout the year, put up better records, and they had convincing wins over other ranked teams throughout the season. Seeing Montreal promoted as the fifth-ranked team should bother the rest of the field. That makes me angry.

I'm angry that Concordia and Nipissing - last year's U SPORTS finalists - are playing against one another in the opening round of this year's National Championship. If the goal of U SPORTS is to have teams cross-over and play teams from other conferences to determine the winner, putting these two teams together in the quarterfinal goes against that goal. Officially, last year's gold medalist or last year's silver medalist will finish no better than fifth-place this year through no fault of their own. That makes me angry.

What doesn't make me angry is that eight teams will determine who is the best among Canada university teams by Sunday. While I may strongly disagree with the rankings and the quarterfinal matchups, one of these eight teams will be crowned U SPORTS National Champions after winning three games against teams from across the country. Buckle up because these games should be good.

No one will make it easy on the eventual champion, and earning the title and the trophy will be a grind over four days. As always, I'll be cheering for Canada West's representatives in UBC and Mount Royal, but all eight teams have a legitimate shot at winning the Golden Path Trophy this year based on their strengths and weaknesses.

It all starts Thursday afternoon.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!