Youth Hockey Hub Weekly Rankings (1-23-12)

YouthHockeyHub · Post by **YouthHockeyHub** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 2:05 pm

Two new number 1's (PWA and U14A) and a ton of noobs in the SQB, PWB, and U10A.

Next weekend is a huge weekend in PWB (32 Teamer hosted by OMG) and SQA/SQB (Duluth)....look for previews later in the week. We also plan on publishing an open letter to the Tournament Director of the Fargo Flyers Int'l Squirt Tourney on the Top 16 seeds in that 64 teamer next month.

Here are the most recent and accurate rankings:

http://youthhockeyhub.com/youth-hockeyrankings/

Have a good rest of the day.

Tony Scott

Toomuchtoosoon · Post by **Toomuchtoosoon** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:38 pm

Just a question on your methods. I noticed that one of your top ranked teams had about 4 losses in the last week, but they did not lose any ground. How is that possible?

Survey · Post by **Survey** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:44 pm

Could also argue why Wayzata isn't ranked #1 in the Bantam A polls with Edina's recent loss to Duluth East and tie to Burnsville...

YouthHockeyHub · Post by **YouthHockeyHub** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 4:50 pm

TooMuch: which team is that? We do our best to scrape sites and document all 9 levels (especially all of our T10 and close bys).

survey: Wayzata is inching higher in our formula. I would say by next week they will pass Edina, no matter how well either plays this week. Here's how I know:

Our formula is 3 parts:

1. Popular poll: each level has at least 20 rankers, some have 50+. Similar to a coaches poll in NCAA Football or Basketball (pts awarded for a ranking in the T10). We also throw out bad pollsters each week (some guys will deliberately rank teams no where near the T10 in the top 10) in order to retain the integrity of the popular poll.

2. Strength of Schedule: Similar to My hockey rankings, once 10 games have been logged by a team - we can determine mathematically whose schedule is tougher than the others. Where ours differs from MHR is we weight recent wins (e.g. Edina tie Bville and loss to DE) more heavily than a win in October.

3. T10 Wins: we also log wins vs. T10 teams, also with weight given to recency. This is how I know Wayzata, with nice wins over T10 opponents will surge fairly soon and Edina will dip slightly. We do not publish our data on these 3 for a couple reasons. 1. The Popular Poll is super fickle and most the time the least reliable (hence the reason certain rankings stink so bad, well at least those rankings started to copy ours*). 2. The data for T10 wins is sometimes off (e.g. we don't know at the time of publish who won such and such tournament games last weekend).

*I have proof that other sites copy our rankings (we strategically/randomly put teams that don't exist into our rankings and then somehow they end up in competing sites rankings - proof our rankings are lifted).

Our goal is to have the most accurate rankings. If we miss a game, or miss on a team it pisses us off. We are also extremely thankful when we are notified of a miss, not offended ONE bit.

Note: next year our ranking system will be even more full proof than it is today (the data will all be centralized and scorers/rankers will have access to the above 3 data sets).

Thanks for your questions guys.

Best Regards,

Tony Scott

PWGUY33 · Post by **PWGUY33** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 5:07 pm

So Let's Play Hockey copies your rankings? That's the only one I can think of. Myhockeyrankings is all computer no human element.

YouthHockeyHub · Post by **YouthHockeyHub** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 5:19 pm

PW33: I choose not name other sites who rank teams. But I will say this...we randomly place teams that are nowhere near T20 or don't exist at all but sound like they could be, but have been found on other sites as ranked.

By this time next year, I believe our site will be the only source for rankings.

The data will be so clean, the recency will be spot on, and the rankers will be way more informed (the formula for good rankings).

Sidebar: I love how people come on here and say rankings don't matter. Our traffic quadruples on rankings day. There is nothing we could write or report that could equal the importance of ranking (oh wait, I could write an article about Edina Hockey's Squirt Coach, that might do it - did you see that thread last week?)

Toomuchtoosoon · Post by **Toomuchtoosoon** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:07 pm

Burnsville Bantam B1 lost twice to Edina and twice in Woodbury Tourney. Woodbury black also lost twice in that tourney and still are ranked high.

Ratings are fun, but yes, they do not mean much. The state tourney takes care of that.

Survey · Post by **Survey** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:08 pm

Tony,

Thanks for the info and yes that does make sense. Was just curious and i figured you used a formula and I can see where it would take effect next week based off of that formula.

Edina has beat Wayzata twice so far so I can see how that factors in as well.

hockeysmart · Post by **hockeysmart** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:59 pm

Toomuchtoosoon wrote:Burnsville Bantam B1 lost twice to Edina and twice in Woodbury Tourney. Woodbury black also lost twice in that tourney and still are ranked high.

Ratings are fun, but yes, they do not mean much. The state tourney takes care of that.

Burnsville also took 3rd while Woodbury Black took 2nd in the tourney. Obviously both teams had key wins

forreal · Post by **forreal** » Mon Jan 23, 2012 10:14 pm

YouthHockeyHub wrote:TooMuch: which team is that? We do our best to scrape sites and document all 9 levels (especially all of our T10 and close bys).

survey: Wayzata is inching higher in our formula. I would say by next week they will pass Edina, no matter how well either plays this week. Here's how I know:

Our formula is 3 parts:

1. Popular poll: each level has at least 20 rankers, some have 50+. Similar to a coaches poll in NCAA Football or Basketball (pts awarded for a ranking in the T10). We also throw out bad pollsters each week (some guys will deliberately rank teams no where near the T10 in the top 10) in order to retain the integrity of the popular poll.

2. Strength of Schedule: Similar to My hockey rankings, once 10 games have been logged by a team - we can determine mathematically whose schedule is tougher than the others. Where ours differs from MHR is we weight recent wins (e.g. Edina tie Bville and loss to DE) more heavily than a win in October.

3. T10 Wins: we also log wins vs. T10 teams, also with weight given to recency. This is how I know Wayzata, with nice wins over T10 opponents will surge fairly soon and Edina will dip slightly. We do not publish our data on these 3 for a couple reasons. 1. The Popular Poll is super fickle and most the time the least reliable (hence the reason certain rankings stink so bad, well at least those rankings started to copy ours*). 2. The data for T10 wins is sometimes off (e.g. we don't know at the time of publish who won such and such tournament games last weekend).

*I have proof that other sites copy our rankings (we strategically/randomly put teams that don't exist into our rankings and then somehow they end up in competing sites rankings - proof our rankings are lifted).

Our goal is to have the most accurate rankings. If we miss a game, or miss on a team it pisses us off. We are also extremely thankful when we are notified of a miss, not offended ONE bit.

Note: next year our ranking system will be even more full proof than it is today (the data will all be centralized and scorers/rankers will have access to the above 3 data sets).

Thanks for your questions guys.

Best Regards,

Tony Scott

Sorry if I'm just confused, but you mention that you don't mention other ranking systems, but you know there are others that copy yours???
What would be another sites motivation to copy yours?

Beyond that, what is your motivation to convince this "bored" that your system is superior?

Based upon looking at many of these ranking systems. For many years, there are 2 that seem to be far more accurate than the others. Those being let's play hockey and myyouthhockeyrankings.com. I do hope you you achieve your goal in having the best ranking site. It would be nice to have one site that proves to be superior to the rest. It's my humble opinion, that in order to do that, you need to qualifyrtankers that are non biased and have no "skin" in the game. I also believe having few objective rankers would be far more effective than having numerous rankers with ties to specific teams or associations.

I would also be interested in having a section ranking the "hottest" teams at the moment in addition to the teams ranked and expected to finish at the end of the season.

Sorry for the long post, just feel that there are a few obvious changes that would need to be made to be in the class of the two other systems mentioned earlier.

Finally, I do agree with the popular sentiment that any rankings hold no real value, other than entertaining us and giving us something to chat about. It is also nice for the ranked teams to see their names attached to a ranking it helps people feed our egos but still doesnt define any givens team Regardless of where a team is ranked doesn't dictate how good they are. The ultimate test, and arguably the only one that matters is where the teams end the season. The thing that make myhockeyrankings the best is that it eliminates human opinion and year in and year out seems to be the most accurate to the way teams finish the year. Just my 50 cents

Bluewhitefan · Post by **Bluewhitefan** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:58 am

forreal wrote:
YouthHockeyHub wrote:TooMuch: which team is that? We do our best to scrape sites and document all 9 levels (especially all of our T10 and close bys).

survey: Wayzata is inching higher in our formula. I would say by next week they will pass Edina, no matter how well either plays this week. Here's how I know:

Our formula is 3 parts:

1. Popular poll: each level has at least 20 rankers, some have 50+. Similar to a coaches poll in NCAA Football or Basketball (pts awarded for a ranking in the T10). We also throw out bad pollsters each week (some guys will deliberately rank teams no where near the T10 in the top 10) in order to retain the integrity of the popular poll.

2. Strength of Schedule: Similar to My hockey rankings, once 10 games have been logged by a team - we can determine mathematically whose schedule is tougher than the others. Where ours differs from MHR is we weight recent wins (e.g. Edina tie Bville and loss to DE) more heavily than a win in October.

3. T10 Wins: we also log wins vs. T10 teams, also with weight given to recency. This is how I know Wayzata, with nice wins over T10 opponents will surge fairly soon and Edina will dip slightly. We do not publish our data on these 3 for a couple reasons. 1. The Popular Poll is super fickle and most the time the least reliable (hence the reason certain rankings stink so bad, well at least those rankings started to copy ours*). 2. The data for T10 wins is sometimes off (e.g. we don't know at the time of publish who won such and such tournament games last weekend).

*I have proof that other sites copy our rankings (we strategically/randomly put teams that don't exist into our rankings and then somehow they end up in competing sites rankings - proof our rankings are lifted).

Our goal is to have the most accurate rankings. If we miss a game, or miss on a team it pisses us off. We are also extremely thankful when we are notified of a miss, not offended ONE bit.

Note: next year our ranking system will be even more full proof than it is today (the data will all be centralized and scorers/rankers will have access to the above 3 data sets).

Thanks for your questions guys.

Best Regards,

Tony Scott
Sorry if I'm just confused, but you mention that you don't mention other ranking systems, but you know there are others that copy yours???
What would be another sites motivation to copy yours?

Beyond that, what is your motivation to convince this "bored" that your system is superior?

Based upon looking at many of these ranking systems. For many years, there are 2 that seem to be far more accurate than the others. Those being let's play hockey and myyouthhockeyrankings.com. I do hope you you achieve your goal in having the best ranking site. It would be nice to have one site that proves to be superior to the rest. It's my humble opinion, that in order to do that, you need to qualifyrtankers that are non biased and have no "skin" in the game. I also believe having few objective rankers would be far more effective than having numerous rankers with ties to specific teams or associations.

I would also be interested in having a section ranking the "hottest" teams at the moment in addition to the teams ranked and expected to finish at the end of the season.

Sorry for the long post, just feel that there are a few obvious changes that would need to be made to be in the class of the two other systems mentioned earlier.

Finally, I do agree with the popular sentiment that any rankings hold no real value, other than entertaining us and giving us something to chat about. It is also nice for the ranked teams to see their names attached to a ranking it helps people feed our egos but still doesnt define any givens team Regardless of where a team is ranked doesn't dictate how good they are. The ultimate test, and arguably the only one that matters is where the teams end the season. The thing that make myhockeyrankings the best is that it eliminates human opinion and year in and year out seems to be the most accurate to the way teams finish the year. Just my 50 cents

So, LPH and MyHockey are more "accurate" than the others? Based on what? YOUR OPINION. Please advise as to where the non-biased rankers with no "skin in the game" are supposed to come from? These are the only people who watch the games. Taking all human opinion out of the equation is not possible.

GTTN · Post by **GTTN** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 11:10 am

Lets play hockey rankings have been slightly off for years.

forreal · Post by **forreal** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 1:57 pm

Bluewhitefan wrote:
forreal wrote:
YouthHockeyHub wrote:TooMuch: which team is that? We do our best to scrape sites and document all 9 levels (especially all of our T10 and close bys).

survey: Wayzata is inching higher in our formula. I would say by next week they will pass Edina, no matter how well either plays this week. Here's how I know:

Our formula is 3 parts:

1. Popular poll: each level has at least 20 rankers, some have 50+. Similar to a coaches poll in NCAA Football or Basketball (pts awarded for a ranking in the T10). We also throw out bad pollsters each week (some guys will deliberately rank teams no where near the T10 in the top 10) in order to retain the integrity of the popular poll.

2. Strength of Schedule: Similar to My hockey rankings, once 10 games have been logged by a team - we can determine mathematically whose schedule is tougher than the others. Where ours differs from MHR is we weight recent wins (e.g. Edina tie Bville and loss to DE) more heavily than a win in October.

3. T10 Wins: we also log wins vs. T10 teams, also with weight given to recency. This is how I know Wayzata, with nice wins over T10 opponents will surge fairly soon and Edina will dip slightly. We do not publish our data on these 3 for a couple reasons. 1. The Popular Poll is super fickle and most the time the least reliable (hence the reason certain rankings stink so bad, well at least those rankings started to copy ours*). 2. The data for T10 wins is sometimes off (e.g. we don't know at the time of publish who won such and such tournament games last weekend).

*I have proof that other sites copy our rankings (we strategically/randomly put teams that don't exist into our rankings and then somehow they end up in competing sites rankings - proof our rankings are lifted).

Our goal is to have the most accurate rankings. If we miss a game, or miss on a team it pisses us off. We are also extremely thankful when we are notified of a miss, not offended ONE bit.

Note: next year our ranking system will be even more full proof than it is today (the data will all be centralized and scorers/rankers will have access to the above 3 data sets).

Thanks for your questions guys.

Best Regards,

Tony Scott
Sorry if I'm just confused, but you mention that you don't mention other ranking systems, but you know there are others that copy yours???
What would be another sites motivation to copy yours?

Beyond that, what is your motivation to convince this "bored" that your system is superior?

Based upon looking at many of these ranking systems. For many years, there are 2 that seem to be far more accurate than the others. Those being let's play hockey and myyouthhockeyrankings.com. I do hope you you achieve your goal in having the best ranking site. It would be nice to have one site that proves to be superior to the rest. It's my humble opinion, that in order to do that, you need to qualifyrtankers that are non biased and have no "skin" in the game. I also believe having few objective rankers would be far more effective than having numerous rankers with ties to specific teams or associations.

I would also be interested in having a section ranking the "hottest" teams at the moment in addition to the teams ranked and expected to finish at the end of the season.

Sorry for the long post, just feel that there are a few obvious changes that would need to be made to be in the class of the two other systems mentioned earlier.

Finally, I do agree with the popular sentiment that any rankings hold no real value, other than entertaining us and giving us something to chat about. It is also nice for the ranked teams to see their names attached to a ranking it helps people feed our egos but still doesnt define any givens team Regardless of where a team is ranked doesn't dictate how good they are. The ultimate test, and arguably the only one that matters is where the teams end the season. The thing that make myhockeyrankings the best is that it eliminates human opinion and year in and year out seems to be the most accurate to the way teams finish the year. Just my 50 cents
So, LPH and MyHockey are more "accurate" than the others? Based on what? YOUR OPINION. Please advise as to where the non-biased rankers with no "skin in the game" are supposed to come from? These are the only people who watch the games. Taking all human opinion out of the equation is not possible.

Fair enough, though as far as I know, myhockeyrankings has no human element and following the last couple state tournaments, their method has seemed to be very close! Maybe it is just MY OPINION, that the only way to have the best ranking system, is to eliminate rankers. I suppose it would be impossible to motivate "hockey people" with out kids playing to go rank youth hockey games. They would probably think the idea was crazy.

YouthHockeyHub · Post by **YouthHockeyHub** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 2:08 pm

Great discussion.

66% of our ranking points are data driven (see above), the other 33% is popular poll. I also noted that we do a thorough check of all of our ranker's submissions each week, thus eliminating the ego side of a pollster. For example we will kick out a ranking if the poll posted is not in the same stratosphere as the previous week or includes a team that is not close.

I do have to admit, the rankers from all over the state have been invaluable resources for us to discover new teams in less visible parts of the state.

We also have a few rankers that are referees at the youth level as well.

I think our rankings are the best because we factor in recency to the data giving more weight to a win in February vs. October. The computer ranking system that you speak of does not. As a whole it does a great job of data mining (much better than we do that's for sure), but I think we do a better job of recency with the data we have.

TS

Hockey General · Post by **Hockey General** » Tue Jan 24, 2012 10:55 pm

TS, I think you guys are doing a great job! Question though. Why aren't your top 10 teams at each level followed in the tournaments they play in? Or are they? I see them covered in the "known" tournaments because it is followed with several local blogs. But what about the tournaments with little or no coverage. You have top 10 teams going out in to these little known tournaments and not performing well but still maintaining their "ranked" status. And, in some cases highly ranked status. For example, Sibley Squirt A's (ranked 2nd in your poll for weeks) comes up to Cloquet a couple weeks ago to play in a six team tournament and finishes 3rd by winning a double overtime shootout. Yet, they're still ranked 2nd in your polls two weeks later. Does a tournament like that go reported? If one of your rankers watches a game/tournament are they committed to reporting on that game/tournament or do they only report positive news on their teams. Just curious.....

District 8 Fan · Post by **District 8 Fan** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:38 pm

Hockey General
You raise a good point. As you noted, a lot of the tournaments don't list results. It is frustrating that so few of the squirt teams list all their scores. Kudos for Sibley for listing (in detail) game results. As shown they did lose one game in the Cloquet tournament to a WI team who lists on their web site a victory among others over #3WBL (funny not on WBL's site). In the tourney Sibley did beat a team (Hermantown) which defeated #7 Andover twice. Based on what is shown on their site, Edina is the only team which Sibley hasn't been able to beat.

jpiehl · Post by **jpiehl** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:56 pm

District 8 Fan wrote:Hockey General
You raise a good point. As you noted, a lot of the tournaments don't list results. It is frustrating that so few of the squirt teams list all their scores. Kudos for Sibley for listing (in detail) game results. As shown they did lose one game in the Cloquet tournament to a WI team who lists on their web site a victory among others over #3WBL (funny not on WBL's site). In the tourney Sibley did beat a team (Hermantown) which defeated #7 Andover twice. Based on what is shown on their site, Edina is the only team which Sibley hasn't been able to beat.

Most squirt teams don't list their results because most districts have rules that say they can't. Since standings aren't allowed to be kept, scores aren't allowed to be listed because you could easily form standings based on everyone's game results.

District 8 Fan · Post by **District 8 Fan** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 2:21 pm

jpiehl wrote:
District 8 Fan wrote:Hockey General
You raise a good point. As you noted, a lot of the tournaments don't list results. It is frustrating that so few of the squirt teams list all their scores. Kudos for Sibley for listing (in detail) game results. As shown they did lose one game in the Cloquet tournament to a WI team who lists on their web site a victory among others over #3WBL (funny not on WBL's site). In the tourney Sibley did beat a team (Hermantown) which defeated #7 Andover twice. Based on what is shown on their site, Edina is the only team which Sibley hasn't been able to beat.
Most squirt teams don't list their results because most districts have rules that say they can't. Since standings aren't allowed to be kept, scores aren't allowed to be listed because you could easily form standings based on everyone's game results.

Interesting indeed. Which districts have those rules? I am certain I can find a squirt team in all districts which do post.

Royal24 · Post by **Royal24** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 2:22 pm

District 10

District 8 Fan · Post by **District 8 Fan** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 2:59 pm

Royal24 wrote:District 10

I see one their site that Irondale's top squirt team is 12-7-1
Are they soon to be on District 10's double secret probation?
District 10 does seem to limit postings. So does District 5. However in all of the other Districts squirt postings are prevalent. Why have rules if they aren't going to be inforced is my beef.

YouthHockeyHub · Post by **YouthHockeyHub** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:05 pm

Over the last 2 weeks I have received more "complaints" about our Squirt Rankings. More than the whole year combined. And what you read above is the chief reason....very little data.

Stillwater, for example, accross the board has a private site...which makes any of their teams impossible to rank.

Our Fargo predicted seeds article caused a stir yesterday:

http://youthhockeyhub.com/fargo-flyers- ... t-1-seeds/

We are doing our best to get it right, we are not perfect.

jpiehl · Post by **jpiehl** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:19 pm

District 8 Fan wrote:
jpiehl wrote:
District 8 Fan wrote:Hockey General
You raise a good point. As you noted, a lot of the tournaments don't list results. It is frustrating that so few of the squirt teams list all their scores. Kudos for Sibley for listing (in detail) game results. As shown they did lose one game in the Cloquet tournament to a WI team who lists on their web site a victory among others over #3WBL (funny not on WBL's site). In the tourney Sibley did beat a team (Hermantown) which defeated #7 Andover twice. Based on what is shown on their site, Edina is the only team which Sibley hasn't been able to beat.
Most squirt teams don't list their results because most districts have rules that say they can't. Since standings aren't allowed to be kept, scores aren't allowed to be listed because you could easily form standings based on everyone's game results.

Interesting indeed. Which districts have those rules? I am certain I can find a squirt team in all districts which do post.

I know at a minimum District 10 and District 5 have those rules. Yes, you will find teams in each that do post, but especially in 10 they will come down on an association for doing it. They don't actively patrol, but will enforce when it is found.