Jason Down a Wockey Dream

Entering the 2013 Wockey Pool, 200 entrants had dreams of becoming the Wockey Champion and having their name etched in immortality.  Down to the final game, just two are left who can still hold onto that dream.  And they actually have the same name.  And also they live in the same town.  And really things get much more complicated than that.

 After Yale continued their impressive upset run by downing Massachusetts-Lowell 3-2 in overtime and top seed Quinnipiac beat St. Cloud State 4-1, Jason Kuss and Jason Sturm are the two remaining Wockeyites vying for the title of Wockey Champion.  We are down to two vastly different scenarios.

The simple solution is that on Saturday night Quinnipiac wins and Jason Kuss is crowned your Wockey Champion.  In this scenario, Joe Zielinski would finish second and Sturm third.  There would be a five-way tie for the two remaining money-winning spots between Mary Cotie, Brian Jesse, Jon Brinckerhoff, Matt Laaksonen, and Wockey God Kevin Jewett.  The first tiebreaker is total goals scored in the Frozen Four.  After tonight’s games, there have been ten goals scored.  The tiebreaker comes down to who is closest to the number of goals scored--it doesn’t matter if you go over.  If we still have a tie, the second tiebreaker comes down to total goals scored in the tournament.  More on that in a bit, because...

This is where things get ridiculously complicated.  Yale was the last team to make it into the NCAA tournament.  They got in only when Michigan lost the very last game before the NCAA made its selections.  They played powerhouse Minnesota in the first round.  Nobody expected them to get this far.  Nobody except for Tim Evanson.  Tim was the only Wockeyite clever enough to send the Bulldogs to the national championship game.  Unfortunately for Tim, the rest of his picks weren’t fueled by that same cleverness and even if Yale wins, the best he can finish is in a tie for 46th place.

So if the Bulldogs are able to pull off the unthinkable, then in a pool of 200 brackets, we will crown a winner who was unable to correctly predict the NCAA Champion.  And we will have to go to two tiebreakers to do it.

As it stands, no one can gain the ten points one would earn for predicting the NCAA Champion if Yale wins.  Therefore the current standings would remain the same.  Finishing in third would be Chris Walker.  Finishing in a tie for fourth and fifth would be Zielinski, Chris Goodman, and Erich Manwarren.  Finishing in a tie for the title of Wockey Champion would be Kuss and Sturm.  Remarkably, they both predicted there would be 15 goals scored in the Frozen Four, so the first tiebreaker is thrown out.  For the second tiebreaker, Kuss predicted 70 goals would be scored in the tournament while Sturm guessed 88.  As it stands, 73 goals have been scored.  If Yale wins and five or less goals are scored, Kuss wins the title.  If Yale wins and 7 or more goals are scored, Sturm is your victor.  And if six goals are scored, they would split the title, split the winnings between first and second place, and somehow have to set up a custody schedule for the Wockey Champion mug.  Quite frankly, it would suck if it got to this point, but would you expect anything else from a tournament that has gone so unaccording to plan so far?

Just when you think Wockey can’t get any more bizarre, something like this happens.  Or this.  Or possibly even this.  We’ll see how weird things get on Saturday night.  

I hope you can watch the game.  Even though the names of the teams aren’t necessarily sexy, if Yale and Qunnipiac have shown us anything, it’s that they play great hockey and should provide an exciting game.  Did you know this is the first time two teams from the ECAC will play each other in the NCAA title game since 1984?  Did you know the schools are only ten miles apart?  Did you know Quinnipiac is already 3-0 against Yale this season?  This is the kind of banal, useless information you only get from the Wockey Pool, but it also makes for just a few of the great storylines heading into this game.  I hope that if nothing else, you’ve developed a greater appreciation for the wonderful sport of college hockey through this silly, little pool.  And I hope you’ll tune in Saturday at 7:00pm CT on ESPN to watch what should be a marvelous final game (especially considering the Wockey circumstances at stake).  

Until then...

Your Sleazy, Cheesy, Easy Wockey Commish,

Alex