Wockey Pool X Day Four - A Tie at the Top or are we on the Brinck of a New Wockey Champ?

Welcome back to Wockey Pool X, or as it’s known to most of you, that stupid pool my friend convinced me to waste ten bucks on!  We are officially down to the end after last night’s semifinals saw Quinnipiac top Boston College 3-2 and North Dakota escape with a 4-2 victory over Denver.  The North Dakota win was especially thrilling as they blew a two-goal third period lead only to score on a fantastic goal with under a minute to play.  I’ll give the basketball tourney credit for providing superb drama this year, but in my radical, idiosyncratic, zamboni fume-addled opinion, it still can’t touch the NCAA hockey tournament in terms of excitement.

 

Before we get to the Wockey outcomes, a brief college hockey lesson:  This is top-seeded Quinnipiac’s second trip to the national title game, their last coming in 2013 when they lost to Yale.  They’ve been the top-ranked team in the country for most of the year, which is why it’s particularly unusual to see them actually reach the championship game.  The same can be said for North Dakota (which spent most of the year as the second or third-ranked team in the country), but for different reasons.  Despite having seven national titles under their belt -- second only behind Michigan -- the Fighting Siouxhawks have had a tendency to choke* in recent years.  Their last national title came in 2000 and their last title game appearance occurred in 2005.  They’d lost their last six Frozen Four games, and in fact hadn’t held a lead in their last four Frozen Four games before last night.  How’s that for hockey knowledge?!

 

*You’re welcome Gopher fans.

 

In terms of Wockey, having two of the top three teams make the championship game means LOTS of people have good-looking brackets.  In fact, 129 Wockeyites have either North Dakota or Quinnipiac winning the whole thing.  50 brackets correctly predicted the finals matchup.  Only three Wockeyites, however still have a chance at winning the whole thing.

 

If Quinnipiac tops North Dakota

 

Ryan Bartlett and Andrew Slattengren will tie for the Wockey title.  Andrew’s bracket, however, is titled “Champion Mom-E”, and doing some creepy Facebook sleuthing, I discovered that he’s married to an Erin Slattengren, so I’m going to assume this is her bracket and that Andrew’s bracket is the one in 242nd place that didn’t predict either North Dakota or Quinnipiac to make it to the final.  If he’s smart (Facebook says he’s a doctor, so I’m assuming he is), he’ll give his wife credit for this bracket even if my assumptions are incorrect.

 

As the second tiebreaker is closest to Frozen Four goals scored (the first is picking the national champion correctly), this criteria will be used to determine our champion.  Ryan predicted 21 goals would be scored over the final three games, while Erin guessed it would be 18.  Therefore, if Quinnipiac wins and eight or less goals are scored, Erin becomes just our second lady Wockey winner.  If nine or more are scored, Ryan completes a perfect past six months in which he not only becomes Wockey Champion, but also got to see his beloved Kansas City Royals win the World Series (seriously, it’s amazing what you can find on Facebook).

 

Completing this scenario, Jeremy Lano would finish third.  A four-way tiebreak between Pete Lucs, Kevin Miller, Beau Bauer, and Marc Majerus would determine fourth through seventh places.  And four Wockeyites -- Austin Roberts, John Hendrickson, Ryan Graupmann, and Paul Sylvester -- would use a tiebreaker to determine the last place money-winner.

 

If North Dakota beats Quinnipiac

 

Jon Brinckerhoff becomes your Wockey Champion as his 60 points in this scenario would be the highest possible total that anyone could’ve earned after the first weekend of Wockey.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, Jon does not appear to have much of a presence on Facebook.  In fact, the only two tidbits of information I could find out about Jon are that he lives in Denver, and he looks like this:

 

 

I’m not gonna lie -- Jon looks a bit cartoonish, like if Casper the Ghost and Richie Rich had an illegitimate love child.  Assuming this isn’t him, if any of Jon’s Denver-based acquaintances want to send me an actual picture (particularly an incriminating one) of him, I’d be much obliged.  

 

After Jon, things get a bit nuts.  Second through seventh places would be determined by a tiebreaker between David McDonnell, Matt Kilby, Ron Goodman, Erik Pederson, Brad Zeimet, and Andy Brammer.  Eighth place will be determined by an eight-way tiebreak between Ryan Krajewski, Jilann Axt, Erik Pederson (again), Jeremy Meyer, Puckhead Chris Goodman, two of Thomas Nikula’s brackets, and Brandon Nemec.  Brandon won’t win though, as he inputted his tiebreaker picks incorrectly (unless he actually believes 105 goals were going to be scored between the three Frozen Four games).

 

Speaking of terrible tiebreaker gaffes, Chris Goodman can’t be happy about there being only 11 goals scored during the first two games.  He now needs 30 goals to be scored tomorrow to avoid the dreaded Puckhead.  Here’s hoping for that 16-14 North Dakota win.  The good news for Chris is that he appeared to have someone cheering for him at the game last night.

 

 

Yep, it’s Wockey.  Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up.

 

The NCAA Championship game begins tomorrow night at 7:00 on ESPN2.  While the excitement of a potential underdog winning won’t be there, it should be an outstanding matchup between arguably the two best teams in the country all season long.  You know, like a normal tournament.

 

Good luck to all who are still playing for the money and to all needing thirty goals to be scored to avoid a life of infamy!

 

Your Troubling, Trolling, Troubador of a Wockey Commish,

Alex

 

P.S.  This.