Wockey Pool 2019 - Breaking Records...and Hearts

Congratulations on being the select few who have decided to put aside your basic human decency and join the very last Wockey Pool!  Feel free to begin questioning every decision you’ve ever made.  I know I’m doing that right now as day one of Wockey 2019 couldn’t have gone more horrendously wrong for me.  WE WILL NEVER SPEAK OF THIS DAY AGAIN.  DO YOU HEAR ME?!  NEVER!!!

 

On the bright side, we ended up crushing our previous bracket entry record by 125 entries as Wockey 2019 will include 538 brackets!!!  On a dark and cold evening such as this, that warms the cockles of my heart.  Thank you to you fine folks of Wockey for making this last Wockey the biggest one yet!  As promised, by getting to 500 brackets, we’ll expand the payouts to the top 10 finishers.  That means that the Wockey Champion will end up winning somewhere around $2500!  Payouts will be as follows:

 

Wockey Champion - 50% of the pot + the Wockey Champion Prize

2nd - 12%

3rd - 8.5%

4th - 7%

5th - 6%

6th - 5%

7th - 4%

8th - 3%

9th - 2.5%

10th - 2%

 

Before we recap day one, we must hand out our final ever Wockey Bracket Name of the Year Award!  We had some truly inspired bracket names this year and I daresay it was the most difficult decision of my life.  Of course, that was quickly replaced by the new most difficult decision of my life, which is deciding whether I will ever allow myself to have faith in that infuriating central Minnesotan hockey team again, but I digress.  The nominees for the WBNYA are:

 

F You Commish for canceling x mas - Nick Sapienza - We start off with a nomination by last year’s Wockey Champion, Nick, who is apparently lamenting my decision to discontinue the Wockey Pool.  I wish he would’ve been a little more clear about how he feels though.

 

What the heck am I going to do without Wockey?

What the heck are you going to do without Wockey?    

What the heck is Alex going to do without Wockey?

What the heck is Bob Motzko going to do without Wockey?

What the heck is Jesus going to do without Wockey?

What the heck is What the heck is What the heck is What the heck is What - Nick Wenck WOOOOO! - I always appreciate multiple bracket names that follow a theme.  To answer your questions, Nick, you will be fine without Wockey.  The rest of Wockey will be fine without
Wockey.  I will finally be able to get a decent night’s rest during the NCAA hockey tournament without Wockey.  Bob Motzko will be happy to no longer be the scapegoat for St. Cloud’s failings without Wockey.  Jesus will most assuredly not be fine without Wockey.  And your last question is an unanswerable mystery of the universe that will only be reconciled at the very moment before the world collapses upon itself dissipating into an unrecognizable memory that will never be able to be explained by the sentient beings that replace us as the dominating force of the universe, which not coincidentally will also be the moment when I send out an e-mail announcing the return of the Wockey Pool.

 

Still Running Windows 95? - Neil Hennen - Last year’s WBNYA winner Neil always puts forth the most bizarre, inexplicable bracket names, which if you haven’t figured out in the past thirteen years, the Wockey Commissioner cherishes.

 

Nick G- 13th stab at winning this damn thing - Nick Gaither - Nick, one of my college roommates and one of the original 16 of the Wockey Pool makes the list in recognition of his commitment to Wockey for all of these years.  And as he picked our alma mater, St. Cloud State, to win in this bracket, Nick can also lay claim to the longest streak of participating in Wockey without winning.

 

Thanks, Montana - Peter Simon - I love this name.  As far as I can tell, Montana has absolutely nothing to do with college hockey.  Yet Peter felt it incumbent upon himself to give gratitude to the Big Sky state for reasons we cannot explain.  It’s a prime example of a perfectly dumb Wockey bracket name.

 

Katie Reid John Faith Betsy - Ron Goodman - Many Wockey entrants submit multiple brackets on behalf of the rest of their family naming them after the people who selected their picks.  But in all the years I’ve run Wockey, I’ve never seen a bracket which needed five people to complete.  Is this a situation like when people all pitch in to buy a bunch of Powerball tickets?  I prefer to envision the five of them sitting around a table debating the merits of each team while trying to formulate a bracket.  It’s the very definition of overly complicating a simple task.  But I suspect there’s probably nothing better to do in North Dakota.

 

I attend UND for rest and fun only -  Chris Goodman - Suspicion confirmed.  There’s really nothing better to do in North Dakota.

 

Let’s Go St. Cloud! - Grace Walker - My daughter’s first and only ever solo Wockey bracket, and she named it herself.  If God forbid my wife ever decides to divorce me, she can use this bracket name as proof that I’ve abused my daughter by molding her into a Husky fan.

 

maddie’s 1st wockey - Mary Varian - Speaking of kids’ first Wockeys, Webmaster Mike Varian and his wife Mary had their baby girl Maddie complete her very first bracket using a method they used to use with their cat.  The process, which Mary shared with me through a series of photos, was hilarious.

 

Zach Walker’s Neighbor, unfortunately - Chris Hoganson - A decent jab at my brother Zach by his neighbor, Chris.  And while it wouldn’t necessarily normally qualify for the WBNYA, you also have to understand that this is the neighbor Chris has to deal with.

 

SCSU Hockey Alum Bracket - Craig Shermoen - Wait...an SCSU hockey alum?  In the Wockey Pool?  Sure enough, I looked this up and Craig was a player at St. Cloud in the late eighties.  You know the Wockey Pool has come full circle when a former SCSU player is a member of Wockey!

 

Spread Wockey, Not Herpes - Brooke Zilka - Always the bridesmaid, never the Wockey Bracket Name of the Year bride, Brooke consistently puts out great names that never quite have enough to win.  To be fair, this was going to be my favorite bracket name of the year until I was sentimentally struck by the winner of this year’s WBNYA...

 

I’m Forever Yours Wockey…...Faithfully - Chris Walker - Call it nepotism if you will.  I love this name, but wasn’t going to pick it over Brooke’s.  But then I let the emotions of this being the last Wockey Pool get the better of me.  And the deal was sealed when I made the choice to go back and watch the video of Journey’s 1983 hit after which the bracket is named.  Seriously.  It looks like something a 2nd year video production student shot with his camera phone, only if it came out three decades before camera phones were a thing.  It’s so completely ridiculous and therefore so very perfect for this final Wockey.  Congratulations Chris!  For your reward, you win this!

 

And now onto day one of Wockey.

 

I’m still not sure that, as I’m writing this five hours after the game ended, I’m quite able to process St. Cloud State’s loss to American International.  For the uninformed, this was the second straight year St. Cloud entered the tournament as the overall top seed.  And it’s the second straight year they came out flat, got behind, ran into a hot goaltender, and couldn’t come back.  

 

Before last year only one top overall seed had ever lost their first round game.  And four years ago St. Cloud also lost their first round game when they were the second overall seed.  I saw a stat on Twitter tonight that in the history of the biggest upsets in the NCAA Tournament based on Pairwise ranking differential, St. Cloud now owns spots three through five.  

 

Last year was heartbreaking.  This year just felt like a punch to the gut.  In fact, rooting for St. Cloud in the NCAA tourney has now begun to resemble something like this.  As a Vikings fan, I’m used to gut wrenching losses, but this is on a different level.  It’s like if the Vikings had lost the 1998 and 2009 NFC title games, but in back-to-back years.  And both times to the Lions.

 

As for those hoping St. Cloud might lead them to Wockey glory, they feel much the same.  Of the 538 brackets entered, only 19 didn’t have St. Cloud winning their first game.  And 209 of them -- nearly 40% of the field -- had the Huskies winning it all.  American International’s win not only ranks as arguably the biggest upset in the history of the tourney -- yes, perhaps even bigger than this upset -- it basically ruined two fifths of people’s Wockey bracket before the tournament could really get going.

 

It also meant that astonishingly, in a pool this large, we have exactly zero perfect brackets after day one.  That may be the most shocking of all.

 

We do have 137 brackets that correctly picked three out of four games including the 19 which predicted the American International upset.  On the other end of the bracket, 27 brackets couldn’t manage to get one game right on opening day including that of yours truly.  What sweet irony there would be in your Wockey Commissioner finishing Puckhead in the very last year of the Wockey Pool’s existence.

 

Outside of the St. Cloud game, the main attraction was the Notre Dame-Clarkson game.  Notre Dame, which has a history of finding ways to pull out last second wins in the tournament, did it again scoring an empty net goal with just over two minutes to play to tie the Golden Knights and then beating them in overtime after a truly back and forth affair.

 

It was a fantastic day of hockey...I mean, besides for...you know.

 

Tomorrow is the greatest day in sports outside of the Frozen Four when six games will be played.  The Midwest and East regionals play their first round games while the first two Frozen Four entrants will be determined in the West and Northeast regionals.  Only two Wockeyites -- Shane Wasserman and Webmaster Mike Varian -- have American International going through to the Frozen Four.  Should make for an interesting day indeed.

 

The games kick off tomorrow when Providence takes on Minnesota State-Mankato at 12:00 CT on ESPNews.  I do hope you’re able to take it all in!

 

In the meantime, I’m going to try to get some sleep, dream of better days to come, and ponder whether it’s too late to turn my daughters into Bemidji State fans.  I’ll be back with more updates tomorrow.  And if you want to track the tourney’s progress in real time, don’t forget to join our Facebook group or follow Wockey on Twitter.

 

Until tomorrow I am…

 

Your Befuddled, Bewildered, Beaten Down Wockey Commish,

 

Alex

 

P.S.  This.