NCAA Hockey 101: So how good is Denver, exactly?

The big shocker this weekend in college hockey shouldn't really have been that much of a shocker. North Dakota went down to Denver, but got swept in somewhat stunning fashion.

The reason this was so noteworthy is that North Dakota entered the weekend third in the Pairwise, and carrying the second-highest winning percentage in the country. With just three losses — and only one since Nov. 21 — the Fighting Hawks enter just about any weekend as the prohibitive favorite.

Not that Denver comes off as being a particularly bad team or anything like that. They entered the weekend 12th in the Pairwise, which is a not-entirely-comfortable position but certainly worthy of respect. What's interesting, though, is that they seemed to be buoyed heavily by strength of schedule in this regard. They play conference games against two of the top three Pairwise teams in the nation and that'll help, even if their record (13-8-5) isn't all that wow-inducing.

But they not only beat North Dakota at Magness Arena twice, they won a wild, instant classic on Friday, 6-4, but only trailed for about seven minutes in the entire game. The next night was an altogether more convincing 4-1 win in which they never trailed at all.

And with that, Denver jumped four spots in the Pairwise — the power of sweeping good teams — and now seems a near lock to make the national tournament despite carrying the 15th-best winning percentage in the country. So this leads one to wonder how good Denver is, actually?

They only have eight losses from 23 games, which is a decent enough number, but those losses are to some puzzling teams. Okay, they got edged by BC and BU in Boston way back in October, and lost four straight to North Dakota and St. Cloud in December. That's six of the eight right there, and four of them were on the road. Understandable. But they also lost to Air Force in overtime and Miami in regulation, and neither team is all that good.

But that's the thing. They're a talented team, with five draft picks on the roster and a few more guys who will surely be sought-after free agents when they decide they're done with college hockey, or graduate. And Jim Montgomery is a very good coach. And they're a solid possession team overall (52.2 percent, 20th in the nation).

Determining their actual quality, then, takes more than a look at their record, or their position in the Pairwise, because they seem to do things mostly right in a difficult conference.

So, what gives?

The first thing to note here is that Denver has likely been a little bit unlucky so far this year, at least in comparison with other top teams nationwide. In college hockey far more so than at the NHL level, PDO is in some ways a measure of skill; pretty-good goaltenders can boost your PDO well above 100 in ways that only truly elite ones can in the big leagues, and high-skill players can drive team shooting percentage to a ludicrous extent.

And among the current top-14 Pairwise teams — that is, those who would make the NCAA tournament if the season ended today (and yes of course it does not do so) — Denver has the second-lowest PDO of the group at just 100.3. Only Penn State — a low-skill, well-coached squad in its nascent years as a burgeoning D-1 power — comes in lower, at 99.2 percent.

Much of Denver's problem here stems from its .916 team save percentage at 5-on-5, which is somehow just four-thousandths higher than its save percentage on the PK. Fact is, neither Tanner Jaillet or Evan Cowley have been particularly bad overall — the Pioneers' .917 save percentage in all situations is probably a little above the national average —  but they haven't provided much help, either.

The team shooting percentage, meanwhile, is a little below average in terms of this group of elite teams, but another game or two against bad opponents should sort that right out. And what do you know, they've got a pair against Colorado College this weekend. That'll do nicely.

A thing that I'm starting to believe about college hockey, though, is that when it comes to determining team quality, it's not so much the ability to turn in good possession and scoring performances overall, but rather against elite teams.

For example, UMass Lowell is currently the 11th-best 5-on-5 possession team in the country at 53.9 percent, which is a really good number. That puts them sixth among top-14 PWR teams right now. And while they can often out-possess good teams (the River Hawks went 56 percent in a weekend series against corsi juggernaut Providence in January), they build a lot of their 53.9 percent by absolutely crushing bad teams; 70.4 percent against Arizona State, 65.9 percent against UMass, etc.

They're good and everything, no doubt about it, but I'd be more inclined to buy their roughly 49 percent possession number against top-16 teams (albeit in only six games this season!) as being more representative of their quality when it comes to running the show versus the nation's best. That's especially true when it comes to the fact that they've led for huge chunks of those games, so score effects come into play.

They are, to that end, probably about average among the “top-14” group, but the superlative goaltending they've received from Kevin Boyle — that is, the second-best in the country for my money, behind only Yale's Alex Lyon — has helped get them where they are. Lowell only sits 13th in the Pairwise because of some ugly losses to not-good teams this season. They're 3-2-1 against BU, Notre Dame, and Providence, which isn't bad.

But that is instructive with respect to Denver as well. And if you have a look at their numbers relative to everyone else in the top-14 in games against each other, you can see that they're on basically the same level as Lowell.

I think on the balance, these numbers are probably at least fairly reflective of the quality I would have assigned these teams anyway. At least for the most part. I wouldn't have guessed BC was that low, or Penn State that high — and certainly you see the talent disparity reflected in their GF% numbers — but the other issue is that you have huge gaps in games played. Four each for the Big Ten teams, 13 for BU, 12 for Denver, etc.

Is Denver probably around the 10th-best team in the country? Yeah, that feels about right. There's nothing wrong at all with being 10th out of 60, certainly. They're probably about the fourth-best team in their own conference, which also isn't an indictment.

But even with this big sweep of North Dakota, I'm not exactly looking for them to go on a big run, either.

A somewhat arbitrary ranking of teams which are pretty good in my opinion only (and just for right now but maybe for a little longer too?)

1. Quinnipiac (lost at St. Lawrence, won at Clarkson)

2. Boston College (took three points from Merrimack in a home-and-home)

3. St. Cloud (idle)

4. North Dakota (got swept at Denver)

5. Michigan (took three points at Wisconsin)

6. Providence (swept a home-and-home with UConn)

7. Notre Dame (swept Maine)

8. BU (split a home-and-home with UMass Lowell)

9. Yale (won at Colgate and Cornell)

10. UMass Lowell (split a home-and-home with BU)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and also covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is here and his Twitter is here. 

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.