The No. 2 Michigan State hockey team will be hosting the No. 4 Minnesota Golden Gophers this weekend for a massive series in East Lansing. There is the possibility for either team to take a stranglehold on the Big Ten Standings after this weekend, as heading into the weekend, the Spartans lead the conference standings by just one point over the Golden Gophers.

On top of that, a big result against Minnesota for Michigan State could help the Spartans leap frog the Boston College Eagles for the top spot in the PairWise standings, which is the formula used to seed the NCAA Tournament.

I will have a preview of the series against Minnesota specifically tomorrow, but wanted to take a pause here to talk about a few different things around the hockey program and take a breather to look back and forward before a series so large.

The PairWise Rankings (PWR) are NCAA hockey's answer to the NET rankings in NCAA basketball that readers may be more familiar with. The PWR compares every NCAA hockey team against each other, with the winner of the comparison receiving one PWR point.

These teams are compared across three categories: Ratings Percentage Index (RPI-computed by a teams winning percentage, average of the team's opponents' winning percentage and average of the team's opponents opponents' winning percentage), Record versus common opponents, and head-to-head record. With 64 NCAA Division I Men's teams, the most PairWise Rankings points a team can accrue is 63, hence they would win every comparison and be ranked No. 1 in the PWR.

Currently that top team is Boston College, which has a slightly higher RPI than the Spartans, as the teams are each 1-0 versus Western Michigan and they split a series so the head-to-head is a tie as well. Presently just .0038 RPI points separates the two teams (.6349 vs .6311); whereas the Spartans are .0343 points ahead of the third place PWR team (.6311 vs .5968), Minnesota.

I want to thank College Hockey News and their PWR primer for a ton of help in writing this all out for you.

You do not need to understand all that to follow Michigan State's path down the rest of the season, after all we're discussing hockey here folks, none of us are crunching numbers in the room either.

Here is what important for the average fan to know about the PairWise Rankings:

-The PWR is how the NCAA Tournament is selected and seeded. The top PWR team will be the No. 1 overall seed in the national tournament. Typically how this plays out is you need to be in the top-15 of the PWR to receive a bid, as the auto-bid from Atlantic Hockey usually is from outside the top-16 of the PWR. As is the case in NCAA basketball, more shocking auto-bids from conference tournaments can steal bids from that PWR list, moving the cutoff from 15 to higher numbers. For this season MSU is very safely in the field, and more so playing for NCAA seeding, instead of inclusion in the tournament.

-Overtime games. This gets very important and I explain it a lot on X (formerly Twitter) right after games. So in 2021-2022, the entire NCAA adopted the same overtime rules, for the first time in a while, as some had 3-on-3 OT play, while others did not. Once there was a standard overtime format, they could be included in the PWR. At present, a team that wins a game in OT gets .6666 credit for a win and a team losing receives the remaining .3333 points available. This is similar to the Big Ten standings with an overtime winner receiving two of the possible three points in the standings.

-Shootouts are worthless for separating teams in the PWR, and only used in league standings. Teams who go to a shootout each receive .5000 of a win, despite league standings making a difference. This means surviving overtime to get to shootout, even if you do end up "losing" the shootout, is preferable to losing in OT, even though for league standings there is no premium in losing in a shootout versus in OT. For example "losing" at Penn State in the shootout, or "winning" in the shootout at Minnesota, as this MSU team has done this season, was a wash prior to road versus home weighting, which I will cover below.

-Home vs road games are weighted differently. A home loss and road win are weighted by a factor of 1.2, while home wins and road losses are weighted by 0.8.

To bring this all to a close, I hope this helps you follow a little bit of the why hockey accounts will focus on the PWR, and not polls, as the NCAA Tournament approaches.

Michigan State is in an excellent position, and fortunately, has no poor teams left on its schedule as the Big Ten is really loaded with four teams currently in the top-11, and the bottom of the league — Wisconsin (17), Penn State (27) and Notre Dame (37) — are mostly respectable, though losing to the Fighting Irish and Nittany Lions is definitely not preferred.

After this huge series against the Golden Gophers, the Spartans will travel to take on No. 10 in the current PWR, Ohio State, on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31.

Following the series with OSU, Michigan State will host rival Michigan at Munn Ice Arena on Feb. 7 before playing a neutral site game against the Wolverines at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit on Feb. 8. Michigan is currently ranked No. 11 in the PWR.

These next three weeks will not only set up what the stretch run of the Big Ten title chase entails, but also could really set in what part of the PWR the Spartans are at and their NCAA Tournament seed outlook.

As the calendar turns to February, award season inches closer and closer. This week was a busy week for the Spartans in terms of awards. Charlie Stramel was named as the B1G second Star of the Week after scoring two goals and three points total against Michigan last weekend.

This week also saw Isaac Howard and Trey Augustine announced as nominees for the Hobey Baker Award (think Heisman Trophy equivelent). Fan voting is now live for the award and runs through Sunday, March 9. The top-10 finalists for the award will be announced on March 19, with the three "Hobey Baker Hat Trick finalists" revealed on April 3, and the winner announced on April 11 during the Frozen Four.

The last two weeks have seen some acclaim come to the Michigan State recruiting class, with their NHL prospects and a flip out of the class as well.

On Thursday, Jan. 16, three MSU commits played in the 2025 Chipotle All-American Game. Ryker Lee (2006 forward), Brady Peddle (2007 defenseman) and Cullen McCrate (2007 defenseman) all played in the game, with Lee winning the MVP award after scoring the game-winning goal in the third period.