NIHL 2012 Seeding Round: Squirts

Every hockey parents' favorite past time this time of year is speculating on how the regular season tiers will shake out. With that in mind, we indulge in a little bit of prognostication ourselves. My first year of doing this, I spoke to Larry Beller of NIHL.  He lifted the curtain on some of this seeding stuff. Check here for our previous coverage. Larry said that, every year, about 10% of the teams move up or down. Now with NIHL's fancy new website, we can look at what happened last year (2011-2012) and use that to inform our forecast.

First up, we take a look at the Squirts. The Squirt seeding round included 3 Gold brackets of 9 teams, 3 Silver brackets of 9 teams, and 3 Bronze brackets of 9-10 teams. The regular season became 1 Elite bracket of 9 teams, 1 Gold bracket of 17 teams, 2 Silver brackets, and 3 Bronze brackets. Silver and Bronze were tiered to further match like competition. So who went where?

The top 3 teams from each of the 3 Gold seeding round brackets moved on to Elite. Cut and dried. After 8 seeding round games, you will know if you are Elite or not based on where your team finishes in the table. Points from wins and ties are the first factor that decides a team's placement in the table. In the event of a tie, the goal differential decides position.

The remaining teams in the 3 Gold seeding round brackets stayed in the Gold regular season bracket, with the exception of teams with 1 win or less going down to Silver Tier 1 and the Jaguars #1 team that landed in the Silver Tier 2 bracket. Only the very top team at Silver moved up to Gold, and all were the solitary undefeated team in their respective seeding round bracket. The remainder made up Silver Tier 1 regular season bracket, with the exceptions being that the 1 win teams moved down to Silver Tier 2 and the winless teams moving down to Bronze Tier 1.

The Silver Tier 2 bracket was rounded out using the top 2 teams from each Bronze seeding round bracket. Those Bronze teams that just missed the cut to move up became the Bronze Tier 1 regular season bracket together with those Silver seeding round teams that moved down.

Knowing the above, and recognizing that there are still 1-5 games to be played that will alter the final outcome, here is the CAYH Hockey Blog's prognostication for the 2012 regular season brackets at Squirt:

Elite

All teams #1 unless noted.

Cyclones
Ice Dogs
Hawks
Admirals
Falcons #2
Falcons #1
Express

On the bubble:
Leafs
St. Jude
Northbrook
Winnetka
Wilmette

Gold

Any bubble teams not making the cut plus:

Redwings
Bloomington
Jets
Vikings
Sabres
Bruins
Yellowjackets
Blues
Chargers
St. Jude #2
Jaguars
Bulldogs
Wolf Pack

Headed to Silver:

Rockford
Skokie
Peoria
Hawks #2
Glenview

Moving up from Silver:

Cyclones #2
Leafs #2
Chiefs #1

Silver Tier 1

Gold teams moving down plus:

Vikings #2
Winnetka #2
St. Jude #3
Chargers #2
Jaguars #2
Jets #2
Falcons #3
Ice Dogs #2
Bloomington #2
Wilmette #2
Winnetka #3
Yellowjackets #2
Bruins #2
Wildkits #1
Sabres #2
Blues #2
Wolf Pack #2
Northbrook #2
Express #2

Silver Tier 2

Irish #1
Maniax #1
Glenview #3
Bulldogs #2
Glenview #2
Huskies #1

Moving up from Bronze:

Leafs #3
Falcons #4
Hawks #3
Leafs #4
Ice Dogs #3
Vikings #3


Check back in next month and see how we did.



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