Prior to the 2015-2016 season, the NCAA quietly updated its women’s hockey Pairwise criteria. No one noticed (or at least no one who wasn’t involved in the offseason coaches’ meetings noticed) until the season was half over. We published a corrected Pairwise Rankings calculator based on this new criteria, and USCHO followed suit a few days later.
This season there hasn’t been any changes to the criteria, but the addition of six D-I/D-II independent programs who will have played the required number of games to be included in the Pairwise does have the potential to throw some quirks into the rankings — and to affect which teams are selected to the tournament in the process.