May 7, 2025
CHN Staff Report
College hockey’s venerable Pairwise system will soon be replaced with something called the NCAA Percentage Index, or NPI.
That transition has been in the works over the couple of years, and it looks like the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Committee is ready to officially make the change.
The final makeup of the formula is still being worked out, but expect the new system to be in place by the coming season.
The Pairwise has seen many changes to its makeup over the last 30-plus years it’s been used, but at heart, it’s a hands-off, deterministic method of selecting the field for the NCAA Tournament. Plus the parameters into the computer, and it spits out a ranking. Though the criteria that goes into the Pairwise has been tweaked over the years, at the end of the day,…
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