The Final Countdown

This is the fourth, and final installment of my posts about the important of the third period. I've already covered when teams are trailing after two periods, when they're leading after two periods, and when the score is tied after two periods. Now the only thing to do is to put them all together.

The formula I'm using to do this is: (Points gained when trailing after two periods) - (Points lost when leading after two periods) +/- (Points gained/lost when tied after two periods.) That should give us a pretty workable number about how many points a team gained or lost in the third period of games last season.

We'll start with the CCHA.

Western Michigan: +5
Miami: +4
Lake Superior: +3
Ferris State: +3
Michigan State: +1
Alaska-Fairbanks: +1
Ohio State: +1
Nebraska-Omaha: 0
Northern Michigan: -2
Notre Dame: -2
Bowling Green: -4
Michigan: -8

I would not have guessed last place Western Michigan would be the best third period team in the CCHA. I probably could have guessed that Michigan was the worst, but this highlights how awful they were.

And now the WCHA.

Denver: +8
Minnesota: +4
Minnesota State: +4
Michigan Tech: +4
Colorado College: +1
Wisconsin: 0
Minnesota-Duluth: 0
North Dakota: -6
St. Cloud: -6
Alaska-Anchorage: -9

Denver was the runaway best team in the third period in the WCHA last year, while Alaska-Anchorage, not surprisingly, was the worst. I think it's surprising that St. Cloud and North Dakota were so bad in the third period.