One of the benefits of an Elo style ranking system is that you can use the comparative difference between the two teams in order to estimate how likely either team is to win the match. While the majority of NCAA hockey games are evenly matched contests, sometimes you have a pretty good idea of who is going to win before the puck is even dropped. Since 1999 there have been 22 games where Elo has given one team a greater than 90% chance of winning. In these cases, the favorited team has won every match.

A review of these games are listed below.

This was a season where Fairfield had only won a single game, and where Quinnipiac was the top team in the MAAC. Quinnipiac College was given a 90.5% chance of winning, and they did so with a 13-2 score.

While Fairfield would manage three wins in the 1999-2000 season, their games against Quinnipiac College continued to be huge mismatches. Quinnipiac won both of these games by 8-0 and 6-1 scores.

These two WCHA teams were at oppisite ends of the conference for this season. Wisconsin was a heavy favorite, given a 92.1% chance of winning the game. Michigan Tech was unable to pull off the upset in either game.

An ECAC match-up gets into the mix as Cornell was on the top of their game in the 2002-2003 season and Princeton really was not. While Cornell was a 91.2% favorite, this was acutally a close game with Cornell winning by only a 2-1 margin.

Like most of the mismatches on this list, this pair of games was also between the top and bottom teams within the same conference. In this case these were both WCHA teams at opposite ends of the charts. Colorado College came into the first game with a 92.8% chance of winning, and went on to win both games.

These two games were the only contests between 2003 and 2011 where one team was a 90% favorite. Minnesota went on to win both of these games 7-4 and 6-2.

Michigan Tech and North Dakota played each other two weekends in a row in order to get four straight games in which the Sioux were heavy favorites. Michigan Tech would only win two games this season and North Dakota won all four of these in a convinving fashion with 6-1, 11-2, 8-0, and 3-1 scores.

Minnesota-Duluth entered this pair of games as heavy favorites with a 91.6% chance of winning. While they would in fact go on to win both games, they were close matches with both games decided by a single goal.

This game for Alabama-Huntsville (and the previous pair against Minnesota-Duluth) came at a time where Alabama-Huntsville was an independent team that won nine games in three years. As such it is almost a suprise that they are not on this list more often. Boston College had a 93.4% chance of winning so their 5-2 victory came as no suprise.

Finally in a conference, Alabama-Huntsville wasn't much better in the 2013-2014 season with a 2-25-1 record. St. Cloud State was a much better team and won this game 4-3.

North Dakota entered 2016 as the best team in college hockey. Alabama-Huntsville was nowhere close. North Dakota won these games 1-0 and 4-1.

The opening weekend of the NCHC tournament reuired the confrence's best team (North Dakota) to play a best of three series against its worse (Colorado College). The series did not come close to needing a third game as the 28-5-3 team beat the 6-27-1 team 5-1 in what was the closer of the two games.