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We Figured Out The Correct Way To Pronounce “KRACH”

A public service announcement for the college hockey community

John Quackenbos, BC Athletics

If you follow college hockey at all, you’ve definitely heard of “KRACH.” It’s one of the most statistically sound methods of ranking teams, and it gets a lot of love around the college hockey universe.

But it’s also a bit ambiguous in it’s pronunciation. Is it “Crack” or “Kratch”?

The KRACH debate is similar to the debate surrounding “GIF.” There are two competing factions out there fighting over whether to pronounce it “Jiff-With-A-J” or “Giff-With-A-Hard-G.” Eventually someone finally thought to ask the guy who invented them, and the world had an answer — even if it was an unpopular one.

So we figured we should do some investigative journalism. To start, we did a quick Twitter poll to see which side of the fence people stand on the KRACH debate, and the results were pretty split:

Not only were the results split, but apparently most of you have been saying it incorrectly all this time.

KRACH stands for “Ken’s Ratings for American College Hockey,” and “Ken” stands for “Ken Butler,” a statistician and lecturer at the University of Toronto. We reached out to Ken directly for his say on the matter — how should the world be pronouncing “KRACH”?

In my head, it's "crack". To me, it looks as if it's a German word, so I would lean that way in pronouncing it.

But I have no special objections if people want to say it differently.

There you have it! The man behind the math has spoken, and the correct pronunciation of “KRACH” is “crack.” Henceforth there shall be no more confusion on the subject. You’re welcome, world.