More Best Moments...

... this time at the celebration...

(this is also a mini-recap for those who couldn't be there)

::Bâby gets up to speak::
::pep band plays the Hey Bâby song::
Bâby: I'm glad they played that, I'll miss that song, my mom may not, but I will.

----------------------------------

::Schafer gets up to speak::
::pep band plays the Schafer-beer song::
Schafer: "Better than 'kill Schafer kill' "
....
Schafer: "They got something wrong in that season recap - the whole 'UNH got out to a 3-0 lead part.' I've never said this before, but that was a goal."
crowd: ::cheers:: "Kill Schafer Kill..."
Schafer: "That cheer was the reason my wife almost didn't marry me."

There were more, but Scrubs is on .

Oh, next year:
A: Ben Wallace
C: Schafer: "words I never thought I'd say, being from Ontario, but next year's Cornell hockey captain, from Long Island, NY, Ryan Vesce"

thanks for the recap fred. sounds like it was a fun time. were there alot of people there?

-mike 04

I'd guess maybe 600-700 people were there - loosely spread out in Sects A, B, C, M, and N. They had a platform up in the scoreboard end of the rink- the remnants of the ice are melting in the parking lot - and the team sat between the platform and the visitors box. There were a lot of kids there, with a bunch of them sitting on the boards in front of the visitors box, enjoying the rumble they made kicking on the boards.

It was fun and a (final?) chance to celebrate as a group and say good-bye and thanks. We certainly have a LOT to be grateful for.

Arthur (the emcee) observed that it's only six months until next season.

LET'S GO RED !!

Ken '71

Speaking of the scoreboard...

Cornell       Harvard
    3              0

Post Edited (04-17-03 21:03)

Those were indeed some nice moments. More on the celebration...

Hornby, Hynes, and Hughes were not able to make it due to "prior commitments." (maybe a gathering of "H" names? Okay, that was a dumb comment, anyway....) The team voted on Captain (Vesce) and Assistant Captain (Wallace) moments before the ceremony tonight, so I'm assuming that the aforementioned trio did not participate in the vote.

Another nice moment was, during Arthur's rundown of the season, at the appropriate times (for Mark McRae's game tying goal vs. Harvard, Paolini's OT winner, and Matt McRae's 2OT goal), they replayed Adam Wodon's radio calls over the loud speaker. Since I had never heard them before, I thought that was really really cool. "Hearing that still gives me goosebumps," commented Paolini after hearing the call for his goal.

It was a really fun evening, and I'm glad they had the event.

I highly doubt that those 3 didn't participate in the vote for team captain. I'm sure they were at the dinner or whatever the team does, but then had to go to a prelim or something.

Or am I being naive thinking that "prior committments" meant an exam?

I've got mp3's of the goal calls from Adam and I'll get them up on eLynah soon. Yeah, soon. That's the ticket.

[Q]Schafer: "words I never thought I'd say, being from Ontario, but next year's Cornell hockey captain, from Long Island, NY, Ryan Vesce"[/Q]

That's a subtle dig at his wife who is, of course, from L.I.

Thanks for the recap. Wish it had been netcast.

The team stayed around for as long as there were people wanting autographs, but for me the funniest part was at the end when Murray called all the players out, some of whom had gone in and taken off their jersey.

When they all came back they went up to the band and took their instruments and assembled themselves into a band for pictures. By the way it progressed, I assume it was prearrainged by the band and players. Some of them started playing, etc.. It was alot of fun and I think expresses better than anything why this is truly a college team, not like some semi-pro sports at colleges. The players really seemed to appeciate the band and the fans, much like them calling the fans onto the ice at the end of the season.

However to me the absolute best part, and why this was so important was that they went out as winners, in a happy time, with this as the last memory and not "The goal that was taken away" (my quotes).**)

As a postscript, the event was videotaped. I've emailed Sue Detzer to see if that could be put on the web.



Post Edited (04-18-03 12:07)

The whole team posing as the band thing was pretty spur of the moment.
After the playoffs last year, we took a photo of the band lined up on the bench for use in the CD artwork. We thought it would be neat to also get a shot of the team up in section A. The opportunity never really presented itself though until last night.
During the autograph signing last night, I asked Schafer if he thought the team would go for it. He told me to speak to Doug or Stephen and they'd get it together. Doug said it was no problem as long as we were willing to stick around until all the autographs had been signed. The band stayed, and Doug made sure the team did too. The team seemed kind of annoyed by it until they were told they could grab any instrument they wanted. At that point it seemed sort of like play time in kindergarten with everyone trying to grab the best intstrument.

Mike Schafer trying to fathom how a piccolo works and Doug Murray with a bass drum on his head now stand as two of the funniest moments I've witnessed in Lynah.

I was really pleased by how personable the players were. All extremely friendly and willing to strike up a conversation. Especially Dougie. Just talking to him for a couple of minutes left me with the impression that he is a genuine all around nice guy, who really appreciates the fans.

LetsGoRed wrote:
Especially Dougie. Just talking to him for a couple of minutes left me with the impression that he is a genuine all around nice guy, who really appreciates the fans.

Beating out "I can wear snakeskin pants, I'm european" and "Nice rack!" as my favorite Doug Murray moment has to be the time when Doug pretended to blow his nose all over my Yale staff ID at Dunbars only hours after Cornell had swept Yale in the playoffs, on my birthday no less.

[Q]John E Hayes '98 '00 wrote:

Beating out "I can wear snakeskin pants, I'm european" and "Nice rack!" as my favorite Doug Murray moment...[/Q]

Okay, you can't just say something like that and not explain it - I'm dying to hear this "Nice rack!" story now...

[Q]Chris said:
Doug said it was no problem as long as we were willing to stick around until all the autographs had been signed. The band stayed, and Doug made sure the team did too.[/Q]That says it all about this team.

[Q]That says it all about this team.[/Q]

What, that Murray was really in control of them? After all, Chris also said "[t]he team seemed kind of annoyed by it..."

[Q]CUlater said:

What, that Murray was really in control of them? After all, Chris also said "[t]he team seemed kind of annoyed by it..."[/Q]No, that they would do it if they waited till all the autographs were signed. Meaning the fans come first. And that they would do it if a captain said so.

[Q]...that they would do it if they waited till all the autographs were signed....[/Q]

That's not what Chris said. He said that Murray said they would do it if the band waited until the autographs were signed, but he also said that the team seemed "annoyed".

Sure, it's a technical point and I would guess it was just a knee-jerk reaction by some of the guys before they thought about it (possibly in a rush to get to some other team-only party). But let's not over-romanticize here.

CUlater '89 wrote:

Sure, it's a technical point and I would guess it was just a knee-jerk reaction by some of the guys before they thought about it (possibly in a rush to get to some other team-only party). But let's not over-romanticize here.

I both appreciate and agree with your hesitancy to offer our players up for sainthood, but do you have to pee on the parade every time someone praises the guys?

No, not every time, but someone's got to play devil's advocate here (and who better to do that than a lawyer? )

In any case, in the 17 years that I've followed the hockey program, most of the guys have been "good guys". In the 9 or 10 years when I got to know the team up close, even the guys who some might describe with a slur, for the most part they were quality people (somewhat of a common thread among hockey players). I've seen good work in the community, a lot of support for the women's program, a lot of time spent with local kids and a lot of time spent talking with fellow students.

This team had better on-ice results than any team since I began following Cornell hockey. But it's all too easy, and it's a mistake, for fans to extrapolate from "the best on the playing field" to "the best off of the playing field". In writing the history of this team, particularly relative to its place in the Cornell hockey annals, let's try take off the rose-colored glasses. Yes, all evidence I've seen and read points to the fact that there are many "good guys" on this team as well, and that as a group they are special, but they ain't saints and Chris noted both aspects. My comment to Jim was meant to point out how he missed part of the story (which I believe is human nature and admittedly I have suffered from it as well).

Look, to CUlater and others, my point was not whether the team went along with Murray or if they might have also been annoyed, but that Murray said that the band would have to wait till after all autographs were signed. Sure some might have been annoyed to wait around longer, but:

1. they did stay when a captain said to (after all he no longer had anything to really control them, since the season was over), and

2. the captain said the band had to wait till the fans were through.

Sure you can argue whether there was some bad with the good, but I'd rather think of how thoughtful Murray was toward the fans, not whether some of them were pissed off at first. I try to keep seeing my cup more than half full.

I hope you aren't separating the band from the fans

I'd kill to have seen that moment where the team scrambled for instruments and played around with them. That's fanatastic.

My favorite memory along those lines was the year we went to PRACTICE at the start of the season. Chartrand was writing a column for the Sun that year and discussing how psyched up everyone was, noted that the band had come to their practice.

Larry,

I went looking for that article, and I think I found it, reprinted in another article in the sun:

[www.cornelldailysun.com]

I now remember those columns written by Chartrand. They were pretty funny, often filled with somewhat inside jokes (but they were endearing). I wonder if we could convince the team to do that again in 2003-04, maybe the Abbot twins (with a column entitled, All Abbot Hockey, or something like that...)

Tom Tseng '87 wrote:

I now remember those columns written by Chartrand. They were pretty funny, often filled with somewhat inside jokes (but they were endearing). I wonder if we could convince the team to do that again in 2003-04, maybe the Abbot twins (with a column entitled, All Abbot Hockey, or something like that...)

The Sun did have a sidebox every Monday titled "Greg Hornby's thoughts on the weekend" that was quite entertaining.

The Sun revived that type of player column in the early '90s, with columns from some of the brighter players on the team (Ryan Hughes, David Burke). After a good start, and when the editors became less diligent, the players deviated from the intent and took greater liberties with the columns, which became a little too "insider".

[Q]I try to keep seeing my cup more than half full.[/Q]

This year the cup was much more than half full on and off the ice. The contrast between college hockey at CU and so many sports at so many colleges makes me very proud!

[Q]Marty said:
This year the cup was much more than half full on and off the ice. The contrast between college hockey at CU and so many sports at so many colleges makes me very proud![/Q]Totally.

Tom Tseng '87 wrote:

I now remember those columns written by Chartrand. They were pretty funny, often filled with somewhat inside jokes (but they were endearing). I wonder if we could convince the team to do that again in 2003-04, maybe the Abbot twins (with a column entitled, All Abbot Hockey, or something like that...)

And to think, I was part of the editorial board that green-lighted that column. It was actually his idea, not ours. I think he got the idea from the football season, when we featured "Born to Ron" by Ron Mateo.

In any event, both columns were better than that other guy... what was it called again? Riding Pine?