Harvard bursts Vermont's bubble

3-1 home win for the Cantabs over Vermont Tuesday (12/7), ending Vermont's unbeate1n streak at 11. [Adding from the box score:] A goal apiece in the second period, second Harvard goal seven minutes into the third, plus an empty-net goal. Announced attendance 1798. [www.uscho.com]

Harvard moves into first in the ECAC with 13 points, but that's in 10 games. (Cornell has 9 points in six games.) Now it's time for Colgate to cool off, too.

Looks like there will be four ECAC teams ranked next week. Harvard is playing really well and the game in January is getting pretty big.

We do not want Dov to go out on an up note against the Big Red.

i just came from the game. general impressions:

-I am impressed with vermont's game play. they are an extremely talented team, VERY AGGRESSIVE, have great goaltending, and are quick. they are also undisciplined and one key penalty have harvard the go-ahead power play goal
-harvard stepped it up as the game went on. they owned the third period.
-harvard's pelle is an excellent player.
-hyphen did make some sprawling saves but his inability to control rebounds nearly killed harvard. vermont players were never in a position to hit any rebounds in though
-there was a bizarre period of a few seconds in per 1 where neither team had a goalie in net. apparently the ref called a delayed penalty and both coaches thought the call was on the other team. harvard had the puck and shot it at the vermont open net. it hit the crossbar and then the ref realized that shit had gone down and he blew the whistle (the vermont player may have also touched it then). it was weird. harvard woulda gotten the goal if it had gone in.
-harvard fans are pathetic. wins over bu, bc, vermont and they dont give a shit.

-mike

Against Canisius, the ref (Fulton) moronically signalled a high stick on Cornell as a delayed penalty against Canisius. McKee went to the bench only to realize when he got there that play was going with Canisius controlling the puck.

Despite the HEAVY Eastern bias in the national polls
I would be very surprised if 4 ECACHL teams made it into the top 15 at this point in the season. Harvard will need to beat Maine this Saturday (currently ranked #11) to crack the top 15 and I would guess either Boston University (playing RPI on Saturday) or Northern Michigan (2 against Alaska Fairbanks) would have to lose and another team from a different league would have to not get promoted (BGSO, UMD and Michigan State could all move up if they had good weekends).

Then again posters on USCHO are already trumpeting RPI, PWR, and KRACH numbers despite the lack of a statistically significant sample size (like those formulas can overcome east coast bias anyways!)

Indeed, that was a very strange moment, no goalies in net. From what I could tell, when the penalty was initially called, Fallon, the UVM goalie, saw the puck traveling down toward the Harvard end. He must have assumed it was his guys in control and headed for the bench. Have to admit that at that moment, I was confused, 'cause I thought it was a call against UVM, but watching Fallon go, I figured I had it wrong.

Suddenly, here comes Harvard charging back the other way, and off goes Hyphen. Now I'm really confused...and there ain't a goalie to be found on the ice. Then, for whatever reason, the Harvard guy with the puck, and no one in the net in front of him, decides to shoot from somewhere near Boston Harbor. OK, it was around the blue line, but for the life of me I don't know why he didn't try to penetrate farther. As Mike said, the puck hits the crossbar and the ref whistles the play. Given that Harvard was attacking and UVM hadn't really gotten control of the puck yet, I'm not sure that wasn't a quick whistle. Nevertheless, it was a few seconds of truly surreal hockey.

As for the overall game, it was fun to watch and surprising that the score stayed as low as it did (Harvard missed numerous scoring chances in the 1st). A very fast-paced, but loose game. I thought both teams skated their asses off and looked very quick. But Harvard had the edge in terms of staying in control. The Cats could skate with them, but unfortunately, couldn't seem to skate with the puck. On numerous occasions they'd be bringing the puck up ice only to lose it to little or no Harvard pressure. A whiff here, an overshot pass there, an out-of-position player, and the next thing you knew, the Cats found themselves having to fall back on defense again.

January should be interesting. This doesn't look like the same Harvard team that we beat up at Lynah. They look to have it together a lot more now than they did then. But let's also consider that the game played by UVM played right into the strength of Harvard. They gave them the passing lanes, they didn't work the corners, and when they tried to throw their weight around, it was mostly bodies flying erratically in all directions, versus hard hits that changed the momentum of the play. Call us a clutch-and-grab team if you will, but I suspect our more disciplined way of applying our physical strength out there: solid forechecking, blocking the lanes, grinding it out and forcing numerous faceoffs in the opponent's end, will take its toll and disrupt the Harvard game. Just gotta be sure we put the puck in the net a few times.

Oh yeah, and the Harvard "fans" do suck. Once again, lots of empty seats, no cheering, and they didn't even have their band there tonight. Only entertaining thing about the crowd was the 98-pound weakling behind the UVM goal who went shirtless and painted himself with an "H" on his (sunken) chest.

[Q]Killer Wrote:

Indeed, that was a very strange moment, no goalies in net. From what I could tell, when the penalty was initially called, Fallon, the UVM goalie, saw the puck traveling down toward the Harvard end. He must have assumed it was his guys in control and headed for the bench. Have to admit that at that moment, I was confused, 'cause I thought it was a call against UVM, but watching Fallon go, I figured I had it wrong.

Suddenly, here comes Harvard charging back the other way, and off goes Hyphen. Now I'm really confused...and there ain't a goalie to be found on the ice. Then, for whatever reason, the Harvard guy with the puck, and no one in the net in front of him, decides to shoot from somewhere near Boston Harbor. OK, it was around the blue line, but for the life of me I don't know why he didn't try to penetrate farther. As Mike said, the puck hits the crossbar and the ref whistles the play. Given that Harvard was attacking and UVM hadn't really gotten control of the puck yet, I'm not sure that wasn't a quick whistle. Nevertheless, it was a few seconds of truly surreal hockey.

As for the overall game, it was fun to watch and surprising that the score stayed as low as it did (Harvard missed numerous scoring chances in the 1st). A very fast-paced, but loose game. I thought both teams skated their asses off and looked very quick. But Harvard had the edge in terms of staying in control. The Cats could skate with them, but unfortunately, couldn't seem to skate with the puck. On numerous occasions they'd be bringing the puck up ice only to lose it to little or no Harvard pressure. A whiff here, an overshot pass there, an out-of-position player, and the next thing you knew, the Cats found themselves having to fall back on defense again.

January should be interesting. This doesn't look like the same Harvard team that we beat up at Lynah. They look to have it together a lot more now than they did then. But let's also consider that the game played by UVM played right into the strength of Harvard. They gave them the passing lanes, they didn't work the corners, and when they tried to throw their weight around, it was mostly bodies flying erratically in all directions, versus hard hits that changed the momentum of the play. Call us a clutch-and-grab team if you will, but I suspect our more disciplined way of applying our physical strength out there: solid forechecking, blocking the lanes, grinding it out and forcing numerous faceoffs in the opponent's end, will take its toll and disrupt the Harvard game. Just gotta be sure we put the puck in the net a few times.

Oh yeah, and the Harvard "fans" do suck. Once again, lots of empty seats, no cheering, and they didn't even have their band there tonight. Only entertaining thing about the crowd was the 98-pound weakling behind the UVM goal who went shirtless and painted himself with an "H" on his (sunken) chest.[/q]

I'm not so sure that Cornell "beat up" on Harvard when they played. It was a pretty tight game with very few scoring chances either way. I wasn't at the Michigan State games but I have been at every other game and Cornell had fewer scoring chances against Harvard than any other team they have played.

[Q]Cornell95 Wrote:


Then again posters on USCHO are already trumpeting RPI, PWR, and KRACH numbers despite the lack of a statistically significant sample size (like those formulas can overcome east coast bias anyways!)[/q]

Statistically meaningful, not statistically significant. They are not the same thing, in spite of significant meaning meaningful in general usage. Clear? No?

Significance refers to acceptance or rejection of the null hypothesis, nothing more and nothing less. Last time I checked, RPI and PWR ain't got no p value. Thus, you cannot assess whether or not it is statistically significant.

Now, if you wanted to talk about power, or generalizability, feel free. But this is the second time in as many weeks that I've heard someone misuse 'statistical significance' in reference to the PWR. Stop that. You're a Cornellian, not a cantab; we expect you to know the difference.

And yes, I'm sure JTW will now be happy to explain how to do a power calculation for the Bradley-Terry method. And if we're really luck, maybe somebody else will write a rant about how significance is an outmoded 20th century concept.

Captain Pedantic returns to his Structural Eq. Modeling

IMHO they were beat up. The game I watched was close only in score. Had it not been for Hyphen, that one could have gone down as 6-0. We outshot them 34-17, IIRC. Harvard had trouble clearing the puck, penetrating our zone, and seldom got off more than one shot before they were scrambling back on defense.

I thought we looked great for that early in the season, and Harvard had not yet found their legs, nor their organization and discipline. You may disagree, but to me it looked like a pretty dominating performance, one I'd love to see again at Lynah East, but suspect we won't (unless Harvard goes into another of their famous finals-related doldrums).

Significance is an outmode twentieth century concept, rooted in competing cultural hegemonies of racialized, patriarchical memes.

See: [www.elsewhere.org]

given harvard's current streak (8 wins in their last 9 games) i am beginning to think that their 2 games in central NY were an aberration...

i don't know if harvard will be ranked next week, but if cornell has their record and is not ranked, there would be a revolution here.

[Q]I'm not so sure that Cornell "beat up" on Harvard when they played.[/Q]

I'm pretty sure Cornell did "beat up" Harvard when they played here. 2-0 game that easily could have been 5-0 had it not been for H's defense and netminder. As I remember Harvard had about zero scoring opportunities.

[Q]jeh25 Wrote: . But this is the second time in as many weeks that I've heard someone misuse 'statistical significance' in reference to the PWR. Stop that. You're a Cornellian, not a cantab; we expect you to know the difference.

And if we're really luck, maybe somebody else will write a rant about how significance is an outmoded 20th century concept.

Captain Pedantic returns to his Structural Eq. Modeling[/q]And this is not the first time that I've seen someone not proofread their posting. Unless "if we're really luck" is something I've not heard about. Hey, I don't claim to be up on all modern lingo.

Harvard leading Maine 1-0 after one. Goal by Jon Pelle, who has six of Harvard's thirteen shots on goal. Hyphen vs. Howard.

Edit: Du makes it 2-0 midway through second.

Edit: Lederman, 3-0 late in the second. Can Maine rally in the third again?

Edit: Johnson on a 5-on-3, 4-0 late in third.

Edit: Final 4-1 on a late PPG. Harvard 8-0 at Lynah East.

Oh, yeah, now Hahvahd can hold a lead against Maine.