Dustin Traylen Out at Clarkson

So he can't play hockey, but he still gets a free ride? Sounds fair.

Traylen's departure might just be a such tipping point even if it seems like the end of the world now. Every time it seems as if the North Country teams are on the ropes and will never come back, they come back and win like two of the next three ECAC playoffs between the two of them.

Playoffs, Rich, we said "playoffs," not RS titles. We know you have a wallfull of them. Like the vice-presidency in the words of John Nance Garner, RS titles "aren't worth a warm bucket of spit." Funny how the quote always says spit, as if those were Garner's original words.

Anyone who thinks this is a bad thing for Clarkson is in for a rude surprise. Traylen's lack of focus and discipline -- like many of the Clarkson upperclassmen's -- was obvious. I'm impressed that Roll is laying down the law. Clarkson's recent decline (which I guarantee is temporary) has hurt Cornell, and I welcome Roll's new order.

[q]Anyone who thinks this is a bad thing for Clarkson is in for a rude surprise. Traylen's lack of focus and discipline -- like many of the Clarkson upperclassmen's -- was obvious. I'm impressed that Roll is laying down the law. Clarkson's recent decline (which I guarantee is temporary) has hurt Cornell, and I welcome Roll's new order.[/q]Exactly. No matter how much talent a kid has, you don't want him out there playing if he's not going to work hard and play smart hockey. Hopefully Roll will clean house, bring in some good players and get Clarkson back to where they should be.

It's taking Roll longer than I thought it would, but I have every confidence that he's the right guy for Clarkson.

[Q]Scersk '97 Wrote:

It's taking Roll longer than I thought it would, but I have every confidence that he's the right guy for Clarkson.[/q]

I look forward to a revival of the Cornell-Clarkson rivalry, which was the hottest one during my years as a student since at the time Clarkson (a) brought a band to our games, (b) brought fans to our games, and (c) was actually a competitive team. It always seems to go back to Harvard, but I still have a fond place in my heart for some of our games against Clarkson from '95-'98.

Cheers,
Kyle

[Q]Scersk '97 Wrote: It's taking Roll longer than I thought it would, but I have every confidence that he's the right guy for Clarkson.[/q]These expectations seem to be speeded up, like dog years or Internet time. Roll has only been at the helm last year and this year. True, Mike Schafer took Cornell to the NCAAs his first two years, but most coaches coming in are not going to pull that off, and even in Schafer's case there were four painful building years after that.

We need about five or six NCAA caliber, TUC-worthy teams in the ECACHL if the league is to shed its image as the league in the great no-man's land between real college hockey (HE, WCHA, CCHA) and the currently pretender leagues with the 15 and 16 seeds (CHA, Atlantic Hockey). Clarkson has to be one of the serious ECACHL half-dozen. Cornell and Harvard are two most every year now. Colgate and Darmouth make two more. Clarkson and St. Lawrence can take turns being a serious team and it would be nice if they did it together not in rotation. Then maybe Brown or RPI.

Otherwise our reputation and those RPI-Krach-PWR ratings are going to be based too much on the early season two-game series with a Michigan State caliber team (plus the couple pushovers) and two more games at the Florida Classic. Not doing well enough in those four games (1-2-1) probably helped land us in land of 10,000 hostile fans on a big sheet last week.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

even in Schafer's case there were four painful building years after that.[/q]

With all due respect, I wouldn't call the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 seasons "painful" at all. Just because we didn't make the NCAAs doesn't mean they were particularly bad seasons. Lighten up a bit Bill.

[Q]RatushnyFan Wrote:

Has this happened at Cornell since Alex Nikolic in the early '90's (academic reasons)? I hate seeing this kind of stuff.[/q]

Yes.

[q]With all due respect, I wouldn't call the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 seasons "painful" at all. Just because we didn't make the NCAAs doesn't mean they were particularly bad seasons. Lighten up a bit Bill.[/q]Perspective, perspective, perspective. 1993 was painful. 1998 was a disappointing rebuilding year after two straight titles. But was only painful because of the playin game business (man that day sucked). 1999 was similarly disappointing. 2000 and 2001 were solid 4th place finishes where we advanced to Lake Placid, losing to a very good SLU team each year. Not up to the standard set by 2003, but very far from "painful"seasons.

[Q]billhoward Wrote:
We need about five or six NCAA caliber, TUC-worthy teams in the ECACHL if the league is to shed its image as the league in the great no-man's land between real college hockey (HE, WCHA, CCHA) and the currently pretender leagues with the 15 and 16 seeds (CHA, Atlantic Hockey)[/q]

The CCHA is Michigan plus one rotating team. At this point, the ECAC minus Cornell is *better* than the CCHA minus Michigan, in terms of NCAA chances.

From this years F4, I'd say the line of demarkation between real college hockey and the rest is west of Michigan.

The point was: Don't pile on George Roll for not working miracles in just two seasons at Clarkson. The first two Cornell years under Schafer were amazingly good and some people hoped for more of the same in succeeding years as he brought in a team that was all his. For some, the inability to advance on to the NCAAs for the next several years was a bit hard to take even if the season was quite successful up through March.

Oh, I wasn't expecting Roll to win championships, but I expected Clarkson to be a contender immediately. Roll has a reputation as a good bench coach and he seemed to have a reasonable nucleus of players. After the disorganization of the last Morris year and the interim coach situation, I thought he would just come in and say, "All right boys, let's go to Albany this year." To my admittedly somewhat disinterested eye, I thought the talent was there.

It turns out that the problems run deeper than I had imagined. I don't know if I've examined this hypothesis here, but it seems that Morris was a very hard-nosed disciplinarian, able to deal with some problems and bad apples. Eventually, that got the best of him. Roll seems instead to think that discipline will be a lot easier if he gets rid of the bad apples. I think both approaches can work, but it seems logical that the transition between the two positions would be rocky.

A strong Clarkson is important for a strong ECAC(HL). Whether we're in the last stages of the Morris to Roll transition remains to be seen. With two years of his recruits on the team and the recent house cleaning, I suspect there will be little more news like this out of Potsdam.

[Q]Scersk '97 Wrote:

A strong Clarkson is important for a strong ECAC(HL). [/q]

I'm trying to wrap my head around one part of your argument. Why is it important that Clarkson specifically return to glory? I agree with the numbers of teams we would need to be perennial contenders, but what if, say, Yale rose to glory over the next decade and Clarkson remained at or near the bottom of the standings? Why is Clarkson more important in this scenario than roughly half of the ECAC(HL)?

[Q]Scersk '97 Wrote:
It's taking Roll longer than I thought it would, but I have every confidence that he's the right guy for Clarkson.[/q]Taking longer? Yeesh, they won a playoff series at Lynah and had a pretty good chance to beat Harvard in the championship game last year, this fresh off the shambles and malcontents Morris left him. I think he's doing just fine.

[q]Why is Clarkson more important in this scenario than roughly half of the ECAC(HL)?[/q]Well, if Yale rose to glory and maintained it over time it would probably be just as good as Clarkson. However, I think it's much more likely that Clarkson can maintain a strong program over a long period of time because they have a history of strong programs and dedication on campus to the program. Not to mention scholarships. Basically what we're saying is that it's important for the league to have it's traditionally strong programs performing well most of the time.

A similar example: it's important for Hockey East to have BU and Maine be strong most of the time. Yes, Lowell or Merrimack could step up and establish a consistently strong program to replace the Terriers or Black Bears. But it's less likely.

[Q]KeithK Wrote:
However, I think it's much more likely that Clarkson can maintain a strong program over a long period of time because they have a history of strong programs and dedication on campus to the program. Not to mention scholarships.
[/Q]
Exactly.
[Q]jmh30 Wrote:
Taking longer? Yeesh, they won a playoff series at Lynah and had a pretty good chance to beat Harvard in the championship game last year, this fresh off the shambles and malcontents Morris left him.
[/Q]
Yeah, but that's not playing like a "contender," it's playing like a "surprise contender." I did not expect Clarkson to finish in the bottom 3rd of the ECAC two years in a row. Without an uncharacteristic collapse by us in 2004, Roll would have nothing to show for his first two years.

As a partial defense, I reference Greg's TBRW predictions for the last couple of years, which are very stats based if not "scientific." 5th in 2005: [www.tbrw.info] 8th in 2004: [www.tbrw.info] Both the coaches and media also picked Clarkson 5th for 2005, and the coaches picked Clarkson 6th for 2004. Their regular season performance has been poor. I'm not the only one who has expected more out of Clarkson.

As I've said above, with what's been coming out of the Clarkson program lately, I have no illusions that many of these problems are due to transitional friction. I mean, when you question your starting goalie's effort enough to kick him off the team, you've got problems. If I had known the type of player that Morris left him, and if I had known that Roll's personality would not mesh with that type of player, perhaps I would've changed my expectations. Without those pieces of information, I based my numbers on stats and Roll's reputation as a bench coach at Oswego. In that admittedly fictitious world they "shoulda been a contender!"

I gotta go against the crowd on this one and say that I have serious questions about Roll. Okay, maybe Morris did leave the guy some malcontents, or whatever. I think Clarkson has been the least disciplined team in the ECAC during his reign. It used to be that you could count on Clarkson to play great disciplined but physical hockey.

I think Roll has had the athletes to finish in the top half for the last two years. He has got a team that shows some flashes of brilliance, but has no consistency. I think Schafer, Vaughn, Sneddon or Donato would have had that team more motivated and playing at a consistently higher level.

Clarkson has a golden opportunity this next year to get back in it. Colgate and Harvard will be rebuilding. Vermont will be gone. I think he needs to get Clarkson back into the top 4 next year. [ Pack the rink...Get home ice...sweep SLU ??]. If they can't finish in the top half next year, I think you have to wonder if the wrong guy is at the helm. Watching telecasts from Cheel makes me think that a lot of the Clarkson fans have deserted that program.

It used to be that you could depend on Clarkson to be strong for the whole regular season, and fold in the playoffs. Now, they seem to lose for the first 3/4 of the regular season, and show up only for the post-season. It has got to be a lousy time to be a Clarkson fan -- last years playoff run not withstanding.

[Q]Mike Nevin Wrote:
It used to be that you could depend on Clarkson to be strong for the whole regular season, and fold in the playoffs. Now, they seem to lose for the first 3/4 of the regular season, and show up only for the post-season. It has got to be a lousy time to be a Clarkson fan -- last years playoff run not withstanding.
[/q]
I'd rather have a team that shows up in the playoffs than a team that chokes most every year.

Clarkson has 30 appearances in the ECAC final four, we have 28:

[www.tbrw.info]

We have 11 championships, they have 4:

[www.tbrw.info]

Three of their champions were #1 seeds:

[www.tbrw.info]

The other one was a #3 seed. Clarkson teams under Morris were legendary for choking in the playoffs. Now that was a coach who had problems getting his teams "over the hump." They need their Schafer. The jury is still out on Roll, but he needs to show something soon, I think.

Clarkson fans have returned! But really only for this thread, and to agree with most of you. There are a few problems that I see with Roll's coaching during games. For almost the whole regular season, we had ONE breakout play. ONE. Every time down the ice, it looked identical. Getting an offensive zone set up 5v5 just didn't happen often at all. Teams would pick up on the breakout and crush it every time. Roll switched it on and off with a new breakout against Union, which seemed to work a little better since we could actually get the zone set up, even if we didn't put many in the net. First game against Cornell was an embarrassment, and there was no way to explain it other than you guys have a great team. Second night, I was too preoccupied with trying to keep some "happy" friends in check to really notice, but I imagine it didn't go very well on the breakout then either, just happened to capitalize when we could.

I don't like the dismissal of Traylen, but if he is going to do it, better now than during the season. I never thought I would miss Matt Nickerson but having an offensive defenseman would have been a great help on a struggling power play, and it looks like Roll's got some decent recruits lined up. Give him two more years to work with this year's and last years freshmen and I like the way the team could look. Brought in quite a bit of young talent, and I liked Leggio against Cornell after Traylen got pulled -- he got lucky at times, but it was a good confidence booster to come in and stone the Red, even though we were already losing.

Of the poorly-performing scholarship schools in the ECAC (Clarkson, SLU, RPI), how would you rank them in terms of their ability to return to powerhouse status? Why?

My vote is (1) SLU (2) Clarkson (3) RPI. SLU is getting their scholarship system up and running, but they still seem to be a day late and $1 short on defense. Clarkson I'm giving Roll the benefit of the doubt. RPI.....that team is about as depressing as the Troy local economy.

[Q]Greenberg '97 Wrote:

So he can't play hockey, but he still gets a free ride? Sounds fair.[/q]

Yes, it is, actually. This is one of the pillars of what's left of the student-athlete concept. It prevents coaches from giving scholarships to a bunch of freshman prospects and cutting the ones that don't pan out. If you give someone an athletic scholarship, you're committing to four years of their education.

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

Anyone who thinks this is a bad thing for Clarkson is in for a rude surprise. Traylen's lack of focus and discipline -- like many of the Clarkson upperclassmen's -- was obvious. I'm impressed that Roll is laying down the law. Clarkson's recent decline (which I guarantee is temporary) has hurt Cornell, and I welcome Roll's new order.[/Q]
Exactly. No matter how much talent a kid has, you don't want him out there playing if he's not going to work hard and play smart hockey. Hopefully Roll will clean house, bring in some good players and get Clarkson back to where they should be. [/q]


The plain and simple.....Traylen was a cancer. He had to go, and it is better he went now than be a disruptive force next year.