Cornell 2005-2006 - My Opinion

I went to the Princeton game tonight. Pretty boring and the team was uninspiring. Our fans had a strong showing though. I'd say half the fans were Cornell fans.

I think we miss Cook and Downs a lot and we lack offensive firepower. We appeared to have problems bringing the puck out of our zone which used to be a strength. The freshmen were unimpressive. I think Barlow is the best of the bunch. I assume the team has been winning based on overall grit and scoring on the Power Play because we do not have a ton of talent or overwhelming size or speed.

Pokulok certainly is good, but has not risen to the level I had hoped. We need him to take over games.

Recruits should know that if they are good, they will be able to step into the Cornell lineup immediately. Making the postseason this year will be an awesome achievement for this team.

Scott Goldsmith '96
Making the postseason this year will be an awesome achievement for this team.

Actually, not making the post-season would be the awesome -- and somewhat unfathomable -- achievement.

Scott, is "your opinion" meant to cover the entire season to date or just the Princeton game? Not to say that some of your opinions don't have some applicability to the rest of the season, but it sounds like this is the only game you've seen this year.

So much for the Q game launching the team into a 2nd half winning streak. What happened? There's no post game thread, no recap and not many comments anywhere. I know Princeton has beaten some pretty good teams this year, but they still are Princeton and recently lost to Yale 6-1. To get shutout following a 6-0 win is very surprising.

Jordan04,
You must be talking about making the ECAC post season, which is guaranteed. Currently Cornell is 18th in the PWR, so missing the NCAA post season is quite fathomable.

Yeah, it was a joke about the (deplorable - ed.) fact that every team makes the ECAC PS.

Can't get too grumpy about 1 loss in 10 games. A bad night happens. If it carries over to next weekend, okay, make a fuss. But for now, this is most likely just a bump.

Having watched games over the last 13 or so years, it is clear that there is a significant dropoff from this year's team as compared to last year's team. From reading the comments on this board from the Red/White game, there was a feeling that there was nobody to step up and fill the shoes of last year's seniors. Who is scoring besides Moulson? And he is only scoring on power plays.

With Moulson graduating and Pokulok possibly turning pro, we could easily end up in the middle of the ECAC pack next year. Not a tragedy, but Schafer has spoiled me to the point that I expect us to finish at the top every year.

I think it's not only Cook and Downs we're missing, but Hynes and Knoepfli as well. I feel the team lacks spirit. Mike was a wonderful captain, and really helped everyone get up for every game. Shane was going to be the backbone of this squad. I can't blame him (too much) for leaving early, but I having a co-captain depart hurt the team, not only in reduced talent, but heart as well.

Scott Goldsmith '96
With Moulson graduating and Pokulok possibly turning pro, we could easily end up in the middle of the ECAC pack next year. Not a tragedy, but Schafer has spoiled me to the point that I expect us to finish at the top every year.

The way both Moulson and Pokulok have been playing throughout this year, their losses next year might not be huge at all. (Though, to be fair, Pokulok didn't look quite as bad this past weekend as I've become accustomed to this season.)

The fact is, Cornell played the better game last night, controlled the flow, and had the distinct majority of chances. Shots were 35-24, and that's probably a biased Princeton home town scorekeeper.

The only thing they couldn't do was finish. Whether that was there fault, luck, a hot goalie, or a combination of the 3, I don't know. But whatever it was, it sucked.

But had there been a few different bounces on scrambles in front of the net and/or the post they hit in the second (?) period, we easily could have been looking at a nice 3-1, 4-1 lead near the end of the game. Alas it was not to be.


This team is definitely weird though, this team has a variety of different problems that spring up. Lately the D seems to be getting solid and we're back to the nights when we can't put one home for our lives.

Scott is right, this team is a drop off from the last few years. But if there's a night that they can get all the cylinders clicking, they're pretty damn good. Unfortunately that has not consistently been the case.

Pokulok coughed up the Goeckner-Zeller breakaway.

Beeeej

I agree; something is a little weird with this team. They just seem to lack something. I guess we are all spoiled, but there was something about the 02-03 team and last year's too that made me confident they would always come back. Last night, I didn't get that same feel watching the team. They dominated the game, but even if they had won, I wouldn't have left feeling too confidant. Maybe just reading too much into things, I don't know.

Last night, i was particularly disappointed by the 2nd and 3rd lines, they couldn't seem to get much going. I know its been said a lot, and i know Schafer knows a heck of a lot more then I do, but I'd love to see the Abbotts back together. Also, in the last 2 years I have not been impressed with Sawada, anyone else have thoughts?

I was hoping that Sawada would be the next Hynes. Hynes is no John LeClair, but he was a very good college hockey power forward. Physically, he was a moose and he would sometimes crash the boards with abandon. Sawada has not showed me anything to this point.

In recent years, Cornell has simply been physically more dominant in both size and skill over other ECAC teams. Yes, we had more chances last night. But I didn't see a huge difference in the teams. Our hits were not much better, shots were not stronger, passes not crisper, etc.

We lost a bunch of strong seniors and replaced them with smallish freshmen who are contributing, but not leading the team. And the guys like Bitz and Pokulok have not stepped in to keep us at the top level we are used to. We had a fair amount of trouble digging the puck out of our own end and bringing it out of the zone last night. Cook and Downs used to take care of that. Salmela and Seminoff are not able to do the same things.

The sky is not falling, but clearly the 7/8 ranking we had going into last night's game was too high. And I think that this year's recruiting class is extremely important to next year's success.

DeltaOne81
The fact is, Cornell played the better game last night, controlled the flow, and had the distinct majority of chances. Shots were 35-24, and that's probably a biased Princeton home town scorekeeper.

The only thing they couldn't do was finish. Whether that was there fault, luck, a hot goalie, or a combination of the 3, I don't know. But whatever it was, it sucked.

But had there been a few different bounces on scrambles in front of the net and/or the post they hit in the second (?) period, we easily could have been looking at a nice 3-1, 4-1 lead near the end of the game. Alas it was not to be.


This team is definitely weird though, this team has a variety of different problems that spring up. Lately the D seems to be getting solid and we're back to the nights when we can't put one home for our lives.

Scott is right, this team is a drop off from the last few years. But if there's a night that they can get all the cylinders clicking, they're pretty damn good. Unfortunately that has not consistently been the case.

Although I agree somewhat with the beginning of what you said, I don't think Cornell had very many good scoring chances. The second period was filled with cornell dominating posession of the puck and winning the battles in the corners, but the majority of the shots they took would've taken a miracle to get in. They spent too much time in the corners and not enough getting good passes and good shots from the point or the middle of the ice. All the shots were throwing the puck in the middle with a prayer for a rebound. I think that was the main difference between the Q game and princeton and why the outcomes were the opposite.

Will
The way both Moulson and Pokulok have been playing throughout this year, their losses next year might not be huge at all. (Though, to be fair, Pokulok didn't look quite as bad this past weekend as I've become accustomed to this season.)

This must be more of that there new math: we have a team that struggles to score goals & Matt's scored 24% of all goals...yeah, he won't be missed.

ithacat

Will
The way both Moulson and Pokulok have been playing throughout this year, their losses next year might not be huge at all. (Though, to be fair, Pokulok didn't look quite as bad this past weekend as I've become accustomed to this season.)

This must be more of that there new math: we have a team that struggles to score goals & Matt's scored 24% of all goals...yeah, he won't be missed.

I would argue that most of Moulson's goals this year are goals that most of our forwards should be able to score as well. And yet, they're not, it would seem. Moulson's presence would appear to not be solving the problems of the overall offense, and dependence on Moulson to score 1/4 of our goals may even be promoting stagnation in others' scoring attempts. I have to wonder if Moulson's eventual departure will help to serve as the kick in the pants Cornell needs to get their offense going once again. Of course, this is all wildly speculative on my part, I admit.

Not wanting to open up another fight about him, but wasn't that O'Byrne?

Ben Rocky 04
Not wanting to open up another fight about him, but wasn't that O'Byrne?

No, it was definitely Pokulok. He passed the puck left and it went on the stick of the Princeton player, then tried to catch up to him to interrupt the breakaway, but didn't succeed.

Trotsky
Can't get too grumpy about 1 loss in 10 games. A bad night happens. If it carries over to next weekend, okay, make a fuss. But for now, this is most likely just a bump.

I'll bet Schafer isn't very happy either. Only 1 loss in 10 games sounds great, but a 7-1-2 record is actually disappointing when none of the 10 opponents is a top 30 KRACH team, and the loss drops Cornell to 17th in the PWR during a season in which the team's goal from the outset was not just an ECAC championship, but an NCAA title. Who knows, maybe the team is bored from its easy schedule and the arrival of SLU next week will get them going.

Trotsky
Who knows, maybe the team is bored from its easy schedule and the arrival of SLU next week will get them going.

Bored, I sure as heck hope not. But at least it'll be nice to have a good late season test run with a SLU x 2, Clarkson x 2, Colgate x 2, Dartmouth, and Harvard as 8 of our last 12 games.

It'll also be relatively nice to have our SOS probably increase as we go - since our conference schedule so far has consisted of Princeton x 2, QU x 2, Yale, Brown, RPI, Union, Harvard, and Dartmouth - instead of our typical SOS slide as we hit the conference schedule.

One thing's for sure, the next 6 weeks will show if this team can get it together and fulfill their potential, or if they'll sputter to a disappointing end.

Steve M
I'll bet Schafer isn't very happy either. Only 1 loss in 10 games sounds great, but a 7-1-2 record is actually disappointing when none of the 10 opponents is a top 30 KRACH team.

7-1-2 is 16 points in 10 games, which we'd expect if we were four times as good as our average opponent over that stretch. Of course, our average opponent over that stretch was not so good, so out of curiosity I used the DIY script (versatile, isn't it?) to work out what KRACH that 7-1-2 performance corresponds to.

Since those 10 games include the RIT game, I included them in the mix: [slack.net] and came up with a KRACH of 244.9 (look at the comparison grid). That's better than our overall KRACH of 191.6 (again including RIT) and would be good enough for #9 in the nation and an RRWP of over .680.

If you exclude RIT (so we're 6-1-2 in the last nine games that count) [slack.net] you get a KRACH of 223.0 compared to our actual 178.7. Our KRACH based on our performance over those 9 games would make us #13 with an RRWP around .660.

Thanks for crunching the numbers John. So Cornell's play over the last 10 games is at least NCAA tourney worthy, but not Frozen Four likely. That at least meets my post mid-November hopes.

I think the lesson is that even though we think our team should sweep everyone in the bottom half of the standings, it doesn't usually work out that way. The odds are against it.

KeithK
I think the lesson is that even though we think our team should sweep everyone in the bottom half of the standings, it doesn't usually work out that way. The odds are against it.

Good point. We play 11 ECAC teams, so figure the bottom half is 11 games (2 each against the bottom 5, and count one of the games against #6). Even if we had a 90% of winning each of those games, we'd only have a 31% chance of winning all of them (.9^10). To be good enough to even have a 50-50 shot at sweeping the bottom half of the league, you'd have to be good enough to have a 94% chance of winning each game (.5^(1/11)).

Anyone have a composite schedule for 1970? I'm curious how unlikely 29-0-0 was according to KRACH (using the fictitious team fix for perfection, of course).

KeithK
I think the lesson is that even though we think our team should sweep everyone in the bottom half of the standings, it doesn't usually work out that way. The odds are against it.

Here's the h2h by rank of opponent: [www.tbrw.info]

2005 was an exceptional year: Cornell swept the bottom 7 teams in the standings. Here are the totals x/y/z, x the number of teams swept starting from the bottom of the standings, y the total number of teams below Cornell swept, z the total number of teams below Cornell:

86: 2/5/9
87: 1/2/3
88: 4/6/9
89: 2/3/7
90: 0/3/9
91: 2/3/10
92: 0/1/7
93: 1/1/1 easy to be perfect when you finish 11th...
94: 2/2/4
95: 1/1/3
---------
96: 1/4/8
97: 2/5/10
98: 0/0/4
99: 1/2/5
00: 0/2/7 not counting Elephant Walk
01: 1/2/8
02: 2/7/11
03: 4/8/11
04: 3/5/10
05: 7/7/11

Will
I would argue that most of Moulson's goals this year are goals that most of our forwards should be able to score as well. And yet, they're not, it would seem. Moulson's presence would appear to not be solving the problems of the overall offense, and dependence on Moulson to score 1/4 of our goals may even be promoting stagnation in others' scoring attempts. I have to wonder if Moulson's eventual departure will help to serve as the kick in the pants Cornell needs to get their offense going once again. Of course, this is all wildly speculative on my part, I admit.

I hope you're right. Of course, I'd like to see more than one goal scorer on this team. If they're waiting for next year, it may be here quicker than most of us would like.