Brown at Cornell postgame thread

Cornell was the better team on the ice and in shots on goal in the home match against Brown ... but sheesh, it was too close for comfort.

David McKee may not have the GAA of last year's Hobey Baker run, but he bailed us out late in the third and in OT.

Ho-hum. Another PPG for Matt Moulson. That's 12 on the year, plus 2 ENGs, plus 1 even strength goal. Makes him dangerous on man-up, but not exactly a 5x5 force in ECACHL hockey. He is real good on defense, though.

Not a bad night because of the final score, but it shouldn't have been this close. I was hoping for 3-0 and would have settled for 3-1 or 4-2 including an ENG.

Brown really impressed me tonight. Definitely are not the worst team in the conference. All of this without far and away their best player too (Inhacak). Anyways, Cornell's leadership was exposed again tonight after they completely broke down for a good period or so after Brown tied it. They really really struggle after they get scored on. It's been a very bad trend all season. The third brown goal happened because McKee fell for some reason (no Brown players were even close to him when he did) and all the Cornell players just stopped playing. Now for the good.
Pokuluk and O'Byrne were unquestionably the best two players on the ice. The former continues to run the team's offense while the latter anchors the defense. Mugford was outstanding all night so it was good to see him rewarded with a goal. Chris Abbott also had a really good game. Seminoff played his best game at Cornell. McKee wasn't tested much but he made possibly the save of the season in overtime when he went post-to-post for an enormous save. Getting very worried about tomorrow night. Yale dominated Cornell in New Haven and they seem to be an even better team now.

The officiating was by far the worst I've seen all year. I can't even begin to describe how horrible. Noncalls both ways, stupid calls... It got to the point where I seriously thought someone was going to get hurt.

Chris Abbott credited with the OT goal. Assists go to Mugford and McKee (his first career point).

Cornell played well, but they shut down after that first goal.

the worst call of the night was the call on Pegs. I agree that it was a penalty, but after letting two obvious penalties go in the corners, making that call was just BS.

I thought sawada, Mugford, OB, Pokulok, and others (to lazy...) played awesome too.

billhoward
I was hoping for 3-0 and would have settled for 3-1 or 4-2 including an ENG.

Maybe I'm crazy but I'll settle for a 4-3 win in OT.

Maybe the come from behind win might have impressed Thiessen enough to choose us over UND?

My thoughts on the game.

First i hope the ecac looks at this game, because this ref was awful. I was worried somebody was going to get hurt. When you hook somebody around the neck, and it isnt called, that is un believable.

I thought Bitz played his best game this year. Same with mugford/Obyrne.

Mckee wasn't on but made the big save when he needed to. (the one in OT fantastic.)

Played bad but all good teams find a way to win, and that is what we did tonight.

3 stars:

3. Bitz
2. Shasha
3. Chris Abbott

Changed scoring on the game winner:

Chris Abbott 5 (Mugford 6, McKee 1)

Mike K
My thoughts on the game.

First i hope the ecac looks at this game, because this ref was awful. I was worried somebody was going to get hurt. When you hook somebody around the neck, and it isnt called, that is un believable.

I thought Bitz played his best game this year. Same with mugford/Obyrne.

Mckee wasn't on but made the big save when he needed to. (the one in OT fantastic.)

Played bad but all good teams find a way to win, and that is what we did tonight.

3 stars:

3. Bitz
2. Shasha
3. Chris Abbott

Bitz and Moulson didn't do anything after the first goal. Cornell played badly for about 15 minutes but recovered nicely.

Trotsky
Changed scoring on the game winner:

Chris Abbott 5 (Mugford 6, McKee 1)

Just the way it was called on the radio.

calgARI '07
Bitz and Moulson didn't do anything after the first goal. Cornell played badly for about 15 minutes but recovered nicely.

Always hard to tell on CSTV, but I saw numerous cases in the second half of the second period when Bitz was very physical and effective. They didn't lead to scoring chances, but they kept Brown disorganized and back on their heels at a time when the Red was reeling from 3 straight goals against.

archived video is up... the rush leading to chris's gwg is at the 2:18 mark. the camera angle, and ray sawada make is hard to see the move and who got the goal (sawada/abbott). Not sure how they originally gave the goal to mugford? did the ref have a dyslexic moment (12/21?)

Bitz looked very good today. This is a lot coming from me, as I've thought he's been just about awful this year. Has a lot of assists, but his puckhandling has been quite bad. Much better today, he was clearing in front of the net, and moving the puck well.

archived where?

at the some-access site (and through the cornell men's hockey schedule/results page, but that means you see the final score, but that doesn't matter in this case).
your subscription includes access to the archived games.
[allaccess.cstv.com]

The Rancor
archived where?

All Access

Actually, McKee fell because a Brown player put a stick to his face/chest and brought him down. That was the reason for the dispute following the goal. McKee tried to get back to the other side but was not quick enough. That was a clear cut interference call that the ref missed. I am not surprised with Hansen. He just plain sucks.

I'm surprised that hanson talked to schafer for sooo long after the 3rd brown goal. The team definitely had more than enough time to re-group, re-focus, and maybe schafer's little chat made the ref feel remorse... we got the pp right after, and sasha's goal was a result of the powerplay even though brown was technically back a full strength.

canuck89
Actually, McKee fell because a Brown player put a stick to his face/chest and brought him down. That was the reason for the dispute following the goal. McKee tried to get back to the other side but was not quick enough. That was a clear cut interference call that the ref missed. I am not surprised with Hansen. He just plain sucks.

very debatable. i was pretty close to the play and it looked as if he just lost his balance with all the traffic around him. if anything, a cornell player tripped him because i saw no Brown players in the crease.

For the most part I would say that it was not on purpose. However, this does not mean that a penalty did not occur. If the player was pushed by us into McKee and body contact occured -- no penalty. However, the stick itself is not considered part of the body (This is why lifting sticks and such is allowed). I am not sure on the rule at that point then as to whether stick-only contact to McKee can be attributed to our defenseman's check (and subsequently be considered legal). Furthermore, as a hockey player myself, the stick is not rigidly attached to the body; if the player was checked towards McKee, it was that player's own decision to leave the stick out rigid like that and swipe him. A stick held loosely in the hands would bounce of Mckee, not go through him.

And to respond to the possibility of losing balance due to traffic, this is still a penalty. As long as a trip/check did not occur, no contact is allowed. If an opposing player skates through the crease and trips over a defenseman (and into the goalie) who was not playing him, that contact is interference.

billhoward
David McKee may not have the GAA of last year's Hobey Baker run, but he bailed us out late in the third and in OT.

Ho-hum. Another PPG for Matt Moulson. That's 12 on the year, plus 2 ENGs, plus 1 even strength goal. Makes him dangerous on man-up, but not exactly a 5x5 force in ECACHL hockey. He is real good on defense, though.

McKee should have made that amazing save every other time as well, because we know he can. He used to make crazy saves like that all the time last year. Well I hope he doesn't allow anymore goals for the rest of this season. Coming into this season I expected him to be nothing less than #1. My expectation still hasn't changed.

Moulson is the undisputed most important player of our team because of his skills, experience, and character.... Although you're right, he is not exactly a 5x5 force. I don't think there is anyone in college hockey who can dominate and terrorize the opponent's defense like Hynes! We have a pair of extremely "bad-ass" defensemen this year. But no one reliable to anchor in front of the crease. Sawada and Bitz like to chase the puck along the board which is a good thing, but they don't really fill the gap that Hynes left. I noticed that Carefoot got beat to the rebounds twice today- once on penalty kill (almost led to a Brown goal) and once on offense. Maybe he was tired tonight.

billhoward
David McKee may not have the GAA of last year's Hobey Baker run, but he bailed us out late in the third and in OT.

Ho-hum. Another PPG for Matt Moulson. That's 12 on the year, plus 2 ENGs, plus 1 even strength goal. Makes him dangerous on man-up, but not exactly a 5x5 force in ECACHL hockey. He is real good on defense, though.

McKee should have made that amazing save every other time as well, because we know he can. He used to make crazy saves like that all the time last year. Well I hope he doesn't allow anymore goals for the rest of this season. Coming into this season I expected him to be nothing less than #1. My expectation still hasn't changed.

Moulson is the undisputed most important player of our team because of his skills, experience, and character... Although you're right, he is not exactly a 5x5 force. I don't think there is anyone in college hockey who can brutally dominate and terrorize the opponent's defense like Hynes! We have a pair of extremely "bad-ass" defensemen this year. But no one reliable to stay in front and hammer the crease. Sawada and Bitz like to chase the puck along the board which is a good thing, but that doesn't really fill the gap that Hynes left. I noticed that Carefoot got beat to the rebounds twice today- once on penalty kill (almost led to a Brown goal) and once on offense. Maybe he was tired tonight.

Yale has one really good line and the rest is crap. Schafer should be able prep our guys to handle a team like this easily.

calgARI '07
very debatable. i was pretty close to the play and it looked as if he just lost his balance with all the traffic around him. if anything, a cornell player tripped him because i saw no Brown players in the crease.

I just finished watch the replays of the goals on the All Access archive

1) What poise my Moulson to score that first one

2) Gleed has to learn that the puck's supposed to go in the other net. Or, well, at least to be a little more aware of the puck when he's close to the net. Once is a mistake, twice is starting to be a problem.

3) I don't know if it was interference, but there was both a Brown and a Cornell player that could have been the one to make contact with McKee. Or he coulda just lost his balance. If anything I'd lean toward the Cornell player making the majority of the content, but I couldn't tell anything for sure.

4) Beautiful passing on the tying goal. And nice to see our guys be able to hit the open man in the middle... instead of pucks constantly bouncing over sticks. Seems we finally may've added some down low weapons.

5) OT GWG - I can't tell for sure, but after watching it several times, I'd swear that Sawada took that shot. Abbott came in backhanded, twisted towards Sawada, and never really seemed to take a shot... but Sawada's stick sure took a shooting motion, and the puck landed in the back of the net. Again, I could be wrong, and that would take away McKee's assist ... but I could swear that was Ray's goal.

i hate my browser (have to blame it on something, right). well i accidently clicked "post message" when i wasn't done typing. so i quickly hit "stop" and i guess i wasn't quick enough. so don't read the first incomplete post.

But yea, stupid firefox..

Dafatone
The officiating was by far the worst I've seen all year. I can't even begin to describe how horrible. Noncalls both ways, stupid calls... It got to the point where I seriously thought someone was going to get hurt.

It's not a REAL Cornell-Brown game unless one of our players gets hurt.

Hanson did give us a gift when he didn't call a blatant spearing against the boards on us during the third period. However, the worst non-call of the night goes to the Brown player who was lying on one of ours and flopping around pretending to get up.

i'd have thought that the brown player hooking topher around the neck and not getting called for it was pretty bad, especially when the ref was looking right at the play. That and when one of our guys made his opinion about the matter quite clear a few seconds later he gets called. total bullshit.

DeltaOne815
OT GWG - I can't tell for sure, but after watching it several times, I'd swear that Sawada took that shot. Abbott came in backhanded, twisted towards Sawada, and never really seemed to take a shot... but Sawada's stick sure took a shooting motion, and the puck landed in the back of the net. Again, I could be wrong, and that would take away McKee's assist ... but I could swear that was Ray's goal.

Watching it several times, I can see Chris make a forehand motion toward the net with his stick. Sawada seems to make a similar motion simultaneously. Chris's move almost looks like a "skip" in the video, so it's very hard to see.

You watched again, rewound, watched the key plays, etcetera? Wouldn't it be nice to have that as part of the all sports package - highlights of each game that you could play apart from the entire game thread?

Cornell ought to be recording this in high-def. Even if the web feed is less than standard def now, someday the archives will be nicer in high-def. Of course, at some point high def is going from 720 lines to 1080 to 2000-something lines (what PC people would call the vertical pixels).

Right now I'd settle for better cameras in standard def. Notice when the Web feed uses broadcast quality cameras, how much better the image quality is.

Al DeFlorio

DeltaOne815
OT GWG - I can't tell for sure, but after watching it several times, I'd swear that Sawada took that shot. Abbott came in backhanded, twisted towards Sawada, and never really seemed to take a shot... but Sawada's stick sure took a shooting motion, and the puck landed in the back of the net. Again, I could be wrong, and that would take away McKee's assist ... but I could swear that was Ray's goal.

Watching it several times, I can see Chris make a forehand motion toward the net with his stick. Sawada seems to make a similar motion simultaneously. Chris's move almost looks like a "skip" in the video, so it's very hard to see.

Hmmm. Watching it again, I think it's a backhand flip by Abbott. But it's clear to me he's making a shooting motion.

The timestamp on the game-winner in the CSTV archive is 2:18:00.

Perfect pass by Mugford. No idea from the image whether Chris or Sawada really shot it, but I assume they went to the ref after the game and made the change themselves, so I'm taking their word for it.

billhoward
Right now I'd settle for better cameras in standard def. Notice when the Web feed uses broadcast quality cameras, how much better the image quality is.

I'd be happy with better camerawork myself.

If Moulson's scoring on 5x5 has dried up, and one even-strength, non-EN goal two-thirds of the way in represents the Sahara, then he could also be measured by assists and plus/minus. If he's a real defensive force as a forward, then his plus-minus should be awesome. (Did I miss seeing them at Cornell's handoff site [www.collegehockeystats.net] ?)


Maybe it doesn't show up on stats, but on the road when the opponent gets last line change, if they put their first line out against Moulson's line and we neutralize them, our second-third-fourth lines should do better than their second-third-maybe they skate-fourth-line.

The downside to our scoring system is that when it's even strength or when the second power play is on the ice, we're not a top ten team. Cornell's downfall will be in that first-round (second?) NCAA playoff game when we're down 3-2 with six minutes to play and the ref has parked his whistle for the duration.

Got to remind ourselves we're nitpicking. There are fifty other teams in D1 hockey right now who're dying to have this as the biggest problem.

So on the first brown goal, why the heck were our two defensemen leading the rush up the ice on the penalty kill? Pokulok was on the goal line when brown started the rush up the ice, hence the odd man rush that resulted in the goal.

calgARI '07

Mike K
My thoughts on the game.

First i hope the ecac looks at this game, because this ref was awful. I was worried somebody was going to get hurt. When you hook somebody around the neck, and it isnt called, that is un believable.

I thought Bitz played his best game this year. Same with mugford/Obyrne.

Mckee wasn't on but made the big save when he needed to. (the one in OT fantastic.)

Played bad but all good teams find a way to win, and that is what we did tonight.

3 stars:

3. Bitz
2. Shasha
3. Chris Abbott

Bitz and Moulson didn't do anything after the first goal. Cornell played badly for about 15 minutes but recovered nicely.

Bitz did alot, i agree with trotsky. Bitz was playing physical and there were 2 or three times where we were in trouble in our own zone, bitz got the puck and started the other way and gave cornell 3 great scoring chances. Also, I don't know how many face offs he took, but it seemed like he won every single one he took. They were big wins when we needed it. He played a great game.

A few thoughts...
Although he saved the game for us at the end, I thought McKee looked pretty shaky last night especially in the 1st and 2nd periods. I think he would have wanted that first goal back or at least the rebound he let up. I didn't have a very good view of the next two goals, but I don't think he looked comfortable. That wrist shot that Hurley fired from the point that McKee lost track of for a minute gave me a horrible flashback to the 4th goal that MSU scored on us right of the face off. He did turn it around in the 3rd and overtime. His post to post save on Prough was spectacular. It wasn't his best effort or his worse.

Pokulok and O'Byrne were head and shoulders above the rest of the defencemen on the ice (literally and figuratively). I agree with Ari about Seminoff--he was fabulous. He had a great open ice hit early in the 1st period and continued his physical play (which included 2 timely hip checks) and sound positional defense for the duration of the game. Krantz also looked pretty good and didn't have (maybe I missed one?) an offensive zone turnover. I was pretty unimpressed with the Glover-Gleed pairing after such a great weekend against the North Country. They seemed to get caught flat-footed more than a few times. It was definitely not their best game.

I think the best thing that happened for Cornell in the second period (saving the two goals) was when Pegoraro was sent to the box for roughing. As he was skating to the box Hurley was jawing with and taunting Pegoraro (I wasn't close enough to make out what he was saying). When his penalty expired, Dan came flying out of the box full speed and as Hurley was clearing the puck along the end boards Pegoraro checked him into the boards and knocked him right on his ass (a la Hornby). He played great the remainder of the period and continued with his surprising physical play. His assist to Carefoot in the slot was gorgeous and I think the turning point in the game.

We didn't play that great (read: consistent) but it was a fun game to watch. Hansen and his no-calls as well as those odd bounces woke a sleeping giant in the 2nd period. The crowd really came alive and was as loud (for stretches) as its been at Lynah since the 2nd Clarkson playoff game last year. I could only clap in overtime as my voice was pretty well shot. I watched parts of the webcast this morning and it is a shame that they didn't turn the crowd mic up. Lynah was really rocking.

I had a pretty good look at the second period goal, and honestly there wasn't much McKee could do besides maybe keeping his balance of the third goal.

The second goal came on a 2 on 1 in which our only man back had no stick - so maybe a 2 on .5 - and McKee made an outstanding toe save on the initial shot. But without a stick to clear the puck and with McKee already down and out the rebound was a tap in.

The third goal was a little stranger. It looked to me like Kennedy was the one who made contact with McKee, whether or not he was pused into him I don't remember. But then Prough came out from behind the net with Dave already down and had pretty much the whole net to shoot at. Since, as someone mentioned above, Cornell stopped playing for a second.

IIRC all the goals were scored with McKee on his backside, which is a really tough position for a goalie to make any kind of save from. He made the saves when it counted though, I watched the overtime again online and he had to go post to post to keep Prough from scoring in OT. The camera angles they had I wasn't a fan of, but the pass came from the E/F corner to the far post and McKee was there in perfect position for the save.

I agree. I remember commenting to my friend after the first period how the game was boring, even though it was 1-1. I wasn't referring to the game so much as the atmosphere. Whatever the first period wasn't, the second and third made up for it. The crowd really got loud and I loved it! Let's hope we can get just as excited tonight. LGR!

section A returns to full strength...

Is there some way to see the video after the game for free? I didn't think there was, but since a couple of people who were at the game wrote about watching the video, it made me think maybe there was, since I wouldn't imagine you guys would be paying for a subscription if you're here in Ithaca, going to the games. What am I missing?

Thanks.
Andy W.

Not that I know of, I happened to buy a month's subscription so I could watch the RIT game so I have a few days left to watch the archives too.

The first Brown goal last night was, I thought, a total defensive letdown by Krantz. If I remember correctly they came in on basically a 2 on 2 rush and Krantz just kindof "ole'd" his man who had the puck. I was very disappoitned by that but was happy to see the team rebound. Let's keep up that late play tonight. LGR