Brown 2 at Harvard 0, 11/01

One piece of good news about tonight:

[www.collegehockeystats.com]

Not a bad way for Ha+rva+rd to start out the year.

Dartmouth knocked off their no-longer-unbeaten football team, too.

And is actually Princeton good this year or is St. Cloud bad?

Since I am tired of people calling us the EZAC, I am kinda disappointed that Harvard (sucks) lost tonight. I know it's just one game and Yann Dannis is a marvelous goalie, but Harvard (sucks) is supposed to be the class of the league. It's especially painful when a mediocre CCHA team waltzes into one of the hardest places to play in hockey and takes three points from us.

I'm still excited for this season though and it's great to be back at Lynah.

According to USCHO, Princeton got outshot 45-12 on Friday and 49-15 tonight. So, basically, Princeton has a good goalie...or at least, he was good this weekend. But their offense is still weak.

I'm not disappointed that Harvard lost a conference game. I want the ECAC to run the NC table, but in-conference we are in direct competition with Harvard for the conference's top spot (until we aren't), and I want to see them pick up some losses.

Greg Berge '85 wrote:

I'm not disappointed that Harvard lost a conference game. I want the ECAC to run the NC table, but in-conference we are in direct competition with Harvard for the conference's top spot (until we aren't), and I want to see them pick up some losses.

Yes and no. As far as reputation goes, people won't care whether the #4 team in the ECAC is #25 or #30 as much as whether the #1 team is #8 or #15. Parity within a conference actually gives the perception that it's worse than it is.

But as far as self-interest goes, this weekend has shown we should care a lot more about the ECAC than the NCAA (which is kind of refreshing, actually).

John wrote: [Q]Parity within a conference actually gives the perception that it's worse than it is.[/Q]But I think Greg's point was not parity, but knock off Harvard so we'll have a better shot at first.

And maybe Harvard's bandwagon fans will be slow(er) to get tickets to the Cornell game.

And seeing this on the ECAC site is also worth it.

ECAC Division I Men - 2003-2004 Standings  

                         Conference Only                    Overall
                    Pts  GP  Record  Win%  GF- GA   GP  Record  Win%  GF- GA
 1 Brown              2   1  1- 0- 0 1.00   2-  0    1  1- 0- 0 1.00   2-  0
 2 Clarkson           0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    6  3- 1- 2 .667  19- 12
   Colgate            0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    4  2- 1- 1 .625  15-  9
   Cornell            0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    2  0- 1- 1 .250   7-  8
   Dartmouth          0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    1  1- 0- 0 1.00   2-  1
   Princeton          0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    2  0- 2- 0 .000   2-  5
   Rensselaer         0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    5  2- 2- 1 .500  19- 18
   St. Lawrence       0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    9  1- 5- 3 .278  17- 30
   Union              0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    6  4- 1- 1 .750  19- 17
   Vermont            0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    5  0- 3- 2 .200  10- 19
   Yale               0   0  0- 0- 0 ----   0-  0    2  0- 2- 0 .000   4- 18
   Harvard            0   1  0- 1- 0 .000   0-  2    1  0- 1- 0 .000   0-  2

Probably won't happen again this year.

If Harvard has pulled away from us by mid-year, then I'll root for them against other teams down the stretch, in tiny part to better their position relative to the NCAA field but in large part because then their value to us will be in knocking off other teams with whom we will be in competition for ECAC slots.

For now, I'm holding out hope for a run at the RS title, though I don't see it as a serious possibility. I picked us 6th back in August to a chorus of "how could you's" because past experience showed that this weekend was bound to happen, and is going to happen again, several times, at least in the first 20 games.



Post Edited (11-02-03 20:39)

Personally, my favorite stat from that game is that, according to USCHO's ECAC Stats page (http://www.uscho.com/stats/conf.php?season=20032004&conf=6&gender=m), Dov Grumet-Morris is tied for 6th among the leading scorers in conference. Granted, everyone in the conference (except for the 5 Brown players who got 1 point each) is also tied for 6th, but it's still mildly amusing to see a goalie's name under that column.