World Junior Championships

[I thought I should spin this off from the BU-CU thread, which was getting a little long.]

With regard to Lenny possibly missing four games to play for Team Canadia in Nova Scotia, does anyone really think there's a college coach out there who'd begrudge a player a trip to the World Junior Championships? Cornell's not the only team in this situation, and I recall a number of high profile players over the years that have missed a couple of games to go represent their country. (Jason Blake of UND comes to mind.)

Seems to me the OSU team that beat us in Florida last year was missing a couple of players selected for the world juniors.

IMHO, only a fool of a coach would stand in the way of a kid chosen to play for his country in a World Championship tournament. Sounds like something a misanthropic NHL owner might do, but not a college coach.

Bobby Orr, you may recall, at the end of his NHL career completely destroyed what was left of his already badly-damaged knee playing for Team Canada in a world tournament he just wouldn't allow himself to miss. Anyone who doesn't understand what hockey means to a Canadian--and the importance of defending the country's hockey honor against the rest of the world--had better read Ken Dryden's Home Game.

I just want to see Lenny stone Chris Higgins in a shootout to decide the championship game.... )

Does no one think we can beat Maine or any other school for that matter, without Lenny? Yeah, he's good, but so are the others, and so is our defense. If we lose any games without him, it certainly won't be the goalie's fault.

I think the real concern isn't whether or not we can win without Lenny, its the fact that Marr and Chabot have a total of zero minutes in net at this level. Giving one of these guys their first start against a top 5 team is a pretty scary thought.

Did Marr not play at all with Northeastern?

Damn you, Whelan! You did this while I was responding to the BU-CU thread.

I doubt any coach would begrudge a player taking this opportunity, if for no other reason than it might hurt recruiting and the coach's relationship with a player who is obviously top-notch. As for the universities, see my post on the BU-CU thread. Cornell probably encourages this from its student-athletes as well - good for the school and all that.

Correction: Jason Blake did not play in the world juniors. By the time he was at North Dakota, he'd already transferred from Ferris State, and was well over 20 years old.

The point remains, however, that there are countless stars at perennial powerhouse schools that lose players every year and deal with it. You might want to go to USCHO and read any BU or BC game recap from a holiday tournament from the last 4 years to get an idea of how decimated their rosters were from these events.

It doesn't matter what you guys think. It matters what the team thinks. I'm sure they are every bit as confident in Marr as they are in LeNeveu and will reflect that on the ice. Remember, everyone was scared to think of LeNeveu splitting time with Underhill, too. And as for David, he can do whatever he wants. He doesn't owe Cornell any more loyalty than does any other student. It's not like he's on scholarship. Kudos to him for being the best Canadian NCAA goaltender. I'm not worried about Maine any more than any other team. If we lose to them, well, then we were supposed to, and if we beat them, it's an upset. Doesn't sound so bad.

I thought that you sceptics of the Maine game might like to know that their top goalie Jim Howard, possibly the major reason for their ranking, will be playing for the US.
Does this even the game up or throw it into further chaos?

I am looking forward to the game. Lenny will be missed, but the Big Red will still be a force that Maine will have difficulty with.

Adam Wodon wrote:

Correction: Jason Blake did not play in the world juniors. By the time he was at North Dakota, he'd already transferred from Ferris State, and was well over 20 years old.

So who the heck was I thinking of? Somebody from NoDak, I thought...

John,

Numerous players play in the World Juniors every year, so it could be anyone. Most of the US roster is filled with college players every year.

North Dakota tends to have older freshmen, so they don't usually get hit. The teams that recruit true freshmen get hurt worse. By the same token, Lowell's season effectively ended last year when three of their players went to the Olympics to play for France.

Related to the title of this thread, if not the content, I see that Dustin Brown on the Guelph Storm is on the US roster. He is a native of Ithaca, born in 1984. Does anyone remember seeing him play in any of the pee-wee and other youth games at Lynah or Cass? I remember catching a few games with players aged 6-10 back in the early 90s (including some involving 2003

...2003 recruit Mark McCutcheon, who was also born in 1984) but don't remember Dustin Brown's name at all.

Sorry, my earlier note got cut off. It should have read:

Related to the title of this thread, if not the content, I see that Dustin Brown on the Guelph Storm is on the US roster. He is a native of Ithaca, born in 1984. Does anyone remember seeing him play in any of the pee-wee and other youth games at Lynah or Cass? I remember catching a few game

I helped coach Dustin's T-Ball team - so did Zach Schwan, whose younger brother, Jake, was also on the team.

T-Ball helped push a lot of Ithaca kids into hockey...

Ken '71

Canadian Press quotes re: David LeNeveu


"In the States, it's not nearly as big so it's nice having my teammates' support behind me because they realize the importance of what I'm going to," said LeNeveu.

Full story link below


[www.canoe.com]

FYI:

2003 United States National Junior Team members from the University of Maine are Greg Moore (Lisbon, Maine) and Jim Howard (Ogdensburg, N.Y.).

2002-2003 Statistics (through 12 games)

Greg Moore, F, Fr 4 goals / 4 assists

Jim Howard, Fr, G 7-1-0 / 1.33 GAA / 94.9 Sv %

Thanks, great article. This should put the matter to rest.

I think the issue reduces to something like this:

The only reason for LeNeveu not to play for Canada is his pre-existing obligation to his coaches and teammates at Cornell. But, if his statements in this article are accurate, his coaches and teammates fully support his decision to be away from the team for two weeks. He has been voluntarily released from his obligation to Cornell, and should be free to play for his country.

Sure, he does have some obligation to the University and to the fans, but I think we have established that his playing at the national team level will ultimately help the Cornell program. The result of those four games in the middle of the season is not really worth him foregoing what could be one of the biggest breaks of his hockey career.

Graham Meli '02 wrote:

The result of those four games in the middle of the season is not really worth him foregoing what could be one of the biggest breaks of his hockey career.

How many of us would turn our backs on the chance to play our chosen sport--let alone the national sport and major source of national pride--in international competition with the letters USA across the front of our chests? C'mon.

Doesn't anyone remember 1980? (Well, some of us can remember 1960!)

Complete U.S. Roster here ...

[www.uscho.com]

includes 17 college players

It is going to be odd rooting for Higgins to score on LeNeveu.

Also, the links in that article are pretty strange. Dustin Brown's name is a link to Brown (even though he plays for Guelph), there is a link to Maine in Greg Moore's hometown instead of the school and there is no link to UMich next to either of the players from that school.

You guys have convinced me he made the right choice. But I question calling this a "break". He's already been drafted highly in the NHL which is where he would be going next, presumably. I'll just call this a big honor.

So how about I switch the topic to, "Why schedule these tournament games at this time of year?" And why is the Clarkson-SLU weekend scheduled for the first weekend of January and (if I read the schedule correctly) nothing scheduled for the second weekend? Please don't tell me it is so the players can go to fraternity rush week. I think the Ivy league should let the season start earlier by a few weeks.

OK...so...I see that Dustin Brown plays in the OHL for Guelph. What is the progression that a hockey player in his position takes? Do they stay on that team until the NHL? Do they opt for college? Do they go to a different professional league? In other words...does Dustin Brown have any chance of ever playing for the Big Red?

[www.cornellsun.com]

From that Daily Sun article:


[Q] "That will be one of my main priorities," LeNeveu said of following the Red's progress. "I'll be either giving the guys a call, or watching over the Internet, or talking to my parents -- somebody will keep me informed." [/Q]

See, even players want to be able to use the Hockeycam.

Dave is front page news over at insidecollegehockey.com
Check out the East notebook. It seems they make a bigger deal about DAve maybe not coming back than anyone else, including Dave....

Also of note is that JMP was recalled to Carolina again and Steve Mooron was sent back to Hershey by the Avs.

bigred apple wrote:

Also, the links in that article are pretty strange. Dustin Brown's name is a link to Brown (even though he plays for Guelph), there is a link to Maine in Greg Moore's hometown instead of the school and there is no link to UMich next to either of the players from that school.

Well, just like Age has the automagic Bâby-izer at eLF, I imagine USCHO has an SSI that swaps in links for scholl names so the links don't need to be inserted by hand. Thus, Brown and Maine match the filter while UMich doesn't.

The OHL is one of the "Major Junior Leagues" of which you may have heard. Players there are not eligible to play for NCAA schools (with limited exceptions, involving sitting out a number of games). So once Dustin elected to go that route, he closed off the possibility of playing for his hometown school.

I wouldn't worry about what INCH says. They're pretty ghetto, and usually littered with with mistakes and inaccurate info.

USCHO article is fixed, although I can't tell you why it's not linking to Michigan at the moment. "SSI" isn't the right terminology, but it's along those lines. We have a sophisticated homemade content management system, so there's more going on there.

He could, however, play for a Canadian college team if I understand things correctly. On the Guelph Gryphons roster from the Harvard game there is one Benjamin Pilon who's prior team is listed as the Guelph Storm.

Sounds like everyone is expecting Marr to be playing (he saw about 10 minutes in the York game), as did Chabot. IIRC, Coach Schafer's comments after the game were pretty positive regarding both of them. Any chance we'll see Chabot in net?

I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see them platoon. It's kind of a pity the two weekends in question aren't WMU and the Everblades, since then Schafer could give them both a shot against the same team when the stakes are somewhat lower.

Pre-processing? I recall reading somewhere what a waste it was to re-pre-process SSI'ed pages on the fly rather than building them once, but I suspect that the time it would have taken me to write or find such a system is a lot more valuable than all the wasted CPU cycles over the last four and a half years.

I fully support LeNeveu playing for his country, and I'm glad that the team fully supports his decision.

But, in return for the support that the team is giving him, perhaps it would appropriate for him to make it known to the coaching staff (in private) that, for the sake of the team, he would like either Marr or Chabot get significant game time this weekend. In other words, perhaps he should make it known that IF we were up by a comfortable margin by the end of the 2nd period (ie. Vermont), he would have no problems with being pulled so either Chabot or Marr could get some ice time.

Of course, this is just my opinion, and based on the assumption that giving game experience to our other goalies would be a good thing. But a little statement from LeNeveu could make the decision by the coaching staff a little bit easier.

hi all
a couple things:
I fully support Lenny playing for the world junior squad. I hope that he makes the team and does very well.

i actually talked to dustin's mom a while back when I was at Cornell and suggested that she may be able to talk to coach or other people at Cornell about what the then high school kid has for options. i am unsure of whether or not she did. too bad cornell didnt play guelph at home this year. i am sure that would have been great for dustin and his family.

How do you know that he hasn't done just such a thing already?

Another question:
Is it Lenny's position to make this call, or Schafer's?

Maybe Schafer is not concerned with the preparation of the other goalies!

Just my 2 cents

Someone earlier posted that Dustni is on the OHL's Guelph team. This isn't the same Guelph that Cornell has played in season opening exhibitions.

The team Cornell occasionally faces is no other then the University of Guelph Griffons www.uoguelph.ca

Guelph is actually a very pleasant city of about 100,000 people located 2 hours west of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. If you ever have the chance to visit, I strongly recommend talking to Dino in his sports shop downtown.

Learn more about Guelph at www.city.guelph.on.ca

According to the team history on TBRW? Cornell has only ever played the Guelph Gryphons (from the University of Guelph) < [www.spiritone.com] >.

Dustin Brown plays for the Guelph Storm, the OHL team < [www.guelphstorm.com] >. Some details: he was the team leader in goals last year, will be NHL eligible in 2003, and played for the US in the 2001 world junior championships.

I doubt that Cornell has ever played the Storm.

As for Guelph being a nice place to visit, a tour book of Canada that I glanced through at The Bookshelf (a bookstore and cafe in Guelph with an apparently very nice restaurant attached) said essentially "Nice place to live, not particularly interesting to visit." I am pretty sure I was the only person to go to the tourism office in town that day ) . It actually reminded me a lot of Ithaca (particularly since the center of town (read: Commons) seemed to be losing business to the nearby Stone Road Mall (read: Pyramid Mall, now with Best Buy, B+N's, Old Navy, etc.)). I liked living in Ithaca, FWIW.

On the plus side, Moulson's jersey for the Dominators said "Sears Canada Guelph" on the back. At least they have a Sears.

EDIT: apparently the Bookshelf's food quality has dropped a lot since the review I read in a (different) tour book last year: [www.guelphonline.com]

Re Dustin Brown:
My sons played youth hockey in Ithaca and I did get to see Dustin play. He played hockey in the Ithaca league as a mite and squirt (up to about age 12), after which he played mostly on the Syracuse Stars or Junior Crush (I forget which). He was always a tremendous goal scorer – a friend whose son played with Dustin said they all called his shot ‘the money shot’. A low rocket about 6 inches off the ice. As an eighth grader Dustin played for the Ithaca High School team that won the state championship about 3 years ago. I think he was the second leading scorer on the team. I think he has been on the Guelph Storm for 2 years. My understanding of the college eligibility rules is that he loses 1 year of eligibility for each year he plays Junior A, so college play isn’t really an option. By the way, Dustin is draft eligible in 2003 and has been projected as a possible top 5 pick by Hockey’s Future. Dustin was clearly one of the most explosive youth hockey players that I ever watched play.

Dustin played in Ithaca with the Ithaca Youth Hockey Association right through Bantams. He played high school hockey as an eighth and ninth grader and was on the IHS 2000 state championship team. I think he might have been the leading goal scorer on that team, though Chris Uber, now playing at UConn in the MAAC, was the leading scorer. Dustin played some summer hockey with teams from Syracuse, and was, I believe on a squad put together to play in the Tournoi du Quebec PeeWee tournament, but otherwise chose to play at home until I believe his ninth grade year when, in addition to playing with IHS, he played for the Syracuse Junior B team.

Dustin was always an incredible scorer. Some guys just have that knack (if it were easy, everyone would do it!), and it will carry him a long way. IN addition, he matured quickly and was around 6 feet tall as a ninth grader here.

There was a nice article about him in the Syracuse paper this week (same day as the IJ had its article on Lenny). For some reason the Ithaca Journal has just about completely ignored Dustin and his achievements over the years. Curious.