Quinnipiac @ Cornell, Game 2 Postgame

So where was Bill Howard when we needed him most?

owned again. I want to cry.

Sadly fitting that Cornell dies by the power play since special teams has been such a vexing issue all year long. (And notwithstanding we actually did get a PPG this game, and notwithstanding that we spent almost a third of the game killing penalities.)

(Where was I? I've been on the road in California and Switzerland, thus offline a lot, and right now in the vicinity of Estero, Florida (as in the Florida Holiday Classic), celebrating my anniversary and covering a new car launch. I got to watch an extra-jerky, Verizon broadband wireless version of the game. I don't know if anything could have helped the Big Red this past weekend, certainly not my presence as thread-keeper.)

[edit add] Not to play what-if (which means, let's play what-if), I think St. Lawrence would have been beatable in the ECAC quarters [edit correction: semis not quarters] and Clarkson in the finals and, who knows, we could have gotten lucky against an NCAA first-round opponent. Except we didn't get past a team we could have, should have beaten. The best hope is that this team is the nucleus of good and likely great Cornell teams the next 2-3 years.

We should wish RichS good luck in Albany. Somebody e-mail him a voucher for a lite beer for Clarkson's help in getting us home ice.

I'm ready for lacrosse season. Anyone up for a road trip to Duke in 10 days?

We weren't owned either night. We play 2 one goal games against a team pretty much even with us.

I actually didn't think the Sawada penalty was as "dumb" as some have made it out to be. To me, he was going in for a solid shoulder-to-shoulder hit, and the Q guy turned his back just before contact. But it was what it was, and it turned out to be a potentially very dangerous play, so I suppose the 5 minutes was warranted.

Like I said in the other thread, hopefully a year of experience plus some discipline only makes us stronger next year.

We also gave them a generous early gift within 10 seconds of the start of the game.

Between the first and second periods, someone inflated a beach ball and the ball was hit around the student sections for a couple minutes. As inevitably happens, the ball jumped the glass and landed on the ice. One of the Lynah rink staff shuffled out to retrieve it. This guy turned to Section B and tossed the ball up, as if to hit an underhand volleyball serve. When his other hand came into contact with the ball, however, the ball deflated, a victim of a sharp object in his right hand.

Now for the bad analogy...

Cornell's season began with a good deal of uncertainty. With inexperienced goaltending and many freshmen, were we going to witness a substantial drop-off from the last two years? Or, were these new players going to elevate their games to enable us to again compete on the national scale? (Was the man going to hit the ball back into the stands, or confiscate it?)

The way the season progressed, it seemed like the later would be probable. Like the beach ball, Cornell hockey 06-07 had its ups and downs: home win against Harvard, home loss to Wayne State, Florida win over UNH, home loss to Sacred Heart. Despite crashing at the end of the regular season, we secured a bye week and a home series against Quinnipiac (accent on the first syllable, Section B), a team we had shut out a few weeks earlier.

Just as the beach ball appeared to be on its way back to the fans, Cornell appeared to be back on its way to Albany and possibly greater things after that. The blade that struck Cornell was its play this weekend.

It's tough to blame one player. (No "OB gave the puck to Minny." There was an astonishing lack of urgency by Cornell this weekend. Last night, Cornell (with the exception of Davenport) played like it didn't matter whether they won or lost. They didn't attack the net with urgency, and only seemed to realize the significance of the game after it was over.

Tonight, they handed Q the early lead, and then followed the Faithful's growing enthusiasm to a 2-1 advantage. After that, we sat back. Q tied it up, and then our players showed a lack of discipline and gave Q nine minutes of PPs in the third. Thankfully, our PK emerged from the dumpster to kill off minute after minute of PPs, until the go-ahead goal towards the end of the last PP.

Cornell again had great chances in the last minute, but one had the sinking feeling it was over after the Q goal.

I look forward to next year. A healthy Romano. Matured goaltending. New team leadership.

Thank you to the seniors on the team, and also the senior fans. We'll start again next fall with facetimers and whatever other specimens the random distribution produces.

See you at the Red-White scrimmage.

billhoward
Not to play what-if (which means, let's play what-if), I think St. Lawrence would have been beatable in the ECAC quarters and Clarkson in the finals

St. Lawrence just won their ECAC quarters.

Very dissappointing game. We playe dmuch better than last night, only no where near what was needed. I thought the reffing was bad last night, but tonight was by far the worst IMO.
Thank you very much to all of our seniors, and any players who may leave before next season.
Can't wait until next season.

We played well. They played well. They dove every ten seconds and whined about every call that went against them, but Quinnipaic played well.

I don't think it's possible to ref worse than Feola did today. He missed about 10 blatant calls against Q, called terrible things on us, and just plain sucked.

Still, congrats to Q, and all of that.

I thought most calls Feola made tonight were legit.

I thought Mugford played a superb game tonight. And yes, even when he led the charge that started the huge fight

Mugford, McCutcheon, Greening, Gallagher, Nash were all good tonight IMO.

So does anyone know what was up with Bitz tonight? All that I heard was that he was a late scratch.

sah67
I thought Mugford played a superb game tonight. And yes, even when he led the charge that started the huge fight

Mugford sprinted in and pulled a swim move through 3 Q guys... as Davenport stood and watched quietly from the crease.

redheadfanatic
So does anyone know what was up with Bitz tonight? All that I heard was that he was a late scratch.

He was far below 100% last night, and appeared hurt while playing...a surprise to some that he actually played last night. Don't know the specifics of the injury...so no, no PMing me for details.

McCutcheon and Kennedy were without question the hardest working players on the ice this weekend. They were all over the place killing penalties and making things happen offensively.

Mugford's line in general was the strongest, especially in game one (unlike some other lines) showing they truly understood the magnitude of this weekend.

I question taking Salmela off the powerplay the last two weekends and the Scott, Romano, Milo line. While individually they are good players, that line produced almost nothing nice RPI. Granted Romano and Scott were injured for some of the season, Schafer still should've recognized that a line shuffle was in order.

Glover was awful, but I'm glad Seminoff was back, he made some key plays on the penalty kill.

Not sure I'll ever forgive Sawada for taking such a dumb, blatant penalty.

See you next year.

He was game time Friday night. Tonight his injury kept him from dressing.

Lower back or body I heard, not really sure.

It had nothing to do with leadership capabilities...in case anyone was wondering,

As maligned as he has been at times on this forum, I can't help but feel terribly for Bitz not being able to skate in the last game of his senior season. Here's to him realizing all of his potential at the next level.

As for the Sawada hit, and I really didn't see it as many times as I'd like (watching on the webcast), am I the only one who didn't see it as necessarily awful? I mean, yeah, I do think he hit him in the back/side (similar to the location of the Ryan Hollweg hit on Chris Simon, in my opinion) but the hit took place before the goal line! I believe they were over 10 feet from the boards when contact was initiated, so I can't necessarily vilify him completely on this one.

BCrespi
As for the Sawada hit, and I really didn't see it as many times as I'd like (watching on the webcast), am I the only one who didn't see it as necessarily awful? I mean, yeah, I do think he hit him in the back/side (similar to the location of the Ryan Hollweg hit on Chris Simon, in my opinion) but the hit took place before the goal line! I believe they were over 10 feet from the boards when contact was initiated, so I can't necessarily vilify him completely on this one.

Agreed. The result was bad, but the hit itself was mostly common place. I actually specifically looked during the replay, at the hit occurred right on the goal line (maybe a foot closer to boards, at most). The way the Q player started to lose an edge just before the hit, and the way he fell, looked awful, but it had little to do with the hit itself. 5 minutes was an awfully rough call on that. Real time of course, I understand what the ref saw (or thought he did), but I think if he saw a reply, he may regret the call a little.

DeltaOne81

BCrespi
As for the Sawada hit, and I really didn't see it as many times as I'd like (watching on the webcast), am I the only one who didn't see it as necessarily awful? I mean, yeah, I do think he hit him in the back/side (similar to the location of the Ryan Hollweg hit on Chris Simon, in my opinion) but the hit took place before the goal line! I believe they were over 10 feet from the boards when contact was initiated, so I can't necessarily vilify him completely on this one.

Agreed. The result was bad, but the hit itself was mostly common place. I actually specifically looked during the replay, at the hit occurred right on the goal line (maybe a foot closer to boards, at most). The way the Q player started to lose an edge just before the hit, and the way he fell, looked awful, but it had little to do with the hit itself. 5 minutes was an awfully rough call on that. Real time of course, I understand what the ref saw (or thought he did), but I think if he saw a reply, he may regret the call a little.

I was actually a little surprised Sawada didn't get thrown out. I didn't think it was a malicious hit, but the way the Q player fell made it seem bad.

BCrespi
As for the Sawada hit [...] am I the only one who didn't see it as necessarily awful? I mean, yeah, I do think he hit him in the back/side [...] but the hit took place before the goal line! I believe they were over 10 feet from the boards when contact was initiated, so I can't necessarily vilify him completely on this one.

I'm with you on this one. My seat was (so sad that that's past tense now ) 1st row in section A, so I saw it pretty well...yeah, it was a rough hit, but like you said, it was pretty far from the boards when it happened...I can see giving him a 2 minutes...maybe...but not 5.

On another penalty related note, what was Seminoff's 10 minute misconduct for???

amerks127
It had nothing to do with [Bitz's] leadership capabilities...

^in reference to Bitz not being dressed, for whatever reason--isn't that basically what happened in 2004 with Ryan Vesce--he wasn't able to play after the first quarterfinal game?

LFS

I think Ray was also surprised. He had already walked up the stairs towards the locker room, and an equipment manager had to go get him and tell him to go sit in the box.

LynahFaithfulS
On another penalty related note, what was Seminoff's 10 minute misconduct for???

When he heard about his penalty, he slammed his stick against the boards right in front of Feola. Automatic call.

I dunno. From where I was sitting in A, the Sawada penalty wasn't justified. The Q player tripped over his own skate, Sawada then ran into him (momentum- he was a foot away from him, couldn't do anything), and both went into the boards. It all happened really fast, so I can't tell for certain, but it all seemed like an accident. I'll add more tomorrow when I can put my thoughts down coherently.

Thanks for the good times, Big Red '06-'07. It was damn fun to cheer you on.

Jim Hyla

LynahFaithfulS
On another penalty related note, what was Seminoff's 10 minute misconduct for???

When he heard about his penalty, he slammed his stick against the boards right in front of Feola. Automatic call.

To me that was the dumbest reaction of the night (close to the Mugford taking swings that could have seen him tossed). Having Seminoff out for the whole 5 min penalty kill was tough. Almost survived but it was a tall order. I don't think Jason ever mentioned it on the radio call but he said he thought Romano was heading to the box too so I figured Feola took issue with the crazy stick swing and gave him 2+10.

im still trying to understand how Mugford got 2 & 2 no QP players did when 2-3 of them thru punches and the first punch that escalated the whole thing was a a pretty good shot to mugfords head that set him off..

considering we spent most of the 3rd on the PK and almost survived it they played well enough to deserve a shot to try and score.. but if they are gonna call the marginal stuff they need to at least call 1-2 of the them the other way. and the barlow non boarding call in the 2nd was much worse than the mahor sowada took but barlow stayed on his feet while the QP kid was gonna hit the boards head first even if he wasnt touched.

if the ref is gonna blow his whistle on plays in the crease he needs to either work harder to find the puck or make darn sure he knows where it is. we lost one goal and for him to blow the first one dead when the puck was 5 ft behind the goalie on the goal line is really bad...

LynahFaithfulS

amerks127
It had nothing to do with [Bitz's] leadership capabilities...

^in reference to Bitz not being dressed, for whatever reason--isn't that basically what happened in 2004 with Ryan Vesce--he wasn't able to play after the first quarterfinal game?

LFS

i was just thinking that.

Oat

sah67
I thought Mugford played a superb game tonight. And yes, even when he led the charge that started the huge fight

Mugford sprinted in and pulled a swim move through 3 Q guys... as Davenport stood and watched quietly from the crease.

You really want our starting goaltender, arguably the most important position in all of team sports, to risk a game DQ by getting into a fight?

upperdeck
if the ref is gonna blow his whistle on plays in the crease he needs to either work harder to find the puck or make darn sure he knows where it is. we lost one goal and for him to blow the first one dead when the puck was 5 ft behind the goalie on the goal line is really bad...

The one that he blew dead was under the goalie for a good second or two befor he blew the whistle, and *then* it happened to squeak out into the goal. Sorry, that was the right call. It was covered for long enough. If anything, it was a late whistle.

The other one, yes, was a bad whistle, but the Q guy got to it first and appeared to get there in time. It wouldn't've been a goal anyway. Here's a newsflash for you, refs are human, they make mistakes, and whistling a puck dribbling behind a goaltender when the ref is rushing down ice to catch up with an odd-man rush (and the puck dribbles out exactly behind the goaltender from his perspective), well, its just surprising it doesn't happen more often. And as I said, it didn't effect anything.

I agree, from section A, you could see the Q player going down already. The fact that he had a sliding crash into the boards made it seem much worse than it actually was.

Pete Godenschwager

Oat

sah67
I thought Mugford played a superb game tonight. And yes, even when he led the charge that started the huge fight

Mugford sprinted in and pulled a swim move through 3 Q guys... as Davenport stood and watched quietly from the crease.

You really want our starting goaltender, arguably the most important position in all of team sports, to risk a game DQ by getting into a fight?

Maybe Oat is a Scrivens fan?

Jim Hyla

LynahFaithfulS
On another penalty related note, what was Seminoff's 10 minute misconduct for???

When he heard about his penalty, he slammed his stick against the boards right in front of Feola. Automatic call.

that wasn't smart on Seminoff's part...but that's worth TEN minutes?!

LynahFaithfulS

Jim Hyla

LynahFaithfulS
On another penalty related note, what was Seminoff's 10 minute misconduct for???

When he heard about his penalty, he slammed his stick against the boards right in front of Feola. Automatic call.

that wasn't smart on Seminoff's part...but that's worth TEN minutes?!

the theory behind 10 minute misconducts is that it punishes the player... not the team.

Dpperk29

LynahFaithfulS

Jim Hyla

LynahFaithfulS
On another penalty related note, what was Seminoff's 10 minute misconduct for???

When he heard about his penalty, he slammed his stick against the boards right in front of Feola. Automatic call.

that wasn't smart on Seminoff's part...but that's worth TEN minutes?!

the theory behind 10 minute misconducts is that it punishes the player... not the team.

Oh. I see. Thanks

that puck that was blown early was never covered.. it came out within a split second of hitting the goalie he never had any control. the only reason it didnt go in is that it was sliding so slowly. and the only reason he didnt see it was he never bothered to move into postion to see the puck instead stayed above the goal line. he had that problem several times in being late getting back to watch the play, including the big penalty that decided the game..