Dec 9 Polls

USCHO has us at #4!!!

December 9, 2002

Team (First Place) Record Pts Last Week
1 North Dakota (28) 14-1-1 574 1
2 Maine ( 7) 11-1-2 555 3
3 Colorado College ( 4) 13-1-2 529 5
4 Cornell ( 1) 10-1-0 461 7
5 New Hampshire 10-3-2 449 2
6 Boston College 9-3-2 399 4
7 Denver 12-4-2 320 6
8 Minnesota 9-4-4 284 10
9 Ferris State 12-4-0 279 9
10 Michigan 11-4-1 234 8
11 Harvard 9-3-0 223 12
12 Ohio State 10-4-1 197 14
13 Miami 12-5-1 88 11
14 Boston University 8-6-2 67 13
-- Northern Michigan 9-5-1 67 -

Others receiving votes: Yale 31, Massachusetts 18,
Dartmouth 10, Providence 7, Alaska-Fairbanks 2,
Notre Dame 2, Quinnipiac 2, Brown 1, Minnesota-Duluth 1

Oooops. Yeah. Posting the results would have been nice - kinda neglected to do so in my excitement. As jy3 just posted on The Polls thread we are #4 in USA Today too! Wow! Can't believe I'm seeing this - tho we'll likely fall back down a few in weeks to come .

USA Today/American Hockey Magazine
Men's College Hockey Poll - Dec. 9, 2002
No. Team Total Points
(1st-place votes
in parentheses) Overall
Record
Last Rank
1. Maine 237 (5) 11-1-2 1
2. North Dakota 236 (7) 14-1-1 T-3
3. Colorado College 226 (4) 13-1-2 5
4. Cornell 199 (1) 10-1-0 7
5. New Hampshire 181 10-3-2 2
6. Boston College 172 9-3-2 T-3
7. Denver 154 12-4-2 6
8. Minnesota 119 9-4-4 10
T-9. Ferris State 108 12-4-0 9
Michigan 108 11-4-1 8
11. Harvard 99 9-3-0 12
12. Ohio State 79 10-4-1 14
13. Miami (OH) 41 12-5-1 11
14. Northern Michigan 30 9-5-1 NR
15. Boston University 21 8-6-2 13
Others receiving votes: Yale 12, University of Massachusetts 7, Providence College 7, Dartmouth 4

It really says something nice that most of the Ivy League is ranked or at least getting votes. No longer the EZAC?

Well, not if we keep winning. Granted, our schedule gets easier, but if we can hang with Maine in Estero and take care of business against all Ivy League teams not named Princeton, everything else should take care of itself.

Could there be an all-Ivy final four in Albany (damn, I still hate that it's not in Placid...)?

When was the last time we were ranked 4th or higher?

I remember several years back when we were excited to be one of the teams getting votes. So, for as long as I've followed Cornell Hockey ('95-'96 season), this is the first.

[Q]. . . if we can hang with Maine in Estero and take care of business against all Ivy League teams not named Princeton, everything else should take care of itself.
[/Q]

Why do you want us to lose to Princeton? (By that I mean: what do you mean, Sully?)

also - this is from the official ecac website -

Cornell’s ranking is the highest ranking by an ECAC team since St. Lawrence was ranked No. 4 in the April 12, 2000 poll (the final poll of the 1999-00 season).

I think he means that wins against teams not named Princeton take some effort, and that beating these other teams deems us worthy of remaining high in the polls, whereas beating Princeton doesn't exactly bolster an argument very much.

Just one guy's interpretation...

well, this answers my own question (from the Cornell Athletics website) -

The latest USA Today/American Hockey Magazine Coaches Poll and the U.S. College Hockey Online Poll were released this evening, and the Cornell men's hockey team is listed as the No. 4 team in the country on both. This is Cornell's highest ranking by USA Today/AHM since the poll was started in the 1995-96 season and the highest in the USCHO poll since it was started in 1997-98. The rankings in the USCHO poll also match the highest-ever selection of an Eastern College Athletic Conference team. Cornell was seventh in both of last week's polls.


Also - Moulson was named the ECAC Rookie of the Week for his 4 point effort this past weekend.

So, as far as the polls go, the Everblades Classic will be pretty significant. We have the chance to turn some more heads if we beat #2 Maine. If we could end up winning the Dryden Trophy (is that the exact name?) for the first time, then, well, who knows?

For the hockey gods: Please understand that this was not a woof. I just noted the potential outcome a good performance at the Everblades Classic.

Now, I remember that there used to be at least 1 poll in the early '90s. Which one was that? I remember that Clarkson got as high as #2 or #3 in some poll...probably one of the years the Knights got a bye. So if our current 2 polls have only been in exsistance since '95-'96 for USAToday and '97-'98 for USCHO, what the heck polls were around back when I was in school?

WMPL, the radio home of Michigan Tech and the one-time definitive source for information about college hockey, ran a media poll from 1970-2000. Adam recently wrote a great piece on the history of the station and its role that was to be taken over by USCHO.

[uscho.com]

Harkness, actually.

There was also a poll out of Albany during the 80's, I believe Don Birkmeyer (one of the formative influences of TBRW) had something to do with it.

I do not recall Cornell having been ranked this high since I became a fan in 81-82. IIRC, the Big Red finished the 1997 season #4 in RPICH.

I assume Cornell spent most of the late 60's through early 70's at or near #1 in the national polls of that period.

The lineage of the USCHO.com poll goes way back ... it's sort of like the New Jersey Devils ... started as the Kansas City Scouts -> Colorado Rockies -> New Jersey

It started as the Albany Times-Union Poll. I'm not sure when that started, but it was before 1988.

Somewhere in the early 90s, it was taken over by Tim Leonard, RPI beat writer for the Troy Record.

In 1996, Tim left the paper ... and I took over the poll as the "Around the Rinks/USCHO" poll ... Around the Rinks was a weekly 30-minute magazine show on college hockey, which ran one season on AudioNet (which also has its own lineage: AudioNet --> Broadcast.com --> Yahoo! Broadcast --> $6 billion for Mark Cuban's pocket). The show went great and was building a nice on-line audience, but with my acceptance of full-time pro hockey job, I couldn't continue it, and officially handed over the reigns completely to USCHO.

In essence, you can say that the USCHO.com poll started in 1996-97, not 1997-98. But no records exist for 1996-97 when it was ATR/USCHO.

I'm currently researching the Albany Times-Union polls, and will post the findings if I get them.

The WMPL Media Poll ran concurrent to the Times-Union poll, and started in the early 70s. There was another media poll run briefly by a station in Maine. Not sure the start/end dates.

I don't remember any polls back in the "glory" days, but that certainly doesn't mean there weren't any. Gotta remember there were only 25-30 Division I teams then (old ECAC and old WCHA) so a "top ten" wasn't very meaningful.

I knew that. No, really, I did.

Nice to see Don Birkmeyer's name. He was one of the only sources of comprehensive data back then. He wrote the "Intercollegiate Hockey Newsletter". In it he listed all schools and their records, as well as short write ups of their games. Considering that it was before "modern" communication, it was a major task. Unfortunately age took its toll and he had to quit. It was taken over, but never took off again; undoubtably because of the very "modern" communication that I'm using right now. He published about every other week during the season, and more frequently as playoffs started. I have issues going back to the 60's I guess. I still need to organize all that stuff.

I don't ever remember any polls listed early on, but this will encourage me to look back. If they existed, he would have them. I suspect the Michigan Tech poll was one of the first.

Adam's descriptions jibe with my recollections. The Sun used to have those polls available (although they were not often published) and The New York Times used the Albany Times-Union poll as its poll-of-record.

Although I don't believe The Hockey News had a weekly poll, in the season preview for the '90-'91 season, Cornell was ranked #2, IIRC.

I definitely remember there being a "national" poll back in '70-71 which was my first year at Clarkson, but have no recollection of who produced it. I specifically recall that after Tech beat cornell 2-1 in OT in Potsdam, our next game was 3 days later at BU which was #1 in the polls. Both of the other aforementioned teams were very high in that poll as well.

What was the more recent poll from the midwest...guess it was that M Tech one from Houghton, Mich that Jim mentioned?

Well just looked through some of the old "Intercollegiate Hockey Newsletter"(s)(IHN). Interesting stuff. I found an account of the BU disqualifications in 1973. I'll try and post that later.

In regards to polls, the first "official" one that I can see was in Dec. 1976. In that issue Mr. Birkmayer says [Q]The Uni. of N. Dakota is top ranked in the first ice hockey poll ever conducted by the NCAA ... Rules Comm.. The poll was conducted on Tues. Nov. 30 and will be repeated every other Tues. ... .

A five member selection comm. voted the Sioux No. 1 followed by Clk. and Wisc.. ...

Input to the ... poll will be provided by members of the East and West advisory comm. which are selected by the Ice Hockey Rules Comm.. A total of 18 athletic admimistrators and coaches ... will provide input to the poll. [/Q] As an aside Cornell was in the others receiving votes category, followed alphabetically by Gustavus Adolphus. There may be others I'll keep looking.

Unfortunately I also saw the Cornell program for the loss to Yale in 1967. I keep that on top to remind me when I think we are invincible.

Polls or no polls the last time the team was rated this high must have been the 72-73 season. (Pre-season assessment aside.) Correct?