First Half TBRW? Award Choices

You can review the criteria and previous winners of the awards at [www.spiritone.com]

Here are my "listener's ear view" choices. I'd love to hear from everybody how they would choose if the season ended today.

MOESER: Vesce
NORTON: Murray
HAYWARD: LeNeveu
NATYSHAK: Bell
MACFARLANE: --
SHIPPEL: Hornby
GAGE: Marr
SCHAFER: Bâby
BELANGER: --
CARTER: --
MELROSE: --
DADSWELL: Cam Abbott/Moulson
NIEUWENDYK: Bâby (somebody pick Age off the floor)

I would like to nominate Scott Hansen for the Belanger. His lovely work in the BU weekend is going to be hard to beat.

Now that I've picked myself off the floor, I can't disagree with any of your choices. I'd give the nod to Cam for the Dadswell over Moulson because he tends to take the body and work the boards with more effort, while producing more on a less talented line. I'd probably go with Downs for MacFarlane.

Edit: Yeah, how could I forget about Hansen? Of course.

Can two awful games earn you the Belanger? If so, then it goes to Kevin Hall, who reffed the Florida games, hands-down. Leaving out the stat-based awards and no-brainer Hayward:

Natyshak: Paolini
MacFarlane: Pegoraro
Shippel: Hornby
Gage: Marr
Schafer: Murray
Belanger: Hall
Carter: Umberger (only player to score more than one goal against CU so far)
Melrose: frickin' Boucher
Dadswell: Cam Abbott
Nieuwendyk: Bâby

I had managed to forget Pierre Belanger for the last 8 years. . . .
Anyone remember the phantom five minute major in the Harvard game during 1993-1994? Did he call that game?

While I can't say I say the Everblades games, can you really beat a ref excusing the fact that an opposing player was on our goalie for a good 3 seconds, and 2 minutes later calling back a goal that went off an ankle of a player looking the other way and scuffling with a defender?

I think Hansen's 'beauty' wasn't in calling an all around bad game, but in making a few absolutely hate-able calls, I guess it depends which you consider worse, but I think Hansen's 'effort' stands out more.

One of the most annoying performances since we had 3 consecutive goals called back my freshman year vs. Princeton.

Gotta disagree. Hansen doesn't so much make bad calls as he simply doesn't make calls. To me, this seems to be a concious, "let 'em play" choice. At least recently, we just haven't adjusted as well as other teams to this style of play. Personally, I'd rather have a guy that doesn't make calls rather than a guy that misses calls and then gives phantom makeup calls.

Not calling marginal calls is one thing. Not being able to read the top line of the eye chart is another. Hansen makes me long for Noeth sometimes.

[q]Can two awful games earn you the Belanger? If so, then it goes to Kevin Hall, who reffed the Florida games, hands-down.[/q]

Maybe my memory fails me at the moment, but I thought those 2 games were referred quite well and quite fairly.

Is there something specific you're referring to?

I'm right with Josh on the Melrose. Gotta vote for Nick Boucher.

Yes, Pierre was awful; yes, Pierre "has no hair;" yes, Pierre was perhaps the greatest figure of malice over my young college hockey watching world; but now I'll state it for the hereafter: I love Pierre Belanger. Pierre reffed what was, perhaps, the best reffed college hockey game I've ever seen, and even stranger is that he reffed it with the ref I hate most, Gallagher.

The year was 1996-97, the year of a pretty good Red with captain Matt Cooney, goalie Jason Elliot, and everybody's favorite (well, if Lynah is understood to represent everybody) Steve Wilson. By no means was this the team of destiny that the team of the year before had been, but this team, largely through the stonewalling of Elliot, was expected to compete well.

The normal hated opponents, Clarkson and Harvard, had accepted another team into their midst, Vermont. Vermont was the "team to beat" that season, and still smarted over not facing us in the championship final the year before. (Thank you, Harvard.) Boy, did the Catamounts have people to hate that year: the whole first line--J.C. Ruid and the midgets, Perrin and St. Louis; Mike Gilligan, as usual; and, most hated of all, that bastion of conceit, all-everything-but-nothing goalie Tim Thomas. Thomas made a regular show of taunting the faithful, boasting quotefully about his team, and, unfortunately, playing well. This game, however, was not to be his. However interesting the hockey game was--and it was--the real battle was waged between the men in the striped jerseys.

After warmups, we in the band played our tunes, anticipating the start of the game. It was the time of the ill-fated two referee experiment in the ECAC, so many former "greats" were getting into the act. We had heard rumors... just rumors of the unthinkable. For me, though, the unthinkable had already happened when the first orange-armed zebra hit the ice: Gallagher. Gallagher, who could be counted to call everything against the Red; Gallagher, who skated about like a portly poppinjay; Gallagher, whose picture we have scraping puke off the ice at the S(H)IT that year: John Gallagher, my most hated of referrees, had just skated onto the ice to ref what was to be one of the most important Lynah matches of the year.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Pierre Belanger skated out after him.

I had reacted with an expletive when Gallagher took the ice; I reacted with a much more strongly worded expletive when Pierre followed him. One could hear the groans go up over the Lynah crowd: these two refs had caused more woe for the Cornell hockey team over my time watching (around 10 years at that point) than any others. Here was Pierre, back again. I hadn't seen him ref a game since high school.

The game started, and, as expected, Gallagher made his presence known. The first three penalties were on the Red. They were ridiculous, touch calls, made by a man who seemed to be watching a different game through green-hued glasses. Then the unthinkable happened, again...

I have not had that much time in my life to contemplate pure evil. Our world of today is full of many shades of gray. The media exposes many things before evil has a chance to take a true hold. The closest we commonly come in this country to pure evil is the serial killer, and when the media reports his or her capture, we are surprised: the life seems too outwardly normal, the clothes seem too nice, the hair seems too well-kempt. But the eyes, the eyes are black and cold. You can tell that there is something off-kilter in the eyes. Pierre Belanger has serial killer eyes.

Pierre called the rest of his penalties on Vermont.

Since that day, I've had many opportunities to recollect with my friends, and we come up with many theories. Perhaps it was a grand power struggle between Gallagher and Pierre, and Pierre was not about to let this whippersnapper of a horrible ref stand in his way of calling a bad game. Perhaps Pierre, being French-Canadian, hates all other French-Canadians and decided to take it out on the team of St. Louis and Perrin. Maybe, just maybe, Pierre wanted, that day, to be a good ref.

But I think the answer lies in the eyes. For the statistical anomaly that is the history of Cornell hockey, there are Pierres. For all the good in the world, there are serial killers. The forces of nature are often beyond our comprehension, but they often strive towards a balance. Cornell hockey and humans as a whole have striven to stay unbalanced; we have, often, had to fight nature to survive.

That night, Pierre was a force of nature, and, that night, nature was on our side. We won, 6 to 4, and Tim Thomas broke his stick over the goal.

I don't see how we can call Boucher least respected if we can't manage to beat him. Don't get me wrong, I hate the guy, but it's hard to "disrespect" a goalie whose career includes exactly zero losses to Cornell.

Excellent post!

My memory of the Harvard game of 1993-1994 is a little hazy but there was a scuffle after the whistle and a Harvard player got a five minute penalty. A few minutes later a Harvard player was on a break away, closely pursued by a Cornell player. Our guy was at least two strides behind and had yet to get a stick on the Harvard player. Just inside the blue line the Harvard player trips on his own two skates. I don't recall if he got a shot off or not but the ref, perhaps feeling the previous penalty on Havard was too harsh, whistled a five minute penalty for the "trip". Oddly, there was no penalty shot. I'll have to look for an old box score, if this is possible.

> Perhaps Pierre, being French-Canadian, hates all other French-Canadians

This is VERY funny, because PB actually did have a reputation for calling penalties for "speaking French." I have no idea whether he was reacting to some Freudian self/father-hatred feeling, but for whatever reason you didn't want to be in a Pierre game if you were from Province Quebec.

My favorite ref of all time is Kupka -- a.k.a., the ref whose truss showed through his sweater after a period of sweating. He would be 50 feet behind the play calling phantom penalties on us. Lynah, naturally, loved him.

Giles Threadgold

Percy Shore

John Timmins

Scersk wrote:

...and Tim Thomas broke his stick over the goal.

But that's OK, because he went on to replace the washed-up Patrick Roy.

Oh wait, no.