Spencer Penrose Award

Notice anyone missing from this list?

[insidecollegehockey.com]

Par for the course for INCH

Thanks, I just added my two cents.

Comments sent in by Al and Jim were posted under the list.

And here's the reply I got and my further reply.[Q]Jim,

Clearly Cornell is having a terrific season -- and you can't discount a coach's impact in that. But you have to admit that Schafer is playing with a much stronger hand than the rest of the ECAC.

Our list credits coaches who are exceeding expectations. In some cases, like Cornell's, that "penalizes" a coach who's team was expected to do well.

I'm sure Coach Schafer will be happier with the ECAC title -- and a shot at the NCAA crown -- than with a coach of the year award.

In any case, we put together these kinds of lists to stimulate debate, so we're glad you shared your thoughts. Thanks for reading, and we hope you continue to enjoy the site.

Nate Ewell
Inside College Hockey, Inc.

Thanks. I liked your reply so much, I'm posting it on eLynah Forum. However you forgot to note that Coach Schafer had to recruit these guys. Not the easiest thing to do, being in the Ivy League.

But thanks again for a reasonable reply.

Jim
[/Q]

Just sent in my e-mail as well. Pasted below:

Dear Editor,

Were your Spencer Penrose Award candidates a joke? I didn't realize that it was April Fool's Day already. Of course, come April Fool's Day, Cornell University will be poised to make a run at the national championship and you'll feel terribly silly for leaving Mike Schafer's name off your list. All he's done is taken one of the very few teams in the nation that is not allowed to offer scholarships and coached them to a Top 5 spot nationally. Get with the picture, or get out of the business.

Best Regards,

Adam J. Simons
Washington, DC

Carrot and stick.

Tim Taylor is "exceeding expectations"?? I have never understood why, but he is generally highly regarded, so you'd think he would be left off the list as well.

And Dartmouth is at .500 -- which is pretty much where I'd expect them to be.

But they're certainly entitled to their opinions....

I was sent the same reply.

So Whitehead doesn't have strong talent? Or CC? So Yale is exceeding expectations? So...gulp...Dartmouth is?

I would also maintain that thus far this season, Cornell has also exceeded expectations. Did anyone expect us to be 16-3 and in the top four nationally?

I do not recall...where was cornell in the pre-season polls? Was Schafer nominated last year?

These could be factors in his being overlooked in this article.

Cornell was #8 in the preseason poll. For comparison, Maine was 6 (now 1), NoDak 13 (now 2), CC 10 (now 3), and OhioState 15 (now 8). All of those schools' coaches were mentioned in the article. So apparently you need to be ranked at least 5 spots higher than expected to make the cut.

When was the last time an ECAC team was ranked in the top 4 nationally? Or, more appropriately, when was the last time a non-scholarship team was? What Schafer has done with this team is pretty impressive, ESPECIALLY considering that we were good enough two years in a row to be ranked so highly at the start of the season.

"But you have to admit that Schafer is playing with a much stronger hand than the rest of the ECAC." It makes it sound beacuse Schafer has done a better job recruiting and motivitating the players to be in top physical condition than other ECAC coaches, he must not be as good a coach as they are! I think Schafer is absolutely coach of the year -- I've been following Cornell hockey for 30 years and I had come to doubt that any Cornell coach again make us one of the natiion's top teams. A nonscholarship school number four in the nation --

As for Taylor -- I've been watching him coach for 20 years and I simply don't think he is a first rate coach, and I don't care that he was chosen for the Olympics. He conducts himself with dignity, his teams are not chippy, but he's had a fair amount of talent at Yale over the years and the payoff has been pretty modest.

RichS wrote:

Was Schafer nominated last year?

Might have been. (Should have been.) I don't recall. But Whitehead was not only nominated...he won. (And deservedly so, IMHO.) So that shouldn't be a disqualifier.

I agree...I'm not saying that being nominated last year should be a disqualifier but, sometimes I think that the guys who write these articles try to point out coaches or players who they think may be "underrated"...so that their mention of them is some sort of scoop...and makes the writer look good.

Sometimes I wonder if a coach who spends the entire game hunched over a clipboard behind the bench can really have the "presence" or the "passion" to lead/drive his team to the top.

Taylor's teams have never reached an ECAC championship game in 30+ years, or whatever it's been. I suspect he's a good teaching coach, but something just seems to be missing.

Yep. Understand. That's clearly been Ewell's them in his responses: trying to uncover that hidden "jewel."

> When was the last time an ECAC team was ranked in the top 4 nationally? Or, more appropriately, when was the last time a non-scholarship team was?

IIRC, there was a press release when Cornell first reached #4 that it was the first time an ECAC team had been that high in the history of the USCHO and USA Today polls.

Son of IIRC, Harvard was ranked #1 in the nation going into the 1989 ECAC tourny. Since then, the most likely suspects I can think of are Colgate '90, Clarkson '91, Harvard '94, Vermont '96, or St. Lawrence '00.

Clarkson was ranked as high as #2 at the end of the RS in '97 I think it was...I could be wrong by a year.

Clarkson was indeed ranked No. 2 as of March 10, 1997 USA Today poll. Finished ranked No. 6 after the regionals. ATR/USCHO had a poll that year, but unfortunately, no records of it exist, as far as I have been able to dig up.

As a result, I believe the ECAC press release earlier this year was wrong, because I don't remember mention of this. At the time, I believe it was stated that the last time an ECAC team was ranked as high, was Vermont, that same year. Vermont was ranked No. 2 on Nov. 11, and No. 1 on Nov. 4.

This is as far back the complete records of any poll go back, though polls go back to 1971.

Yale was ranked No. 5 in USA Today / No. 6 in USCHO on March 9, 1998.

St. Lawrence finished the USCHO poll at No. 5 on March 20, 2000, and was No. 4 in a post-Frozen Four USA Today poll.

Source: This year's ECAC Media Guide.

Adam Wodon wrote:

Clarkson was indeed ranked No. 2 as of March 10, 1997 USA Today poll. Finished ranked No. 6 after the regionals. ATR/USCHO had a poll that year, but unfortunately, no records of it exist, as far as I have been able to dig up.

Wasn't it posted to INFO-HOCKEY-L? If so, it'll be in the HOCKEY-L archives.

I like how Gaudet is included in there... So, he's picking coaches based on teams that he feels are exceeding expectations? So with Dartmouth's about .500 record, they are exceeding expectations? Did he think that Dartmouth was going to suck (and suck badly) this year? Preseason polls, coaches had them at 9, and media had them at 4. So they are currently exceeding the coaches expectations by 2 (!!!) spots... and they're actually underachieving by the media poll. Sure, they've beaten us but anyone who's paid attention to our games realize that it's not unexpected, or even surprising
Brown...if they can get their act together, then sure, Grillo deserves some recognition seeing how they did act as the doormat for a few years...
Rant over, brain shutting off.

What's especially funny is that insidecollegehockey picked Dartmouth to finish fifth in their ECAC preseason poll--while picking Cornell tenth nationally.

So...who's exceeded and who hasn't?