Cornell-Yale Postgame

Well, at the beginning of the season I didn't expect we would win the reg season. I just didn't expect to lose it to Yale. They did play great this season, and obviously deserve it.

Based on current records, it looks like Jan 10th was the last time Cornell beat a team with a winning record (Niagara). Argh...

I listened to part of the game on the radio, but I'm keen to get a recap from someone who was there. It's clear to me from previous games that we're vulnerable against teams with speed. Was that a problem again tonight?

Recap from the rink:

First, I've never seen Ingalls Rink more packed and vibrant. It's good that Yale is back as a power to be reckoned with. Also, their pink with blue jerseys didn't look half bad. BTW, even though it was a sellout and an SRO sellout too (that doesn't often happen), it still took only 15 minutes (15 rain soaked minutes to buy 2 seats (buy one, another we got for free from a fan who took pity on my son's rain-soaked Cornell jersey. Best $100 investment I made.)

Second, yes, we are vulnerable to quick teams. The breakaway / giveaway first goal was the difference. I think Scrivens made the right move to charge the blue line to get to the puck first and it was misfortune that Yale got the puck right back and found an open net.

Most of all, while therer's been a lot of carping about our power play and penalty kill, maybe there's something to that. Here the special teams seemed to make the difference. Yale was 2x8 on PP plus the man short goal, and Yale got its 2 PPGs earlier in the game, while Cornell got its two PPGs late in its 10 opportunities. Yale's 5x3 PPG was a thing of beauty; we got a score that way too but it wasn't so much of a highlight reel goal. Most noticeable of all, it seemed from the stands that Cornell has trouble setting up on power play and once we got set up, we'd get a beautiful set of passes around the perimeter of our four-man box, but the player in the slot seemed always to be covered, so we passed it out to the point again.

Greening and Nash around the net continue to impress. But there were a lot of chances where Cornell just didn't get its stick down, or the pass was to the offhand side for the shooter, or it was 2 feet from where it should have gone and the second it took to get the puck into position for a shot allowed Yale to get a defender in position, too.

After losing to Harvard Mike Schafer said he was okay with Cornell's play, just not the final score. Bounces of the puck and all. Either team could have won. Yale got the bounces and took the power play to us early on and made a comeback - seldom Cornell's forte - not possible.

We've done a good job almost coming back in a couple recent games. After being badly outshot early on in the game.

A Cornell - Yale rematch in Albany would be a fine conclusion to the ECAC season and a winnable game. We could of course run into a buzzsaw in the quarters or semis.

HockeyMan
I listened to part of the game on the radio, but I'm keen to get a recap from someone who was there. It's clear to me from previous games that we're vulnerable against teams with speed. Was that a problem again tonight?

Yale was definitely fast, but that wasn't the main issue tonight. Scrivens made a couple of nice saves on breakaways, and our d-men did a good job of not giving up too many other rushes.

billhoward
Second, yes, we are vulnerable to quick teams. The breakaway / giveaway first goal was the difference. I think Scrivens made the right move to charge the blue line to get to the puck first and it was misfortune that Yale got the puck right back and found an open net.

The problem here wasn't the speed, it was Scrivens. If you're going to come out of net like that you have to clear the puck far enough down the ice to give you time to get back in the crease. He cleared it back into traffic and Yale got possession. He did a similar thing in Florida last year and Schafer pulled him immediately.

billhoward
Yale's 5x3 PPG was a thing of beauty; we got a score that way too but it wasn't so much of a highlight reel goal. Most noticeable of all, it seemed from the stands that Cornell has trouble setting up on power play and once we got set up, we'd get a beautiful set of passes around the perimeter of our four-man box, but the player in the slot seemed always to be covered, so we passed it out to the point again.

Yale scored the 5x3 on a nice pass, but what concerned me on this play was that Scrivens did not move. At all. He was facing the Yale forward who had the puck, but then this guy passed the puck almost directly in front of Scrivens, across the crease, and to his teammate who was open by the other post. This guy just shot it in the wide open net, and the puck traveled right behind Ben's skates. Scrivens didn't even react until the puck was in the back of the net. As some other people said, I wouldn't expect him to have saved the goal, but it's nice to see your goalie at least act like he knows where the puck is and maybe make a lunge for it. Scrivens flat out missed the pass.

Yale had a great penalty kill...our guys got very few good looks at the net. Credit them for that.

I don't think this was a good effort at all. A stupid play by Scrivens gave them the first goal, and then the third goal resulted from our inability to stay out of the box. We had nothing going on offense until the third period, despite PP opportunity after PP opportunity in the 2nd.

Bizarre officiating, too. A couple times in the third, one of the refs blew his whistle and simply pointed where the faceoff should be. No penalty, no nothing, just interrupting play. One of these times was right after Scrivens was pulled. The ref seemed to be yelling at Schafer for having sent out another skater before Scrivens reached the bench, but he didn't call too many men. He just put the faceoff back in the neutral zone.

Then, as the game was ending, there was a whistle. I heard it faintly above the crowd noise. But then there were 5-6 more whistles from all parts of the ice. And yet the scoreboard kept ticking down, from around :10 when the first whistle sounded to :2.2, which is when it finally stopped. Yet no one on the Cornell bench chose to make an issue of it. Whatever.

Cornell's back down to 11th in PWR. We have to get back to winning tomorrow night if we want to make NCAAs.

ebilmes
Bizarre officiating, too. A couple times in the third, one of the refs blew his whistle and simply pointed where the faceoff should be. No penalty, no nothing, just interrupting play. One of these times was right after Scrivens was pulled. The ref seemed to be yelling at Schafer for having sent out another skater before Scrivens reached the bench, but he didn't call too many men. He just put the faceoff back in the neutral zone.

Then, as the game was ending, there was a whistle. I heard it faintly above the crowd noise. But then there were 5-6 more whistles from all parts of the ice. And yet the scoreboard kept ticking down, from around :10 when the first whistle sounded to :2.2, which is when it finally stopped. Yet no one on the Cornell bench chose to make an issue of it. Whatever.

Cornell's back down to 11th in PWR. We have to get back to winning tomorrow night if we want to make NCAAs.

They actually don't call too many men on the ice in that situation. I'm pretty sure the rulebook just says that if you substitute too soon on the goalie coming off that there is a whistle and a faceoff. I think the more bizarre officiating was that they didn't call any of the cheap shots after the whistle, or before the whistle, or during gameplay. Number 25 on Yale got away with all kinds of ridiculous stuff, and then the refs wondered why things got out of hand towards the end. It started way back in the first period, and calling a few sets of matching minors probably would've gotten it under control, but the refs apparently didn't want to do that.

On the first goal, that was completely Scrivens's fault. First of all, the Cornell defender was actually beating the Yale player to the puck, and even if he didn't get it would probably be able to get a stick check on to prevent a good shot. Second of all, when a goalie charges out to get a puck like that, they are supposed to play it off to the side and preferably get it over the blue line to create an offsides if the puck comes back in. Instead, Scrivens decided to send it straight up the middle and essentially right in to the charging Yale player. If I was coach Schafer I would essentially tell Scrivens that the next time he wanders from the net he is going to the bench at the next whistle.

I had a lot of fun at the game. Ingalls was indeed packed, and the fans did a pretty good job.

I thought that Yale was much faster than we were; often, our players looked winded when rushing to catch up on defense. The problem to me was that we gave the puck away so much. Cornell would get in the Yale zone and then immediately (or on the rush towards their blue line) have it taken away. Our puck control was not so great.

Our powerplay didn't look very good for the first 1.8 periods, but really picked up after that. It was a night and day difference with crisp, cycling passes and movement by the players. I'm not sure why they didn't do that all game long.

The first goal we gave away was absolutely Scrivens' fault. He should have come out, but not as far as he did. The defense was to blame some as well, but mostly Scrivens.

In any case, good crowd on both the Cornell and Yale ends. A bit much fighting for my tastes (Yale was picking fights, especially at the end). Had we played like we did in the 3rd, we would have seen a great game and a win for Cornell.

billhoward
First, I've never seen Ingalls Rink more packed and vibrant. It's good that Yale is back as a power to be reckoned with. Also, their pink with blue jerseys didn't look half bad.

Agreed. Interesting though, that last year's game at Ingalls was sparse at best. The word on the street being that newcomer Quinnipiac gave a lot of local fans reason to stay in the suburbs with ample parking, a more comfortable rink, reason to avoid New Haven traffic, and a better "pro-like" experience than Yale ever did, so they were abandoning the Whale. Funny what a winning team can do. SRO was 2 rows deep pretty much all the way around the rink. Friday traffic being what it is, the new seats probably weren't full until 10 minutes into the 1st (ya know...I'm in favor of moving Fri. start times back to 7:30 for several reasons.) The Yale band probably had about 75-90 people easy. They walked in well after the CU band had been settled and playing for a while (and started drumming behind them); they probably had about 15 drummers (I hesitate to say percussionists) alone. BTW, the renovations of the Whale were interesting. The back now has a glass entrance identical to the front, and they remade the bathrooms that used to be against the back wall into box-like structures. There's now an open press box at the top of both standing-room areas, eliminating some SRO space. One observation was that it seemed like the "student" media was on one side of the ice and the "pro" media was in the original press box on the other side. Either way, it's glass backed and weirdly odd to be able to just look in at what they're doing...like a zoo.

Was it me, or were there tons of pucks that happened to hit the Yale bench? The entire game. I couldn't explain it. Word is that the ice got lowered. It seems they lowered the team benches to match, but the penalty boxes...it looked like the players in there were sitting on high-chairs.

I think Scrivens made the right move to charge the blue line to get to the puck first and it was misfortune that Yale got the puck right back and found an open net.

Yeah, exactly. It was the right play, especially after everyone was aware of Yale's breakaway skill when they had 2 early on. The problem was that the CU defender was also fast and actually caught the Eli. Scrivens got to the puck and seemed startled to see a white jersey there too...instead of forcefully sending it to the boards, he seemed to flub it off our skater and the Yalie collected and had a shot to the empty net. Yeah, the score was 4-2, with an ENG that Yale got in the 1st. After that (in addition to the memory of the Dartmouth crazy goal 2 weeks ago) every dump-in on net was reason to hold one's breath.

Most of all, while therer's been a lot of carping about our power play and penalty kill, maybe there's something to that.

One thing I'll say about Yale, more than the speed: they're the best I've seen other than Cornell at blocking pucks. While so many fans are screaming "shooooot!" on the PP, the fact was that on most of Yale's PK situations, every prime passing AND shooting lane was taken up by a defender. Many shots we tried to take happened with a Yale player right in our faces.

Yes, the first 2 periods had very predictable PP setups for CU. The 3rd, we seemed to flip the proverbial switch and tried a bunch of different sets and had different looks. It looked great. Yale actually seemed to be spinning looking for the same-ol' while we were zipping the puck in different angles. Dunno if that was by design or what.

One thing I'll say about the PK: the past 2 seasons...CU has been awful at preventing the back-door play, and that's exactly what happened on the 5x3 situation. Scrivens didn't react, but the fact that forwards can continuously camp out on the far post without any retribution or fear has been the biggest failing of the Kill.

That said, once we potted the first, there was an excitement in the air. I felt like I did in the 3rd of the Harvard game. One we commit to play an offensive game, a lot of GOOD THINGS (tm) happen. We know we can throw the puck on net and get things going.

Yale has been the best team in the league. They showed why tonight. But hey...we've seen them twice in the last month. If we see them in Albany, I think we'll be in the right mindset to at least have a shot.

billhoward

I think Scrivens made the right move to charge the blue line to get to the puck first and it was misfortune that Yale got the puck right back and found an open net.

I agree. Scrivens skates a lot and that is his style. He has to make split second decisions and trust his gut instincts; most of the time he is right. It's unfortunate that the puck landed on Backman's stick after he initially knocked it away. If he let Backman skate in on him, he probably would have had to make a very tough save. It's easy to second guess him from a fan's eye view, usually well above the ice surface.

We need to take away some positive aspects of this game.
(1) We controlled the puck for good periods of time in the Yale zone and worked the boards effectively.
(2) We PK'ed well give the team speed of Yale and their shooting ability (having been there I'd say some of their forwards could really rip the puck). BTW, the 2 man up score for Yale was a classic 5-3 style goal. Get the puck low, look to the man in the slot then make a hard pass across the crease to the open forward by the other side of the net. If the pass goes through NO ONE can stop the goal. The other man up goal was a scrum for the puck in front of the net.
(3) These guys stayed tough and rallied in the 3rd. It would have been easy down 3-0 in the opponents rink to lay back and concede. But they continued to work, play their style of game and attack. They also played that 3rd with a bit of a chip on their shoulder. I think it was effective for them.

That said the PP needs a lot more player movement. The puck movement if nice but we need to shoot more often and quicker. The forwards seemed to stay away from the front of the net instead of engaging the defense and distracting the goalie.

MattShaf
That said the PP needs a lot more player movement. The puck movement if nice but we need to shoot more often and quicker. The forwards seemed to stay away from the front of the net instead of engaging the defense and distracting the goalie.

It seems that Greening is the only guy who regularly goes into the slot for the first PP unit. I wonder if Mike tells R. Nash to stay out of there and remain along the boards to (a) set up plays or (b) avoid getting banged up because he is still kind of skinny. Another possibility is that he is a little banged up already.

I appreciate the skills of Topher Scott a lot more now that he is gone. He was so quick and really moved the puck well on the PP, especially down low.

The Yale 5x3 goal was a pass across the goal mouth, right to left, and Scrivens was in too-good position to stop the shot from the right, less so the pass the crossed in front. When the pass crossed the goal mouth and went to the left, he didn't even have enough time to look back ... let alone try to get into position. Did you also see the goal mouth come open in super slow motion and all you could wonder was ... would the gods smile and have Mark Arcobello possibly shoot wide? (Not on a day he got 4 points) But I also wondered should he have tried to scramble back (off his knees) to at least look like he was trying?

If you were a Yale fan, it was a thing of beauty second only to the rink itself. Speaking of which, many women were appreciative that the restrooms now provide clean and modern facilities once you suffer the 10-minute wait, which is a big improvement over using antiquated restrooms after a 10-minute wait. (A bit longer if you didn't go during the middle of the period.) Lynah's physical link to Newman-formerly-Bartels for restrooms, refreshments, souvenirs was a stroke of genius, if not design excellence.

If you tell a goalie you're pulling him next time he skates out to get the puck, you need to live with the consequences of the other guy skating in unmolested for a shot on goal. I worry more about our goalies of the recent years skating almost to the corner to play a puck and not getting back in time.

It's a pretty slim moral victory to say we outplayed, outshot and outscored Yale in last period.

Another slim victory: Our 57-25 faceoffs advantage, according to Yale stats.

Yale was the more fists-at-the-ready team, I thought. Because of our size, we've more often been accused of being the goons. Douglas Murray's NHL enforcer skills cements that reputation retroactively.

billhoward
Lynah's physical link to Newman-formerly-Bartels for restrooms, refreshments, souvenirs was a stroke of genius, if not design excellence.

The building is still Bartels. Newman is the arena/gymnasium that the basketball and wrestling teams both use. Sort of like "Messa Rink at Achilles Center." The "formerly" part is Alberding, although I still call it by another former name, "The Field House."

And the new restrooms built in Lynah due to the expansion are quite nice.

ebilmes

billhoward
Second, yes, we are vulnerable to quick teams. The breakaway / giveaway first goal was the difference. I think Scrivens made the right move to charge the blue line to get to the puck first and it was misfortune that Yale got the puck right back and found an open net.

The problem here wasn't the speed, it was Scrivens. If you're going to come out of net like that you have to clear the puck far enough down the ice to give you time to get back in the crease. He cleared it back into traffic and Yale got possession. He did a similar thing in Florida last year and Schafer pulled him immediately.

Scrivens wasn't the only goalie with a miscue last night.




Assist to Freshman York

I had the same thought during one of our PPs: no one is creating any space. We pass the puck around but there is rarely anyone in a dangerous (to Yale) position. Maybe Mike should have the guys watch a few EPL games.

First goal was huge mistake by Scrivens. First there was no good reason to come out, and second when you're trying to clear don't do it straight into an attacking player.

Ken70
I had the same thought during one of our PPs: no one is creating any space. We pass the puck around but there is rarely anyone in a dangerous (to Yale) position. Maybe Mike should have the guys watch a few EPL games.

Or just pop in Michigan ir Minnesota tapes. Had both their games on tonight on the tube... they ar eboth things of beauty. On Michigans PP the puck almost never stops moving in the zone and doesn't move around the circle, but criss-crossing at all angles, really keeping the opposition off balance. And they dont take time to think- they just react and pass/shoot. Our guys eem to be thinking a lot.

High quality video of all the Yale goals is available here:

[www.yalebulldogs.com]

On the first goal, it looks like Gallagher could have beaten Backman to the puck, but it's hard to say. Backman slowed down a little when he saw Scrivens charging out of the net. Scrivens was well ahead of Backman in getting to the puck, so in that regard, his gut instinct was good. However, the biggest mistake that he made, as many have pointed out, is that he directed the puck right back toward center ice and hit Backman or Gallagher's skate. He should have sent the puck to the boards.

Perhaps the most important thing to observe about the goal is the way it started. After Arcobello blocked a one timer from B. Nash near the top of the circles, Backman took off in anticipation of a center ice pass. This is not the type of thing that a defensively minded team would do. Yale is now #5 in the nation in short handed goals with 8, Mankato is #1 with 10. To force the Yale defense to stay lower in their own zone, opponents will need to keep the puck lower during power plays and not shoot a lot from near the blue line.