Cornell - SLU

Cornell up 1-0 on a PPG off a scrum in front of the net but the real news is that Donaldson skated off a few seconds earlier holding his arm with what looked like it might be a broken wrist.

ugarte
Donaldson skated off a few seconds earlier holding his arm with what looked like it might be a broken wrist.

I thought it looked like he was holding his elbow at first, and then it looked like it could be a shoulder issue. I'd be surprised if it was his wrist.

Injury occurred when he fell forward onto the ice in a kinda awkward fashion. Looked on replay like it might have been separated shoulder.

So are we disbanding by attrition?

This year is probably the worst I've ever seen in terms of injuries. Up until this point it felt like Cornell still could patch together a lineup, even with Andreev and Haiskanen out long-term and Smith banged up. But losing Donaldson sort of feels like the dam bursting.

At this point, the best-case scenario is probably for Cornell to limp into the bye week without losing anyone else and get back all except one or two of the above.

With tonight's results, all teams have played the same number of conference games (16) and we have opened up some daylight:

 1. 24 Cornell
 2. 21 Quinnipiac
 3. 20 Clarkson
    20 Harvard

 5. 19 Yale
 6. 17 Brown
 7. 16 Dartmouth
 8. 15 Union

 9. 12 Colgate
    12 RPI
11. 11 Princeton
12.  5 SLU

It’s a great tribute to this team, and the coaches, that we’ve been missing key players all season long and have been banged up and playing hurt. Yet here we are with only 3 weeks left in the regular season having won the Ivy League title, sitting on top of the ECAC (during a year when the league has distinguished itself against non-conference competition), and 8th in the pwr. Someone goes down, and someone steps up. E.g., Regush filled in for Donaldson tonight.

Let’s hope Smith comes back next week. (Been down so long, it looks to me like up is the only way to go.)

The best in the Ivy League!

The Big Red defeat St. Lawrence 3-1,and Princeton’s win at Yale means we’re back-to-back Ivy League Champs!! #LGR pic.twitter.com/KoWA61mL8O

— Cornell Hockey (@CUBigRedHockey) February 10, 2019

LGR!

BearLover

The best in the Ivy League!

The Big Red defeat St. Lawrence 3-1,and Princeton’s win at Yale means we’re back-to-back Ivy League Champs!! #LGR pic.twitter.com/KoWA61mL8O

— Cornell Hockey (@CUBigRedHockey) February 10, 2019

LGR!

The t-shirts should read “empty the infirmary”

That's a great picture. Evidently the instructions were "look like goofballs!"

Please to explain the hardhat and sledgehammer? I assume one of them is the ubiquitous "blue collar belt."

Swampy
It’s a great tribute to this team, and the coaches, that we’ve been missing key players all season long and have been banged up and playing hurt. Yet here we are with only 3 weeks left in the regular season having won the Ivy League title, sitting on top of the ECAC (during a year when the league has distinguished itself against non-conference competition), and 8th in the pwr. Someone goes down, and someone steps up. E.g., Regush filled in for Donaldson tonight.

Let’s hope Smith comes back next week. (Been down so long, it looks to me like up is the only way to go.)

Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is. I suspect that every team at this point of the season is missing important players. RPI has been playing without its player with the most points (Hayhurst) and its top goal scorer (Polino) the last couple of weeks. Now certainly RPI is not in the hunt for the Cleary Cup as Cornell is, but they are ahead of where they were picked preseason.

ursusminor
Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is.

Missed games due to injury. Pretty simple.

Jason made the observation on Friday that we already had 20 missed games among the top 6 D, while last season after the same number of games we had just 7. That was before Haiskenen was hurt.

We've had some really bad seasons with injuries, though. I don't think this one is among the worst, though it seems worse than average. I suppose we could count Bliss and really hike the number up.

Trotsky

ursusminor
Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is.

We've had some really bad seasons with injuries, though.

My least favorite was 1973. There were so many injuries that the 4th line played what seemed like most of the NCAA semi. The injuries were such that we only had 3 lines. Our 3rd line was the regular season 4th line. God knows they were good players but definitely a step down from the rest of the offense.

Bertrand kept throwing them out on the ice to save the top 2 lines for the final on Saturday. We played Friday and the other semi was Thursday. Dick was sure that Denver was going to skate faster and better than Cornell on Saturday. That didn't happen because Cornell didn't skate in that game.

It was the most disappointing game I've ever seen. Losing in OT to a team we dominated. Then seeing them beat the team that was supposed to be the best.

Trotsky

ursusminor
Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is.

Missed games due to injury. Pretty simple.

That doesn't take into account how important the player is. Swampy was talking about key players.

ursusminor

Trotsky

ursusminor
Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is.

Missed games due to injury. Pretty simple.

That doesn't take into account how important the player is. Swampy was talking about key players.

Then weight by points per game or something.

'73 was my junior year and the pain is still palpable!

Back then, there were fewer quick-and-useless stats, such, "So far this year, Cornell is 12-0-1 when leading after two periods, so this 5-2 lead over the Badgers of Wisconsin is pretty much a guaranteed W for the Big Red, and its first return to the NCAA championship since 1970 and Ken Dryden's fabulous post-grad-year season."

It took me a while to parse this headline and wonder if SLU had sneaked into the Ivies to replace say Penn or Columbia for hockey, just as Chicago left the Big Ten and then Michigan State joined. Now I understand: Yale lost to Princeton same night, and that eliminated the last time from contending for the title.

Trotsky

ursusminor

Trotsky

ursusminor
Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is.

Missed games due to injury. Pretty simple.

That doesn't take into account how important the player is. Swampy was talking about key players.

Then weight by points per game or something.

But that really undervalues goalies.

ursusminor

Trotsky

ursusminor

Trotsky

ursusminor
Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is.

Missed games due to injury. Pretty simple.

That doesn't take into account how important the player is. Swampy was talking about key players.

Then weight by points per game or something.

But that really undervalues goalies.

come on dude. nobody evaluates goalies and skaters with the same metrics.

Ralph's awesome, don't be dismissive of him.

I think with goalie I would be tempted to do something like weight by the percentage of games he started when he was healthy. Or maybe even double that, since a goalie is so important. So, for example, a goalie who was the starter 100% of the time except when hurt would get the same weight as a 2 point-per-game scorer. I think that would be fair. The undercounted player then would be the defensive defenseman or defensive forward.

These are the same issues I faced when I tried to come up with a weighted rank of players leaving and players returning in the annual TBRW Predictions. I've gone back and forth with different schemas throughout the years, trying to find a good theoretical fit. I have always wanted the time/energy to redo all the predictions with all the algorithms and then run a goodness of fit with the actuals. This is not good experimental technique (in fact it's exactly the opposite) but it would still be interesting.

Agree Trotsky, Ralph is a great fan.

CAS
Agree Trotsky, Ralph is a great fan.

i have no beef with ralph. i don't even care if he brings up December 1968 again.

Trotsky
Ralph's awesome, don't be dismissive of him.

I think with goalie I would be tempted to do something like weight by the percentage of games he started when he was healthy. Or maybe even double that, since a goalie is so important. So, for example, a goalie who was the starter 100% of the time except when hurt would get the same weight as a 2 point-per-game scorer. I think that would be fair. The undercounted player then would be the defensive defenseman or defensive forward.

These are the same issues I faced when I tried to come up with a weighted rank of players leaving and players returning in the annual TBRW Predictions. I've gone back and forth with different schemas throughout the years, trying to find a good theoretical fit. I have always wanted the time/energy to redo all the predictions with all the algorithms and then run a goodness of fit with the actuals. This is not good experimental technique (in fact it's exactly the opposite) but it would still be interesting.

For goalies, I'm inclined to favor a function of save % and % of games the goalie started when other goalies on the team were also healthy. Not sure it makes much sense to mix goalies with skaters, although if we're trying to come up with a single injury-impact metric there would have to be some way to integrate the GK score with that for skaters.

ugarte

CAS
Agree Trotsky, Ralph is a great fan.

i have no beef with ralph. i don't even care if he brings up December 1968 again.

What about December 1970?

ursusminor

ugarte

CAS
Agree Trotsky, Ralph is a great fan.

i have no beef with ralph. i don't even care if he brings up December 1968 again.

What about December 1970?

Dat overall, tho.

Trotsky

ursusminor

ugarte

CAS
Agree Trotsky, Ralph is a great fan.

i have no beef with ralph. i don't even care if he brings up December 1968 again.

What about December 1970?

Dat overall, tho.

I try to forget RPI's appearance at MSG vs. Cornell and BC in the year in between, but I must admit that I still remember those games. I don't recall the RPI-Cornell game in Ithaca in December 1969, but I must have listened to it.

ursusminor

ugarte

CAS
Agree Trotsky, Ralph is a great fan.

i have no beef with ralph. i don't even care if he brings up December 1968 again.

What about December 1970?

The only one you can't talk about is March 1990.

ugarte

ursusminor

ugarte

CAS
Agree Trotsky, Ralph is a great fan.

i have no beef with ralph. i don't even care if he brings up December 1968 again.

What about December 1970?

The only one you can't talk about is March 1990.

He can talk about it unless Ross Lemon is in the room.

ugarte

ursusminor

ugarte

CAS
Agree Trotsky, Ralph is a great fan.

i have no beef with ralph. i don't even care if he brings up December 1968 again.

What about December 1970?

The only one you can't talk about is March 1990.

It's a deal because until I just looked at the Intercollegiate Hockey Newsletter report of that game, I had no knowledge about it. That was still in the era when news about college hockey was impossible to get in DC. Sometime thereafter I learned about Hockey-L. I suspect that when I got my copy of then ICHN, I read it quite rapidly since RPI was the higher seed and was quickly disappointed because RPI lost to Colgate in the finals.

ugarte

ursusminor

Trotsky

ursusminor

Trotsky

ursusminor
Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is.

Missed games due to injury. Pretty simple.

That doesn't take into account how important the player is. Swampy was talking about key players.

Then weight by points per game or something.

But that really undervalues goalies.

come on dude. nobody evaluates goalies and skaters with the same metrics.

Ralph does "Jokes and Stuff" too.

TimV

ugarte

ursusminor

Trotsky

ursusminor

Trotsky

ursusminor
Someone needs to come up with a decent metric quantifying how hurt a team is.

Missed games due to injury. Pretty simple.

That doesn't take into account how important the player is. Swampy was talking about key players.

Then weight by points per game or something.

But that really undervalues goalies.

come on dude. nobody evaluates goalies and skaters with the same metrics.

Ralph does "Jokes and Stuff" too.

put it in your sig or it doesn't count