What a difference one goal makes

It's amazing where this season would be if Cornell could just muster one more goal per game.

1. Our offense ranking (nationally) would be 28th in the country, a hair above the national median. Far better than where we are now at 54th in the country, which is not too far from the two lowest scoring teams in the land, Lake Superior State and Princeton. Two teams we lost to, to boot.

2. By my calculations, our record would be 13-4-6.

Assuming we scored one more goal in regulation:

- Games 2, 3, and 4, all one-goal losses in regulation, would have instead been ties.
- The 3-1 loss to Denver would be a 2-2 tie. We wouldn't have pulled our goalie and allowed an ENG.
- We would have won against Lake Superior State
- Our second game against St. Lawrence would have ended as a 2-2 tie. Once again, we wouldn't have pulled the goalie, allowing the ENG.
- The 2-2 tie against Colgate would instead be a 3-2 win
- Our most recent loss to Q would have been a tie

3. Significantly, this would have given Cornell 5 more points in the ECAC standings. (4 losses would be ties, 1 tie would be a win.)

We would be in 3rd place as of now, with 22 points, and 3 points out of first place. (Q would have two fewer points, St L one less point.)

4. I didn't get into it, but I would imagine our national ranking and other tournament qualifying statistics would also be higher.

We don't need to be an offensive powerhouse. Just score one more goal a game...

margolism
It's amazing where this season would be if Cornell could just muster one more goal per game.

- Our most recent loss to Q would have been a tie

One goal on Friday would have been a win, most likely, and a shutout for Mitch.

How realistic is one more goal per game, though?

I'd argue that just one more *goal*- not per game, just one goal- would have likely won the championship in 2004-05 or 2005-06 (when we lost to the eventual champion in regional finals, at their home state rink, in xOT).

So... you know, coulda shoulda woulda. Give us the injured guys back and maybe we can turn this thing around. One thing I'll say about this team though- I've never cheered for a frisky Cornell team. We've always been consistently good, then consistently bad. This business of suddenly dropping 5 on Union, beating Colgate at home, beating Harvard in OT- it's kinda fun! We're unpredictable all of a sudden. At least that's what it seems like to me- admittedly I've watched significantly fewer games this season compared to the last few.

If we could just get a a few more replays to go our way. the replays against Quin both didnt really happent but one was changed and one was ignored.. turned 2 ties at worst into 1-1 but instead ended up 0-2. those 2 pts puts us into 3rd without scoring another goal at all.

Instead of one more goal per game, how about it we scored 2 goals a game, every game, and had to protect that lead? 51 of 59 teams average 2 GPG or better. We'd have a couple more regulation wins and we wouldn't have been guarding an empty net and given up ENGs in games that could have been a win and a couple ties. We would have started the season with wins at Princeton and Quinnipiac.

Not that I don't respect hypotheticals, but as long as we're wishing, why not wish for an absurd, record-setting string of brutal, dominating shutouts, culminating in an exciting (but ultimately not really that close) national championship game where we finally win our third NCAA title (the day after Gillam wins the Hobey, natch)?

I think we have a better chance of wishing we could allow one goal less than wishing we could score one goal more..

upprdeck
I think we have a better chance of wishing we could allow one goal less than wishing we could score one goal more..

I look forward to the taem's first 0 to -1 win...

Fewer Goddammit, not less.

upprdeck
I think we have a better chance of wishing we could allow one goal less than wishing we could score one goal more..

Nah, we're below the mean in goals allowed as it is, so we're pushing against a steeper gradient. If "force" is some conceptual combination of ability, preparation, effort, and luck, it requires far more force to move the same distance the farther you move from the mean.

Our best bet is for Algernop Krieger to fix Lowry.

I is very easy to say what the desired result should be. The real question is how. What should the Coach do differently to achieve this desired result?

I think the amazing thing is any team going like 30 years between snippers.. derrough and lemon were so long ago . if only we had a moulson/gallagher 20 goal scorers, just 2 double digit goal scorers make the team harder to defend. ferlin alone i think adds 2-3 wins.

we should make a pool for next time cornell has a 30 goal guy again.. it might roll over for 20 more years.

It is true that we were quite possibly one goal away from a national championship multiple times in the last decade (which makes the Yale and Union championships 10x more frustrating), but I don't think it's particularly farfetched to wonder where Cornell would be if they scored about one more goal per game.

One more goal per game would give them an average--not even good, but average--offense. They would have a bye in the ECAC tourney and probably make the NCAA's. We cannot expect this team to play better defense, but we can justifiably expect it to score more goals. Because this team has 7 draft picks, multiple recruiting advantages, and is yet the 54th best offense in the country! I don't think there is a team in the country with as much room to improve+ability to improve as Cornell.

Trotsky

upprdeck
I think we have a better chance of wishing we could allow one goal less than wishing we could score one goal more..

Nah, we're below the mean in goals allowed as it is, so we're pushing against a steeper gradient. If "force" is some conceptual combination of ability, preparation, effort, and luck, it requires far more force to move the same distance the farther you move from the mean.

Our best bet is for Algernop Krieger to fix Lowry.

Say what?

With standard Newtonian physics, F=ma. If the mean location is the origin, point A = (0,0), but one starts at B = (10,10) instead of A and moves to x+5, where x is the horizontal coordinate of either A or B, F still equals ma no matter where you started.

You seem to be assuming some nonlinearities in the hockey determinants of F, or perhaps a gravitational pull, or perhaps a Harvard suck. Please state you assumptions.

upprdeck
I think the amazing thing is any team going like 30 years between snippers.. derrough and lemon were so long ago . if only we had a moulson/gallagher 20 goal scorers, just 2 double digit goal scorers make the team harder to defend. ferlin alone i think adds 2-3 wins.

we should make a pool for next time cornell has a 30 goal guy again.. it might roll over for 20 more years.

What do you think the explanation for this is? Recruiting? Coaching? Players going early to the pros? The System^(TM)?

Other teams seem to be able to be able to be above average defensively and offensively. Why can't Cornell?

Swampy

upprdeck
I think the amazing thing is any team going like 30 years between snippers.. derrough and lemon were so long ago . if only we had a moulson/gallagher 20 goal scorers, just 2 double digit goal scorers make the team harder to defend. ferlin alone i think adds 2-3 wins.

we should make a pool for next time cornell has a 30 goal guy again.. it might roll over for 20 more years.

What do you think the explanation for this is? Recruiting? Coaching? Players going early to the pros? The System^(TM)?

Other teams seem to be able to be able to be above average defensively and offensively. Why can't Cornell?

How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

BearLover
It is true that we were quite possibly one goal away from a national championship multiple times in the last decade (which makes the Yale and Union championships 10x more frustrating), but I don't think it's particularly farfetched to wonder where Cornell would be if they scored about one more goal per game.

One more goal per game would give them an average--not even good, but average--offense. They would have a bye in the ECAC tourney and probably make the NCAA's. We cannot expect this team to play better defense, but we can justifiably expect it to score more goals. Because this team has 7 draft picks, multiple recruiting advantages, and is yet the 54th best offense in the country! I don't think there is a team in the country with as much room to improve+ability to improve as Cornell.

This was my intention. I am not dreaming of Cornell as an elite offensive team. I was just imagining where they could be with a middle-of-the-road offense.

Swampy

Trotsky

upprdeck
I think we have a better chance of wishing we could allow one goal less than wishing we could score one goal more..

Nah, we're below the mean in goals allowed as it is, so we're pushing against a steeper gradient. If "force" is some conceptual combination of ability, preparation, effort, and luck, it requires far more force to move the same distance the farther you move from the mean.

Our best bet is for Algernop Krieger to fix Lowry.

Say what?

With standard Newtonian physics, F=ma. If the mean location is the origin, point A = (0,0), but one starts at B = (10,10) instead of A and moves to x+5, where x is the horizontal coordinate of either A or B, F still equals ma no matter where you started.

You seem to be assuming some nonlinearities in the hockey determinants of F, or perhaps a gravitational pull, or perhaps a Harvard suck. Please state you assumptions.

sounds like he was making a spring or pendulum analogy, which makes sense to me.

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

Why stop at last season.

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
This!

Bingo.

The most glaring problem is that they lack a Paolini-type. Should've been McCarron: his trajectory on offense is the one with which I'm most disappointed.

The result of his most recent game-changing charging of the net notwithstanding, Hilbrich at least seems to have gotten it. That encourages me. I'm hoping that either Weidner or Kubiak turns into another one. Or maybe Yates or Tschantz. Or, hell, tell Stoick that developing into a "screening wing" is now his new goal.

PS I still hold out hope that Ryan can get back to his old self soon. Perhaps when the "other" McCarron comes back. Will he ever?

Not sure how this compares to previous years, but through 23 games, we have been shut out 5 times already, or 20% of the time. (Actually, just under 22%.) This has resulted in four losses and one tie thus far.

I believe four of those five games were ECAC games.

I don't know if it is players not playing up to their potential, coaching, chemistry, or just poor luck, but it is clear that our inconsistent scoring is keeping down what should otherwise be an NCAA tournament team.

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

I think you are letting the coaching staff off way too easily. They recrutied the "underperforming class", they coached the "underperforming class", they are the architects of "The System ^(tm). Sorry, there are some well paid professionals who need to take some responsibility here.

if anything the lack of scoring is perplexing because in many games its not for lack of quality chances. I think the last several weeks they have improved in many areas on offense but the goals are still not coming. it feels like we are generating more shots, more shots getting on goal. still way to many empty net chances not being finished. still the margin from a bad team at scoring to a good team is only 1 goal.

imafrshmn

Swampy

Trotsky

upprdeck
I think we have a better chance of wishing we could allow one goal less than wishing we could score one goal more..

Nah, we're below the mean in goals allowed as it is, so we're pushing against a steeper gradient. If "force" is some conceptual combination of ability, preparation, effort, and luck, it requires far more force to move the same distance the farther you move from the mean.

Our best bet is for Algernop Krieger to fix Lowry.

Say what?

With standard Newtonian physics, F=ma. If the mean location is the origin, point A = (0,0), but one starts at B = (10,10) instead of A and moves to x+5, where x is the horizontal coordinate of either A or B, F still equals ma no matter where you started.

You seem to be assuming some nonlinearities in the hockey determinants of F, or perhaps a gravitational pull, or perhaps a Harvard suck. Please state you assumptions.

sounds like he was making a spring or pendulum analogy, which makes sense to me.

I'm not well versed in the physics of ceiling (and floor) effects. What I need is a model where increasing force at a constant rate gets you asymptotically closer to a limit, hitting which would require the addition of infinite force. Prosaically, I'm saying it requires less "force" to go from 2.5 to 1.5 GA/GP then 1.5 to 0.5 GA/GP.

Towerroad

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

I think you are letting the coaching staff off way too easily. They recrutied the "underperforming class", they coached the "underperforming class", they are the architects of "The System ^(tm). Sorry, there are some well paid professionals who need to take some responsibility here.

Again, I feel it needs to be pointed out that our "bad" years are years where we go .500. Plenty of teams would take .500 as a bad year.

Somehow, Wisconsin is 2-18-4. Big programs can have much, much, much worse years than .500.

Towerroad
I think you are letting the coaching staff off way too easily. They recrutied the "underperforming class", they coached the "underperforming class", they are the architects of "The System ^(tm). Sorry, there are some well paid professionals who need to take some responsibility here.

I have some criticisms of the coaching staff, but I don't believe that systemic failures caused the senior class to fall short of expectations. I have not perceived a drop off in the quality of recruits. I don't understand why The System ^(TM) would have suited the Class of 2012 but failed the Class of 2015. I don't see enough evidence to support the conclusion that the coaching staff has a subpar record developing forwards. However, I concede that the player-development question, particularly with respect to playmaking forwards and pure scorers, is the most debatable of the three.

I do think that, from a recruiting perspective, if you don't get kids who were prolific scorers in junior hockey, it will be hard to convert them to prolific scorers at the college level. I don't know if you can rewire kids into top goal scorers. Many of the current (and past) forwards, in their junior leagues, just didn't score a ton of goals.

Case in point for some currently recruited forwards:

Ott (1G, 1A in 30 games)
Kubachka (8G in 44 games)
Otterman (4G in 24 games)

margolism
I do think that, from a recruiting perspective, if you don't get kids who were prolific scorers in junior hockey, it will be hard to convert them to prolific scorers at the college level. I don't know if you can rewire kids into top goal scorers. Many of the current (and past) forwards, in their junior leagues, just didn't score a ton of goals.

Case in point for some currently recruited forwards:

Ott (1G, 1A in 30 games)
Kubachka (8G in 44 games)
Otterman (4G in 24 games)

Given how many teams are ahead of us in scoring, I have to believe there are more prolific scorers out there. So is recruitiing them more difficult than MVP goalies or defensemen who make it to the NHL?

I believe it's a known trend that our recruits are younger than in previous time periods. It was never unusual to get freshman in at 20-22 years old. Now most of the freshman are 18-20 years old. The younger age brings with it a steeper curve as it relates to be ready for NCAA level of play.

I remember a former Cornell assistant coach telling me a few years ago that he couldn't believe that Cornell had resorted to recruiting high school kids. Never paid much attention to it at the time, but maybe it actually means something ?

Cop at Lynah
I believe it's a known trend that our recruits are younger than in previous time periods. It was never unusual to get freshman in at 20-22 years old. Now most of the freshman are 18-20 years old. The younger age brings with it a steeper curve as it relates to be ready for NCAA level of play.

I remember a former Cornell assistant coach telling me a few years ago that he couldn't believe that Cornell had resorted to recruiting high school kids. Never paid much attention to it at the time, but maybe it actually means something ?

that seems to have more of an effect on say, power forwards whose bodies will be more filled out, and obviously Cornell doesn't compete for the Eichel types.

The logic I keep hearing on these pages goes something like this.

1. The instinct for finding the back of the net is somthing that a player brings with him. Coaching can help but if it is not there all the coaching in the world will not make a huge difference.

2. The System^tm is built from the crease out and is focused on defense.

3. The System^tm makes Cornell less desireable home for players with an instinct for the net.

4. The System^tm is a reflection of the Coach and his staff.

5. Failure to score is the fault of the Seniors.

It does not add in my book.

Cop at Lynah
I believe it's a known trend that our recruits are younger than in previous time periods. It was never unusual to get freshman in at 20-22 years old. Now most of the freshman are 18-20 years old. ...

These entering freshmen players would then be ... more like the bulk of Cornell students.

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that. The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent. The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational. Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also. That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement. These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance. Players like those are the real aberrations. Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line." It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

BearLover

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that. The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent. The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational. Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also. That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement. These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance. Players like those are the real aberrations. Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line." It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

Sean Collins, I believe, had a fairly big jump in scoring Senior year.

True, but serious hockey players tend to do their internships (junior hockey) prior to enrolling in college

Dafatone

Towerroad

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

I think you are letting the coaching staff off way too easily. They recrutied the "underperforming class", they coached the "underperforming class", they are the architects of "The System ^(tm). Sorry, there are some well paid professionals who need to take some responsibility here.

Again, I feel it needs to be pointed out that our "bad" years are years where we go .500. Plenty of teams would take .500 as a bad year.

Somehow, Wisconsin is 2-18-4. Big programs can have much, much, much worse years than .500.

And don't cry for Onion. The folks at Achilles/Messa are crying a river this year. But yeah, a goal here and there would make such a difference.

marty

Dafatone

Towerroad

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

I think you are letting the coaching staff off way too easily. They recrutied the "underperforming class", they coached the "underperforming class", they are the architects of "The System ^(tm). Sorry, there are some well paid professionals who need to take some responsibility here.

Again, I feel it needs to be pointed out that our "bad" years are years where we go .500. Plenty of teams would take .500 as a bad year.

Somehow, Wisconsin is 2-18-4. Big programs can have much, much, much worse years than .500.

And don't cry for Onion. The folks at Achilles/Messa are crying a river this year. But yeah, a goal here and there would make such a difference.

The last 2.5 years have been pretty mediocre. Characterized by great goaltending, solid defence, anemic offense, poor powerplays, and lots of time in the penalty box. College sports has a 4 year turnover cycle. Do you see the current set of Juniors performing better than todays Seniors next year? Is there an incoming Freshman class that is measurably better than the last few? If it was one or even 2 years they might be abberations but this is looking like a trend that transcends any specific goup of players. That in turn falls at the coachs feet.

I bleed as Red as anyone. But I think we are rapidly approaching the point where we have to say. "This is not working". I hope I am wrong.

Towerroad

marty

Dafatone

Towerroad

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

I think you are letting the coaching staff off way too easily. They recrutied the "underperforming class", they coached the "underperforming class", they are the architects of "The System ^(tm). Sorry, there are some well paid professionals who need to take some responsibility here.

Again, I feel it needs to be pointed out that our "bad" years are years where we go .500. Plenty of teams would take .500 as a bad year.

Somehow, Wisconsin is 2-18-4. Big programs can have much, much, much worse years than .500.

And don't cry for Onion. The folks at Achilles/Messa are crying a river this year. But yeah, a goal here and there would make such a difference.

The last 2.5 years have been pretty mediocre. Characterized by great goaltending, solid defence, anemic offense, poor powerplays, and lots of time in the penalty box. College sports has a 4 year turnover cycle. Do you see the current set of Juniors performing better than todays Seniors next year? Is there an incoming Freshman class that is measurably better than the last few? If it was one or even 2 years they might be abberations but this is looking like a trend that transcends any specific goup of players. That in turn falls at the coachs feet.

I bleed as Red as anyone. But I think we are rapidly approaching the point where we have to say. "This is not working". I hope I am wrong.

I've been saying this for years: mediocrity will continue unless something fundamental changes about the way we coach. The only question is, at what point does mediocrity become enough of an issue for changes to be made.

scoop85

BearLover

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that. The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent. The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational. Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also. That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement. These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance. Players like those are the real aberrations. Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line." It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

Sean Collins, I believe, had a fairly big jump in scoring Senior year.

But he also wasn't a great raw offensive talent. The guys who light it up their first year never seem to improve.

you can only recruit what you can get into the school. the best talents will go where it will be free, the rest go where they can get accepted.

upprdeck
you can only recruit what you can get into the school. the best talents will go where it will be free, the rest go where they can get accepted.

Yale managed to run the table 2 years ago. Union's standards are not that far off from Cornell's or Yale's. And if Union accepts less than stellar-student hockey players, it's harder to bury them in a student body of 1100-1200 males than in a school of more than 10,000 undergrads.

I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp. However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's. Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent. That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams. I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

there are some pretty good players getting into other ivies who cant seem to get into cornell.

Trotsky
I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp. However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's. Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent. That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams. I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats. I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin. We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us. At least that's what I dream of.

marty

Trotsky
I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp. However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's. Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent. That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams. I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats. I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin. We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us. At least that's what I dream of.

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined. My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

Trotsky
"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined. My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

I'm now picturing the one legged hockey player with a great slapper.

Trotsky

marty

Trotsky
I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp. However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's. Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent. That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams. I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats. I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin. We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us. At least that's what I dream of.

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined. My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

Knowing what we need is hardly a proposition from Wittgenstein. It has been obvious for years. Better Power Play, Improved Offense, and Staying Out of the Box. The question is why we have not done what we need to do? Can this coach do it?

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that the answer is no. Unfortuenatley, with the increased emphasis on concussions and safety, building a team around slow, 6'5" man mountains, who can hit and block is rapidly becoming outdated. The System^tm is showing its age and we have to adapt or become like Football.

if the system is so easy why do teams go thru so many cycles? NH was great/ Wisc 2 wins/ ND under .500.

the system has come close. a bad call in buffalo, a bad call in albany, some really tough oT losses on the roadto good teams no that long ago. a couple breaks and we could have had 2-3 titles

we will never get the super elite player more than 1 every 5-10 yrs . what we do is stay at a level that can make the run almost every year to a shot to make the final 16.

we could be beter but we could also be much worse and we have been before Coach got here

are we so far off from beating teams like denver/neb who are top 10 this year?

funny how a team gets that elite player and its the system. when that group leaves and its the players..

My initial point is that we don't really need that much. We just need one, maybe two players, who can seal the deal. Some better luck would also be helpful, including fewer injuries.

I don't think a complete overhaul is in order. To be where we are (which, I admit is only mediocre, but certainly not horrific), with the nation's 6th least productive offense is respectable. We have had a chance to win or tie all but four games. We have defeated multiple ranked opponents.

I do think, however, that when your offense is not very productive, different strategies are in order. We need to take more shots on goal, even if they are lower percentage shots. Maybe we get one or two crazy rebounds. One or two flukes throughout the season. Maybe we get some luck with more offensive zone faceoffs. How much of a downside is there to this? Would this result in even fewer goals? When you are averaging fewer than two per game, I can't imagine that dropping too significantly, if at all.

margolism
My initial point is that we don't really need that much. We just need one, maybe two players, who can seal the deal. Some better luck would also be helpful, including fewer injuries.

I don't think a complete overhaul is in order. To be where we are (which, I admit is only mediocre, but certainly not horrific), with the nation's 6th least productive offense is respectable. We have had a chance to win or tie all but four games. We have defeated multiple ranked opponents.

I do think, however, that when your offense is not very productive, different strategies are in order. We need to take more shots on goal, even if they are lower percentage shots. Maybe we get one or two crazy rebounds. One or two flukes throughout the season. Maybe we get some luck with more offensive zone faceoffs. How much of a downside is there to this? Would this result in even fewer goals? When you are averaging fewer than two per game, I can't imagine that dropping too significantly, if at all.

I think what's important with shooting more is less the percentage of scoring but the percentage of a bad turnover. You rake the wrong low pct shot and you're likely to create a 2 on 1 the other way when it gets blocked. I'm sure Schafer preached against this and for good reason. But throwing the puck on net when it will actually make it to the crease is a different story and we probably need to do more of that. Then again, as others have noted, if you don't have enough traffic in front creating screens and in position to get rebounds that's not going to do much good either.

billhoward

Cop at Lynah
I believe it's a known trend that our recruits are younger than in previous time periods. It was never unusual to get freshman in at 20-22 years old. Now most of the freshman are 18-20 years old. ...

These entering freshmen players would then be ... more like the bulk of Cornell students.

Hell no! We'll need much more bulkier players than that!!! Those puny Cornell students can't possibly screen or clear the crease.

Towerroad

Trotsky

marty

Trotsky
I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp. However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's. Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent. That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams. I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats. I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin. We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us. At least that's what I dream of.

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined. My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

Knowing what we need is hardly a proposition from Wittgenstein. It has been obvious for years. Better Power Play, Improved Offense, and Staying Out of the Box. The question is why we have not done what we need to do? Can this coach do it?

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that the answer is no. Unfortuenatley, with the increased emphasis on concussions and safety, building a team around slow, 6'5" man mountains, who can hit and block is rapidly becoming outdated. The System^tm is showing its age and we have to adapt or become like Football.

I don't know how slowly, you've been preaching this for some time.

And what system are we talking about? The system in the 90s when coach came here and we won a couple of ECAC titles, the system in the early 2000s when we could have won the NCAAs, or the sytem he's using now. It seems like people say that the team is playing the same now as in years past, and it's just not so. Cornell's style of play has changed markedly, even if people don't want to believe it. Does defense come first, yes. But he has given a lot of guys, defensemen included, the go ahead to move offensively. So if by "system" you mean defense first, I'd give you that. If you imply with the ^TM that things aren't a lot different offensively, then I completely disagree.

Cornell's .500 seasons are equivalent to a sub-.500 season in a more competitive conference--so to suggest their worst years are any better than other perennial good teams' worst years is suspect. (Yes, there occasionally will be an exception, like Wisconsin this year.) Moreover, this is a team with great tradition, fans, etc., which gives them a recruiting advantage over many other schools, especially other ECAC schools. So we can and should expect Cornell to be better than .500, virtually every year.

Cornell has been a goal away from winning a few more games this season, but they've also been a goal away from losing a few more. Last year, Cornell was very lucky in these 1-goal games: they were only +5 goals on the season, yet finished 7 games over .500. The year before they were .500, and the year before that that they snuck into the NCAA's on the last day of the season as a 4-seed. The year before that they were .500. You'd have to go back to 2009-10 to find a year where Cornell truly looked like a team set to make noise in the NCAA's. Since then, all things considered, the results have been mediocre. This looks like the first time Cornell will miss the tournament three years in a row since 2001.

The talent is still coming, but how long will that go on? The fans are starting to drop out (did anyone see all the empty seats during the Princeton game?). Other teams have passed us by. All of these things together suggest something has to change soon.

BearLover

scoop85

BearLover

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that. The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent. The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational. Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also. That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement. These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance. Players like those are the real aberrations. Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line." It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

Sean Collins, I believe, had a fairly big jump in scoring Senior year.

But he also wasn't a great raw offensive talent. The guys who light it up their first year never seem to improve.

Collins didn't play in the toughest junior league but his numbers were impressive: 60-51-64-115, 2nd in the league in scoring. 4 goals in the league all-star game earned him the MOP. We might have one guy coming in next year who's in the top 2 on his team scoring list, forget about league stats. Compared to the forwards coming in next year, who have a combined line of 160-41-64-105, he looked pretty darn good on paper.

Mike seems to be in love with power forwards as strongly as ever. As the game continues to move in the direction of skill and speed we'll have a difficult time maintaining (or reclaiming) any national relevance. With the increasing awareness and concern regarding head trauma I believe the game will continue to open up. Mike might be stuck in a previous era with no way out.

BearLover
Cornell's .500 seasons are equivalent to a sub-.500 season in a more competitive conference

"The ECAC is weak" argument doesn't fly anymore. The WCHA is dead, long live the WCHA.

to suggest their worst years are any better than other perennial good teams' worst years is suspect. (Yes, there occasionally will be an exception, like Wisconsin this year.)

What's a "perennial good team" these days, anyway? You mean like Maine, UNH, Wisconsin, CC, Notre Dame? Glancing at the PWR, I only see 3 teams I would define as a traditional Power, in North Dakota, BU, and Denver. The national landscape has been drastically shifted, and maybe your thinking old and outdated. National parity is better than it has been since I've been around.

the year before that that they snuck into the NCAA's on the last day of the season as a 4-seed

Pssst, so did Yale in 2013.

Other teams have passed us by.

I'm so tired of this tired line. Union, while still dangerous, is struggling to avoid playing the 1st round on the road. Yale has re-tooled their run/gun style (you know, the style that had passed us by) to be a defense-focused team. SLU continues their history of a 4-year weak-strong oscillation. Quinnipiac is really the only team that has established and maintained a consistent "reload" talent pipeline better than us.

BearLover
So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that. The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent. The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational. Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also. That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement. These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance. Players like those are the real aberrations. Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line." It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but to use such data convincingly in an argument about the coaching one would have to:

• Compare Cornell data to similar data from schools with high-ranking offenses
• Take into account time on ice, participation in power plays, etc.
• Take injuries into account
• Take characteristics of line mates into account (scoring, speed, size, etc.)
• Take depth of team into account (see lacrosse discussions about how Cornell can't win a NC because 1st-line middies are too tired but coaches are afraid to put in 2nd-line middies)

ithacat
As the game continues to move in the direction of skill and speed we'll have a difficult time maintaining (or reclaiming) any national relevance.

1) You're suggesting there's no skill in defense, which is a ridiculous statement.

2) It is? Prove it. Union won on the back of a generational d-man. Scoring around the nation's top teams is down even compared to 10 years ago, nevermind the days of the 9-6 shoot-em-ups of the '70s and '80s.

Trotsky
I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp. However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

I hope you mean you wouldn't have believed Yale could win the NC. I'm not sure how you're defining "firewagon hockey," but Harkness's teams played an awfully fast, open, very offense-oriented style and won two NC's.

Trotsky

marty

Trotsky
I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp. However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's. Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent. That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams. I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats. I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin. We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us. At least that's what I dream of.

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined. My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

IMHO, we need one line that can be counted on to average 2-3 gpg without being a defensive liability plus three other lines that can be counted on to hold the fort, collectively average 1-2 gpg, and not be defensive liabilities. This would have us averaging 3-5 gpg instead of the current 1.87. Using current stats on USCHO, it would put us somewhere among the top 21 teams offensively. (Union is #8 with 3.46 gpg, Harvard is #10 with 3.41, SLU is #14 3.07, and Dartmouth is just outside the top 21 with 2.96 gpg. So this is not an ECAC thing.) Minnesota State is currently #1 in scoring with 3.79 gpg and #4 in defense with 1.97 gpg. We're currently #2 in defense with 1.78 gpg and Yale is #1 with 1.65.

Balance wins games and championships.

"The ECAC is weak" argument doesn't fly anymore. The WCHA is dead, long live the WCHA.

Except it is demonstrably weak this year, and the time period from which we're drawing data includes many years during which it was far weaker.

What's a "perennial good team" these days, anyway? You mean like Maine, UNH, Wisconsin, CC, Notre Dame? Glancing at the PWR, I only see 3 teams I would define as a traditional Power, in North Dakota, BU, and Denver. The national landscape has been drastically shifted, and maybe your thinking old and outdated. National parity is better than it has been since I've been around.

My thinking may be old and outdated, but the point was regarding teams that are traditionally good almost every year and how Cornell's worst years compare to theirs--which does not require them to be in the top 5 at the moment.

Pssst, so did Yale in 2013.

Yes--I've been arguing on here forever that all I want is for Cornell to make the NCAA's (even if it means the ECAC is worse), knowing how much variance there is in a single game of hockey. But the fact remains that for every 4-seed that wins it all, there are probably four 1-seeds that do. I consider any season where we make the NCAA's a success, but my point was that we easily could have missed.

I'm so tired of this tired line. Union, while still dangerous, is struggling to avoid playing the 1st round on the road. Yale has re-tooled their run/gun style (you know, the style that had passed us by) to be a defense-focused team. SLU continues their history of a 4-year weak-strong oscillation. Quinnipiac is really the only team that has established and maintained a consistent "reload" talent pipeline better than us.

Union, Yale and Quinnipiac have been better than us over the past few years, while Cornell was clearly the best team in the ECAC for almost a decade before. I'm not sure how you can argue against this. Yes, things change from year to year, but if you asked anyone who the best ECAC team was 8-12 years ago, 100% would say Cornell. Now, no one would.

Swampy
I'm not saying you're wrong, but to use such data convincingly in an argument about the coaching one would have to:
Compare Cornell data to similar data from schools with high-ranking offenses
Take into account time on ice, participation in power plays, etc.
Take injuries into account
Take characteristics of line mates into account (scoring, speed, size, etc.)
Take depth of team into account (see lacrosse discussions about how Cornell can't win a NC because 1st-line middies are too tired but coaches are afraid to put in 2nd-line middies)

I wasn't drawing any conclusions; I was only refuting the conclusion that the non-development of the Class of 2015 was an aberration. And if it's not an aberration, if it's been a reoccurring theme throughout Schafer's tenure, it makes more sense to (tentatively) conclude it is the coaching staff's fault rather than this class of players'.

scoop85

BearLover

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that. The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent. The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational. Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also. That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement. These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance. Players like those are the real aberrations. Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line." It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

Sean Collins, I believe, had a fairly big jump in scoring Senior year.

If you mean the Sean Collins who graduated a few years back, he steadily increased his production over four years:

Sean Collins

More generally. . . wat. This is a terrible analysis. For one thing, over half of the guys on that list showed substantial improvement from first to second year. But the real issue is it doesn't tell you anything about coaching quality. If I were to trust that kind of statistical analysis I'd be forced to conclude that Keith Allain at Yale was incapable of improving offensive output from a given group of players. Just take a look at the career point totals for some of his best:

Sean Backman
Brian O'Neill
Andrew Miller
Broc Little
Kenny Agostino (4-5 extra games as a junior account for the increase there)

Man, that guy sucks at developing offensive talent. No wonder Yale has so much trouble scoring. To his credit, he did a nice job with Marc Arcobello.

Along those lines, here is equally definitive proof that Schafer-led teams have been brilliant at offensive player development. In addition to the Sean Collins example, take a look at the jumps in offensive production here from two guys who were good but not great as freshmen, and one guy who wasn't even good enough to get a regular shift his freshman year:

Evan Barlow
Stephen Bâby
Sam Paolini

If I were a college hockey coach and I had a couple of kids come in who could light the world on fire offensively, and a bunch of guys who needed a lot of work to be able to produce points consistently at the NCAA level, I know *exactly* which set I'd focus my efforts on when it came to offensive zone improvement.

Swampy

Trotsky
I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp. However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

I hope you mean you wouldn't have believed Yale could win the NC. I'm not sure how you're defining "firewagon hockey," but Harkness's teams played an awfully fast, open, very offense-oriented style and won two NC's.

I meant I'd not have believed a contemporary Ivy could depend on a high octane offense and admit the talent level to win it all.

Tom Lento

scoop85

BearLover

cbuckser

Jim Hyla
How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that. The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent. The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational. Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also. That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement. These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance. Players like those are the real aberrations. Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line." It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

Sean Collins, I believe, had a fairly big jump in scoring Senior year.

If you mean the Sean Collins who graduated a few years back, he steadily increased his production over four years:

Sean Collins

More generally. . . wat. This is a terrible analysis. For one thing, over half of the guys on that list showed substantial improvement from first to second year. But the real issue is it doesn't tell you anything about coaching quality. If I were to trust that kind of statistical analysis I'd be forced to conclude that Keith Allain at Yale was incapable of improving offensive output from a given group of players. Just take a look at the career point totals for some of his best:

Sean Backman
Brian O'Neill
Andrew Miller
Broc Little
Kenny Agostino (4-5 extra games as a junior account for the increase there)

Man, that guy sucks at developing offensive talent. No wonder Yale has so much trouble scoring. To his credit, he did a nice job with Marc Arcobello.

Along those lines, here is equally definitive proof that Schafer-led teams have been brilliant at offensive player development. In addition to the Sean Collins example, take a look at the jumps in offensive production here from two guys who were good but not great as freshmen, and one guy who wasn't even good enough to get a regular shift his freshman year:

Evan Barlow
Stephen Bâby
Sam Paolini

If I were a college hockey coach and I had a couple of kids come in who could light the world on fire offensively, and a bunch of guys who needed a lot of work to be able to produce points consistently at the NCAA level, I know *exactly* which set I'd focus my efforts on when it came to offensive zone improvement.

There was no "analysis" other than a quick demonstration that there was no "aberration" in the non-progress of a group of very skilled freshmen. I'm not sure what you think I was trying to accomplish--it certainly was not some meticulous statistical analysis for the purpose of concluding Schafer Must Go. Literally the only thing I concluded is that most players who light it up their freshman year never significantly improve offensively under this coaching staff.

is union just having a down year or starting to trend back down? we are one over turned goal of being in 3rd place in a down year. i wish we scored more goals too, but im not convinced a new coach brings us any closer to winning an NCAA championship.

BearLover

"The ECAC is weak" argument doesn't fly anymore. The WCHA is dead, long live the WCHA.

Except it is demonstrably weak this year, and the time period from which we're drawing data includes many years during which it was far weaker.

This year, Cornell's strength of schedule is ranked a hearty 16th: Link

The many years you're referring to, back when the ECAC was weaker, was the time we were doing well, from 2003 to 2010 or so. Since then, the ECAC has gotten stronger and we've alternated between pretty good and .500 years.

But this year, we're at .500 with a tough strength of schedule.

BearLover
My thinking may be old and outdated, but the point was regarding teams that are traditionally good almost every year and how Cornell's worst years compare to theirs--which does not require them to be in the top 5 at the moment.

Ooooh, I like a data challenge. Let's do this exercise then.

Worst years since 2000:

        W	L	T	  %
BC	18	18	2	0.500
MICH	18	19	3	0.488
CU	15	16	3	0.485
NODAK	16	19	2	0.459
MINN	17	22	0	0.436
DU	16	23	2	0.415
UNH	12	18	4	0.412
SCSU	14	23	3	0.388
MAINE	13	22	4	0.385
WISC	13	23	4	0.375
MIA	12	22	2	0.361
BU	10	21	4	0.343
MSU	10	23	5	0.329
CC	7	24	6	0.270
ND	5	27	6	0.211
UVM	6	27	1	0.191

So Schafer teams have limited the damage of the down years that EVERY. TEAM. HAS. Red and Jerry are the most successful coaches of this era. Red still hasn't pocketed The Big One since 1997.

MY point: every team goes through cycles of success and failure. How high are the highs and how low are the lows? You're perfectly welcome to say "not high enough." But be careful what you wish for. *ker-plunk*

Union, Yale and Quinnipiac have been better than us over the past few years, while Cornell was clearly the best team in the ECAC for almost a decade before. I'm not sure how you can argue against this. Yes, things change from year to year, but if you asked anyone who the best ECAC team was 8-12 years ago, 100% would say Cornell. Now, no one would.

And that's a fuzzy magnifying glass you're looking through. Late '90s, it was Princeton. Early '00s, Harvard, Clarkson where right with us. Mid '00s, Dartmouth and Colgate. Late '00s, Clarkson & Princeton. Early '10s, Yale & Union. Now we're seeing another transition as Quinnipiac & Colgate (and surprisingly SLU) are the teams we're looking to tangle with. Every team goes through cycles of success and failure. We've been at or near the top pretty much for the duration.

Fact is that we finished lower than 5th once in 15 seasons. Sure, that's in jeopardy again, but we aren't seeing any 6-19-1 seasons.

RichH

BearLover
My thinking may be old and outdated, but the point was regarding teams that are traditionally good almost every year and how Cornell's worst years compare to theirs--which does not require them to be in the top 5 at the moment.

Ooooh, I like a data challenge. Let's do this exercise then.

Worst years since 2000:

        W	L	T	  %
BC	18	18	2	0.500
MICH	18	19	3	0.488
CU	15	16	3	0.485
NODAK	16	19	2	0.459
MINN	17	22	0	0.436
DU	16	23	2	0.415
UNH	12	18	4	0.412
SCSU	14	23	3	0.388
MAINE	13	22	4	0.385
WISC	13	23	4	0.375
MIA	12	22	2	0.361
BU	10	21	4	0.343
MSU	10	23	5	0.329
CC	7	24	6	0.270
ND	5	27	6	0.211
UVM	6	27	1	0.191

So Schafer teams have limited the damage of the down years that EVERY. TEAM. HAS. Red and Jerry are the most successful coaches of this era. Red still hasn't pocketed The Big One since 1997.

MY point: every team goes through cycles of success and failure. How high are the highs and how low are the lows? You're perfectly welcome to say "not high enough." But be careful what you wish for. *ker-plunk*

Union, Yale and Quinnipiac have been better than us over the past few years, while Cornell was clearly the best team in the ECAC for almost a decade before. I'm not sure how you can argue against this. Yes, things change from year to year, but if you asked anyone who the best ECAC team was 8-12 years ago, 100% would say Cornell. Now, no one would.

And that's a fuzzy magnifying glass you're looking through. Late '90s, it was Princeton. Early '00s, Harvard, Clarkson where right with us. Mid '00s, Dartmouth and Colgate. Late '00s, Clarkson & Princeton. Early '10s, Yale & Union. Now we're seeing another transition as Quinnipiac & Colgate (and surprisingly SLU) are the teams we're looking to tangle with. Every team goes through cycles of success and failure. We've been at or near the top pretty much for the duration.

Fact is that we finished lower than 5th once in 15 seasons. Sure, that's in jeopardy again, but we aren't seeing any 6-19-1 seasons.

Awesome work. Very nice.

Dafatone
This year, Cornell's strength of schedule is ranked a hearty 16th: Link

That includes Cornell's out-of-conference play, which has probably been about the most difficult in the country. Yale has the 42nd hardest SOS.

So Schafer teams have limited the damage of the down years that EVERY. TEAM. HAS. Red and Jerry are the most successful coaches of this era. Red still hasn't pocketed The Big One since 1997.

MY point: every team goes through cycles of success and failure. How high are the highs and how low are the lows? You're perfectly welcome to say "not high enough." But be careful what you wish for. *ker-plunk*

Why do you think each team's worst year is a good metric? Why not win %? Why not take into account difficulty of schedule? Moreover, those teams had coach turnover and other issues that Cornell hasn't had. I misspoke when I alluded to "worst years" as a metric of any real importance. What I clearly meant was that Cornell's recent struggles are likely not a flash in the pan. They've not had one mediocre year--they've nearly had five straight.

And I never suggested that Cornell would necessarily be better if they made a coaching change--none of my posts here have suggested any change at all until very recently, and even in those I said Schafer should get at least another year. I am perfectly aware the team could take a turn for the worse--but nearly missing the tournament five times in five years is not going to cut it, and at if this continues I'd think of making a change.

And that's a fuzzy magnifying glass you're looking through. Late '90s, it was Princeton. Early '00s, Harvard, Clarkson where right with us. Mid '00s, Dartmouth and Colgate. Late '00s, Clarkson & Princeton. Early '10s, Yale & Union. Now we're seeing another transition as Quinnipiac & Colgate (and surprisingly SLU) are the teams we're looking to tangle with. Every team goes through cycles of success and failure. We've been at or near the top pretty much for the duration.

Sure, there were teams who were right there with us--but they would only last a few years, and we were always right with them. Cornell was clearly, without any doubt, the best ECAC team of last decade. It wasn't even close. In the past five years Cornell hasn't even been the third best ECAC team. Five years is a long time.

A .500 season is not much better than a .250 season, if at the end of the year Cornell is going home early.

And lastly, we can debate the subjective success of every team until the cows come home. But there is an objective measure by which two teams have definitively passed us by: national championships won. All the .500 seasons in the world aren't going to bring Cornell a championship, and to argue that we are better off than Yale or Union or Quinnipiac because our worst seasons haven't been as bad as theirs (which recently isn't even true), it is undeniable that their best seasons have been better than ours.

BearLover
Why do you think each team's worst year is a good metric?

I didn't say it was. I just researched your exact argument that it was, which I bolded and underlined above. And now you look like you're talking in circles at this point, so don't attack me.

RichH

BearLover
Why do you think each team's worst year is a good metric?

I didn't say it was. I just researched your exact argument that it was, which I bolded and underlined above. And now you look like you're talking in circles at this point, so don't attack me.

I was responding to posts like these:

Again, I feel it needs to be pointed out that our "bad" years are years where we go .500. Plenty of teams would take .500 as a bad year.

You found a sentence (that we should not count a .500 season by Cornell the same as one by BC, etc.) tangentially related to my argument and then ran with it.

There was a guy on LaxPower who tried to make this same argument about JHU lacrosse - just X more goals, Y more groundballs, and Z more faceoffs and they'd be national champs! It was nonsense then, and it's nonsense now. He forgot that while he was asking for small improvements in raw numbers, he was asking for nearly 25% improvements overall. That's not just a little better - that's MILES better.

When margolism asks for "just" one more goal per game, let's not forget that he/she is asking us to increase our offensive output by 53%. That's not just going to happen with one little tweak of recruiting, training, or game planning. That's a huge mountain to climb that will require improvements in *all* of those areas. This is not a case of "we're so close except for this one little thing."

Robb
There was a guy on LaxPower who tried to make this same argument about JHU lacrosse - just X more goals, Y more groundballs, and Z more faceoffs and they'd be national champs! It was nonsense then, and it's nonsense now. He forgot that while he was asking for small improvements in raw numbers, he was asking for nearly 25% improvements overall. That's not just a little better - that's MILES better.

When margolism asks for "just" one more goal per game, let's not forget that he/she is asking us to increase our offensive output by 53%. That's not just going to happen with one little tweak of recruiting, training, or game planning. That's a huge mountain to climb that will require improvements in *all* of those areas. This is not a case of "we're so close except for this one little thing."

This. "One more goal per game" is HUGE. And the difference between a decent goalie (2.75 gaa) and a lights-out goalie (1.75 gaa) is, literally, one more save per game (also huge). Reminds me of this scene from Bull Durham:

[www.youtube.com]

BearLover
And lastly, we can debate the subjective success of every team until the cows come home. But there is an objective measure by which two teams have definitively passed us by: national championships won. All the .500 seasons in the world aren't going to bring Cornell a championship, and to argue that we are better off than Yale or Union or Quinnipiac because our worst seasons haven't been as bad as theirs (which recently isn't even true), it is undeniable that their best seasons have been better than ours.

Cornell still has two banners, which is tied for the most among teams currently in the ECAC. Yale and Union only have one, Quinnipiac has zero. I think the objective measure you're really going for is how many NCAA titles Schafer has won. That removes Harkness from the conversation.

The idea that we were close to having a 5-year NCAA drought is a little off because both 2014 and 2012 could've gone either way. 2012, we got in. 2014, we didn't.

That being said, I think my realistic hope for this team in the regular season is that they average being on the verge of getting into the NCAAs every year with an at-large bid. Right now, that's not happening. 2014 & 2012 hit that objective. 2013 & 2011 have not.

KGR11

BearLover
And lastly, we can debate the subjective success of every team until the cows come home. But there is an objective measure by which two teams have definitively passed us by: national championships won. All the .500 seasons in the world aren't going to bring Cornell a championship, and to argue that we are better off than Yale or Union or Quinnipiac because our worst seasons haven't been as bad as theirs (which recently isn't even true), it is undeniable that their best seasons have been better than ours.

Cornell still has two banners, which is tied for the most among teams currently in the ECAC. Yale and Union only have one, Quinnipiac has zero. I think the objective measure you're really going for is how many NCAA titles Schafer has won. That removes Harkness from the conversation.

The idea that we were close to having a 5-year NCAA drought is a little off because both 2014 and 2012 could've gone either way. 2012, we got in. 2014, we didn't.

That being said, I think my realistic hope for this team in the regular season is that they average being on the verge of getting into the NCAAs every year with an at-large bid. Right now, that's not happening. 2014 & 2012 hit that objective. 2013 & 2011 have not.

I'm a big believer in tournament success being a crapshoot, which is why making the NCAAs is where I set the bar for success.

We're trending downward in that department, but I don't think a five year lull in which we're still right around that bar twice isn't that bad.

I don't know the college hockey coaching scene very well, but I have to imagine we're not as attractive a destination as we'd think for new coaches. Ivy restrictions and fewer games are issues. I worry if we make a coaching change that we'll be worse than we are now for a really long time.

I get frustrated when I read posts stating outright or even just implying that it's time for Schafer to move on or that it soon may be. In my opinion, Coach Schafer has earned the right to coach Cornell as long as he likes, and personally I hope that it's a good, long time longer.

For starters, what makes any of you believe there's anyone out there who could do any better? When I hear Schafer rip into the Quinnipiac coach, defending his players the way he did after that game in Connecticut a couple of months ago I'm not bothered by the fact that Schafer's never going to be elected President of the United States. (He couldn't be anyway. He was born in Canada.) I'm thinking there's a guy who is passionate about his players.

Schafer knows and loves Cornell hockey. I honestly don't believe there is a person out there who would do a better job than Mike as head coach.

andyw2100
I get frustrated when I read posts stating outright or even just implying that it's time for Schafer to move on or that it soon may be. In my opinion, Coach Schafer has earned the right to coach Cornell as long as he likes, and personally I hope that it's a good, long time longer.

For starters, what makes any of you believe there's anyone out there who could do any better? When I hear Schafer rip into the Quinnipiac coach, defending his players the way he did after that game in Connecticut a couple of months ago I'm not bothered by the fact that Schafer's never going to be elected President of the United States. (He couldn't be anyway. He was born in Canada.) I'm thinking there's a guy who is passionate about his players.

Schafer knows and loves Cornell hockey. I honestly don't believe there is a person out there who would do a better job than Mike as head coach.

I understand your perspective. It is held by many. The on ice record is not the only reason to keep or not keep a coach. (Just ask Coach DeLuca). If you honestly believe that Coach Schafer is the best coach we could ever get then so be it. However, we should not have expectations of playing deep into, the NCAA's or even making, the NCAA Tournament on a regular basis. Perhaps we will look back at the last 20 years and suggest that it was the "second golden age" of CU hockey as we long for days gone by.

RichH

ithacat
As the game continues to move in the direction of skill and speed we'll have a difficult time maintaining (or reclaiming) any national relevance.

1) You're suggesting there's no skill in defense, which is a ridiculous statement.

2) It is? Prove it. Union won on the back of a generational d-man. Scoring around the nation's top teams is down even compared to 10 years ago, nevermind the days of the 9-6 shoot-em-ups of the '70s and '80s.

Union won the final weekend by an aggregate score of 12-8. They had the 2nd highest scoring team in the country last year. They also had a great defense, but they won because of offense.

KGR11
Right now, that's not happening. 2014 & 2012 hit that objective. 2013 & 2011 have not.

Motion to outlaw odd-numbered years for the time-being.

BearLover

There was no "analysis" other than a quick demonstration that there was no "aberration" in the non-progress of a group of very skilled freshmen. I'm not sure what you think I was trying to accomplish--it certainly was not some meticulous statistical analysis for the purpose of concluding Schafer Must Go. Literally the only thing I concluded is that most players who light it up their freshman year never significantly improve offensively under this coaching staff.

Or, apparently, under Yale's coaching staff, or likely under any other.

If you aren't trying to slag the current coaching staff, and you're simply pointing out that highly scoring offensive players tend not to improve their point production over a 4 year college career (which is actually what one should expect based on a simple probabilistic scoring model), why do you continue with the "under this coaching staff" or "under Schafer" qualifiers?

RichH
Motion to outlaw odd-numbered years for the time-being.

Denied. I can't afford to get older any faster.

Tom Lento

BearLover

There was no "analysis" other than a quick demonstration that there was no "aberration" in the non-progress of a group of very skilled freshmen. I'm not sure what you think I was trying to accomplish--it certainly was not some meticulous statistical analysis for the purpose of concluding Schafer Must Go. Literally the only thing I concluded is that most players who light it up their freshman year never significantly improve offensively under this coaching staff.

Or, apparently, under Yale's coaching staff, or likely under any other.

If you aren't trying to slag the current coaching staff, and you're simply pointing out that highly scoring offensive players tend not to improve their point production over a 4 year college career (which is actually what one should expect based on a simple probabilistic scoring model), why do you continue with the "under this coaching staff" or "under Schafer" qualifiers?

Because I was replying to someone who said such players typically do develop under this coaching staff?

For your convenience, I've included the initial post here:

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

This post argued our offensive failings were due to the non-development of the senior class, and how "the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era."

I argued that this was no aberration. What is so difficult to understand about that?

What are the "three consecutive years" of "struggling"? Last year they went 17-10-5, got to Lake Placid, and were only dispatched by the eventual national champion. Even so they missed the NCAAs by one slot. That .609 percentage was better than 6 of the 7 seasons immediately prior to Schafer and tied with the other one (18-11-3 in the 1991 season, itself an NCAA year).

2014 only feels like struggling if you think Schafer's best seasons are the team baseline. If a career .320 hitter who has had a few .340 seasons bats .315, that isn't struggling.

RichH

KGR11
Right now, that's not happening. 2014 & 2012 hit that objective. 2013 & 2011 have not.

Motion to outlaw odd-numbered years for the time-being.

BC would probably second the motion.

Rita

RichH

KGR11
Right now, that's not happening. 2014 & 2012 hit that objective. 2013 & 2011 have not.

Motion to outlaw odd-numbered years for the time-being.

BC would probably second the motion.

So would the SF Giants.