Clarkson @ Cornell 03/10-3/12?/17

scoop85
SOG, 32-13

One 3rd period shot on goal for Cornell. Turned out to be enough, but...scary.

much better effort than friday, the 3rd period was dodgy but clarkson got shots but really many quality ones just a bunch or shots thrown in from the blue line.

the two breakways and post shot would have made the last few minutes a bit easier to watch.

at least cut down the odd man breaks and 2-0 attempts this game.

Good luck, gents. A series that could have gone either way, it was a good battle.
Cheers!
Drew

Drew
Good luck, gents. A series that could have gone either way, it was a good battle.
Cheers!
Drew

Sure could have. Thanks for the good wishes. Glad we don't have to play Clarkson again.

Drew
Good luck, gents. A series that could have gone either way, it was a good battle.
Cheers!
Drew

You had 7 freshman skating tonight, right? I would say Clarkson's going to be a team to beat for the next few years, which will be good. Clarkson, Harvard and Cornell should be good. It's right and proper.

Drew
Good luck, gents. A series that could have gone either way, it was a good battle.
Cheers!
Drew

You guys deserved better. Thanks for your geniality and best of luck in the battles to come.

I just want to make clear that i spent a lot of time looking for a gif of Matthew Broderick throwing the milkshake at Reese Witherspoon's boss's car in Election to reply to daredevilcu's post if Clarkson won today.

As for the shot totals, going only by the radio call, Cornell didn't even try to generate offense except as counterpunch breakaways. A dubious strategy until the clock struck zero at which point it became brilliant, then the clock was reset to .9 seconds and then less than a second later it became brilliant again.

Indeed, we have to stop meeting in the quarterfinals.

Heck of a showing from Clarkson.

ugarte
I just want to make clear that i spent a lot of time looking for a gif of Matthew Broderick throwing the milkshake at Reese Witherspoon's boss's car in Election to reply to daredevilcu's post if Clarkson won today.

As for the shot totals, going only by the radio call, Cornell didn't even try to generate offense except as counterpunch breakaways. A dubious strategy until the clock struck zero at which point it became brilliant, then the clock was reset to .9 seconds and then less than a second later it became brilliant again.

Which post?

daredevilcu

ugarte
I just want to make clear that i spent a lot of time looking for a gif of Matthew Broderick throwing the milkshake at Reese Witherspoon's boss's car in Election to reply to daredevilcu's post if Clarkson won today.

Which post?

the one where you said someone threw a water bottle at you in the parking garage after Clarkson won game 2 in 2004

our D and its inability to clear with control of the puck was an issue all weekend.. we would lose control or whiff or not get it up the boards all weekend long..

by far the worst the D has looked in awhile, or at least everytime other teams really went with pressure, which will probably be every game from now one.

upprdeck
our D and its inability to clear with control of the puck was an issue all weekend.. we would lose control or whiff or not get it up the boards all weekend long..

by far the worst the D has looked in awhile, or at least everytime other teams really went with pressure, which will probably be every game from now one.

Smith's absence is quite noticeable. The D is out of whack because of the juggling back there, and while we're doing ok keeping the opposition at bay, our breakout is far less effective.

ugarte

daredevilcu

ugarte
I just want to make clear that i spent a lot of time looking for a gif of Matthew Broderick throwing the milkshake at Reese Witherspoon's boss's car in Election to reply to daredevilcu's post if Clarkson won today.

Which post?

the one where you said someone threw a water bottle at you in the parking garage after Clarkson won game 2 in 2004

Actually, that wasn't me. That was one of the other posters admitting to doing the throwing... But it wasn't at me.

scoop85

upprdeck
our D and its inability to clear with control of the puck was an issue all weekend.. we would lose control or whiff or not get it up the boards all weekend long..

by far the worst the D has looked in awhile, or at least everytime other teams really went with pressure, which will probably be every game from now one.

Smith's absence is quite noticeable. The D is out of whack because of the juggling back there, and while we're doing ok keeping the opposition at bay, our breakout is far less effective.

Smith was invisible in the best possible way on the ice. Smooth on defense and with the puck, rarely out of position.

scoop85

upprdeck
our D and its inability to clear with control of the puck was an issue all weekend.. we would lose control or whiff or not get it up the boards all weekend long..

by far the worst the D has looked in awhile, or at least everytime other teams really went with pressure, which will probably be every game from now one.

Smith's absence is quite noticeable. The D is out of whack because of the juggling back there, and while we're doing ok keeping the opposition at bay, our breakout is far less effective.

The relevant comparison here, in the context of the breakout, is Rauter vs. Smith. I couldn't put my finger on why our breakout has been so terrible, but it's certainly been terrible.

BearLover

scoop85

upprdeck
our D and its inability to clear with control of the puck was an issue all weekend.. we would lose control or whiff or not get it up the boards all weekend long..

by far the worst the D has looked in awhile, or at least everytime other teams really went with pressure, which will probably be every game from now one.

Smith's absence is quite noticeable. The D is out of whack because of the juggling back there, and while we're doing ok keeping the opposition at bay, our breakout is far less effective.

The relevant comparison here, in the context of the breakout, is Rauter vs. Smith. I couldn't put my finger on why our breakout has been so terrible, but it's certainly been terrible.

Also credit to Clarkson, who gave us very little time and space.

upprdeck
our D and its inability to clear with control of the puck was an issue all weekend.. we would lose control or whiff or not get it up the boards all weekend long.

"up but not out" is a phrase I never want to hear again. it was driving me nuts how much trouble we were having getting the puck over the blue line.

I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, but I think you have to give credit to Clarkson's 2-man pep band! They had one snare (or similar) drummer, and one trumpet player, and they actually sounded pretty darn good! I'm guessing the rest of the Clarkson band had hotel reservations for just one night, and drove back home after last night's game. That drummer and trumpet player were dedicated!

andyw2100
I don't think anyone has mentioned this yet, but I think you have to give credit to Clarkson's 2-man pep band! They had one snare (or similar) drummer, and one trumpet player, and they actually sounded pretty darn good! I'm guessing the rest of the Clarkson band had hotel reservations for just one night, and drove back home after last night's game. That drummer and trumpet player were dedicated!

I heard an audible "Knight" during the anthem and I don't think I've heard that (or U) at Lynah on the broadcast before.

ugarte
I heard an audible "Knight" during the anthem and I don't think I've heard that (or U) at Lynah on the broadcast before.

I'm pretty sure Clarkson fans shout "knights."

there was a pretty good number of clarkson fans in section o and many season ticket holders who never showed up at all.

not sure which is struggling more the hockey D breakout or the Lax D against the 10 man ride.

Fortunately, the former is still winning games; somehow.
However, my nervous system is suffering.

BearLover

scoop85

upprdeck
our D and its inability to clear with control of the puck was an issue all weekend.. we would lose control or whiff or not get it up the boards all weekend long..

by far the worst the D has looked in awhile, or at least everytime other teams really went with pressure, which will probably be every game from now one.

Smith's absence is quite noticeable. The D is out of whack because of the juggling back there, and while we're doing ok keeping the opposition at bay, our breakout is far less effective.

The relevant comparison here, in the context of the breakout, is Rauter vs. Smith. I couldn't put my finger on why our breakout has been so terrible, but it's certainly been terrible.

I was at Lynah on Saturday for the 2-1 win. Very impressed with Rauter's poise on defense. He played both defense and forward in 5 on 5, PP and PK situations. That is unbelievably difficult at this level of competition; speaks to his skating ability, puck protection and hockey smarts. Didn't see the Friday or Sunday's games but I think he played a nearly flawless game on Saturday.

RatushnyFan

BearLover

scoop85

upprdeck
our D and its inability to clear with control of the puck was an issue all weekend.. we would lose control or whiff or not get it up the boards all weekend long..

by far the worst the D has looked in awhile, or at least everytime other teams really went with pressure, which will probably be every game from now one.

Smith's absence is quite noticeable. The D is out of whack because of the juggling back there, and while we're doing ok keeping the opposition at bay, our breakout is far less effective.

The relevant comparison here, in the context of the breakout, is Rauter vs. Smith. I couldn't put my finger on why our breakout has been so terrible, but it's certainly been terrible.

I was at Lynah on Saturday for the 2-1 win. Very impressed with Rauter's poise on defense. He played both defense and forward in 5 on 5, PP and PK situations. That is unbelievably difficult at this level of competition; speaks to his skating ability, puck protection and hockey smarts. Didn't see the Friday or Sunday's games but I think he played a nearly flawless game on Saturday.

Agree that Rauter played extremely well, but I think that one problem Saturday was fatigue, especially for the defense. I said at the game that they looked dead. I'd like to see the play times for each player. Does anyone know where to get that? In particular, how much time McCarron logged.

Jim Hyla
I'd like to see the play times for each player. Does anyone know where to get that? In particular, how much time McCarron logged.

I can't find TOI, but check out McCarron's shot attempts on Sunday.

McCarron looked gassed at times on Saturday in the 2nd and 3rd period, some 20-30 second shifts where he was looking to get off. He didn't play poorly, I just think they realized the legs weren't there so keep the shifts short. I've never been able to find TOI for college games. I've trolled and I can't find it.

Best stats I can find are here, where you can get +/- (I still like to see it, though not all that useful in a vacuum), shot and penalty info: http://collegehockeystats.net/1617/schedules/corm

upprdeck
not sure which is struggling more the hockey D breakout or the Lax D against the 10 man ride.

No question the Lax D is worse. And it shouldn't be that hard. Your upfield middies and attack work an over-and-back across the midfield line to pop someone open by using the offsides rule. There's always confusion among the riders as to who goes across, especially if you use some picks. You can also play some games sneaking in and out at the substitution boxes.

Thinking a bit more about this past weekend and how Cornell was fortunate to survive it, I'm starting to worry that Cornell has actually just been really lucky this entire season. Our advanced stats are not good. Meanwhile, the advanced stats of the other teams ranked highly in the PWR are almost universally strong--and in nearly every case better than ours. We've had this debate enough on here, but now we have a full season's sample of games to work with, and Corsi etc. really do seem highly correlated with overall success. Outside of the advanced stats, though, until this past weekend, we've looked pretty consistently good...

No matter how we got here this season is a whole LOT more enjoyable than last season. Now, if Cornell can improve as much again next year . . .

we probably didnt deserve to win, based on the stats, last weekend. but there have been way too many games were we just dominated for 2/3 of the game to think we were lucky the whole season.

upprdeck
we probably didnt deserve to win, based on the stats, last weekend. but there have been way too many games were we just dominated for 2/3 of the game to think we were lucky the whole season.

I think we generally over-achieved this season. That's obviously a lot better than under-achieving and we saw plenty of that a few years ago.

You have to think that the defense is getting close to worn out. I posted before that it certainly looked like that was at least part of the problem in the third period of the third game. I suspect they actually did better trying to defend in their zone, rather than getting caught out of position and with no legs, further up the ice.

The defense reminded me some of Schafer's first 2 seasons, 96 & 97, when he won ECAC titles. The strategy then seemed to be, get ahead and ride defense and good goaltending to wins. I wouldn't be unhappy to see that again.

You also wonder what could have been, if we had not lost so many, especially Bliss, on defense.

I'm salivating at the thought of having all our defensemen healthy. Who would you even scratch out of mccarron, wedman, bliss, Smith, kaldis, mccrea, and nuttle?

Dafatone
I'm salivating at the thought of having all our defensemen healthy. Who would you even scratch out of mccarron, wedman, bliss, Smith, kaldis, mccrea, and nuttle?

Graduation will scratch McCarron.

you start to get tired when you cant get the puck cleared and you cant get a forecheck giong either. We got the puck in deep like 1 period in 3 games and dominated that period..

We were chasing the play a lot of the time, which usually means tiredness. Rauter though -- my God, talk about rising to a challenge.

Al DeFlorio

Dafatone
I'm salivating at the thought of having all our defensemen healthy. Who would you even scratch out of mccarron, wedman, bliss, Smith, kaldis, mccrea, and nuttle?

Graduation will scratch McCarron.

Yeah. I meant in an injury-free fantasy world.

Still, that's a very solid six to begin with next year.

Dafatone

Al DeFlorio

Dafatone
I'm salivating at the thought of having all our defensemen healthy. Who would you even scratch out of mccarron, wedman, bliss, Smith, kaldis, mccrea, and nuttle?

Graduation will scratch McCarron.

Yeah. I meant in an injury-free fantasy world.

Still, that's a very solid six to begin with next year.

This is assuming Bliss' injury isn't career threatening.

Smith / Kaldis / McCrae is a solid core for the defense and they'll all be here for two more full seasons. Add that we're deep enough on forward to be rolling four decent lines right now, and the big question mark is going to be goaltending.

Trotsky

Dafatone

Al DeFlorio

Dafatone
I'm salivating at the thought of having all our defensemen healthy. Who would you even scratch out of mccarron, wedman, bliss, Smith, kaldis, mccrea, and nuttle?

Graduation will scratch McCarron.

Yeah. I meant in an injury-free fantasy world.

Still, that's a very solid six to begin with next year.

This is assuming Bliss' injury isn't career threatening.

Smith / Kaldis / McCrae is a solid core for the defense and they'll all be here for two more full seasons. Add that we're deep enough on forward to be rolling four decent lines right now, and the big question mark is going to be goaltending.

I thought I heard that he dropped out of school to retain eligibility for 2 more years. Anyone got more data?

Chasing the puck is more tiring than passing the puck. On the bright side, chasing the puck is fine conditioning for both your defensive and offensive players. After the Clarkson series Cornell skaters should be in magnificent skating condition.

BearLover
Thinking a bit more about this past weekend and how Cornell was fortunate to survive it, I'm starting to worry that Cornell has actually just been really lucky this entire season. Our advanced stats are not good. Meanwhile, the advanced stats of the other teams ranked highly in the PWR are almost universally strong--and in nearly every case better than ours. We've had this debate enough on here, but now we have a full season's sample of games to work with, and Corsi etc. really do seem highly correlated with overall success. Outside of the advanced stats, though, until this past weekend, we've looked pretty consistently good...

My theory on advanced stats is that they (at least, corsi/Fenwick) don't factor in shooting accuracy or goalie play. On the NHL level, where everyone can shoot accurately and all goalies are at least very good, this is less of an issue. But we've seen some Cornell teams that can't put the puck on net (oh, Cole bardreau, if only you could shoot) much at all.

A few legit snipers and a very good goalie make a big difference.

Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

Dafatone
Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

The Edmands/Fawcett years were indeed a sight to behold.

Trotsky

Dafatone
Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

The Edmands/Fawcett years were indeed a sight to behold.

Edmands/Fawcett. I started throwing up at the mention. Different world then. As great as Dadswell was, he routinely allowed 3-4 goals. Of course Edmands/Fawcett routinely allowed 5-6.

arugula

Trotsky

Dafatone
Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

The Edmands/Fawcett years were indeed a sight to behold.

Edmands/Fawcett. I started throwing up at the mention. Different world then. As great as Dadswell was, he routinely allowed 3-4 goals. Of course Edmands/Fawcett routinely allowed 5-6.

Two goals in particular define the Edmands/Fawcett era for me. One was a high hop from the red line with nobody around that went through the wickets. The other was a deflection that went straight up, eldued the rafters, and plunked off the back of the goalie's head and into his net. He never saw it. Dadswell ("But Mom's Terrific" ) showed the difference a great goalie can make all by his lonesome.

1985 save percentage:

.898 Dadswell
.847 Fawcett
.804 Edmands

Dafatone

BearLover
Thinking a bit more about this past weekend and how Cornell was fortunate to survive it, I'm starting to worry that Cornell has actually just been really lucky this entire season. Our advanced stats are not good. Meanwhile, the advanced stats of the other teams ranked highly in the PWR are almost universally strong--and in nearly every case better than ours. We've had this debate enough on here, but now we have a full season's sample of games to work with, and Corsi etc. really do seem highly correlated with overall success. Outside of the advanced stats, though, until this past weekend, we've looked pretty consistently good...

My theory on advanced stats is that they (at least, corsi/Fenwick) don't factor in shooting accuracy or goalie play. On the NHL level, where everyone can shoot accurately and all goalies are at least very good, this is less of an issue. But we've seen some Cornell teams that can't put the puck on net (oh, Cole bardreau, if only you could shoot) much at all.

A few legit snipers and a very good goalie make a big difference.

Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

Yes, but shooting accuracy (something Cornell has never particularly excelled at) and goalie play (Gillam's save % is actually lower/the same as most other top teams' goalies) can't account for the (pretty big) disparity between Cornell's advanced stats and those of basically all the other teams around them in the PWR. That's not to say Gillam hasn't been very good--he probably saved us last weekend--but if we were truly limiting other teams' chances to shots from outside that Gillam can see, this would be reflected in an exceptional save %, instead of just a very good one.

True. Funny though that the .898 sp that made Dadswell a life saver then, would have him playing in DIII now. Just a completely different game. My senior year, Nieuwendyk averaged two points a game. Crazy.

My sense from last weekend was that we were in survival mode and the team played very tight against an aggressive team that was not a great match-up for us. My expectation is that we'll play better on Friday, which of course doesn't guarantee a win against a very good team.

BearLover

Dafatone

BearLover
Thinking a bit more about this past weekend and how Cornell was fortunate to survive it, I'm starting to worry that Cornell has actually just been really lucky this entire season. Our advanced stats are not good. Meanwhile, the advanced stats of the other teams ranked highly in the PWR are almost universally strong--and in nearly every case better than ours. We've had this debate enough on here, but now we have a full season's sample of games to work with, and Corsi etc. really do seem highly correlated with overall success. Outside of the advanced stats, though, until this past weekend, we've looked pretty consistently good...

My theory on advanced stats is that they (at least, corsi/Fenwick) don't factor in shooting accuracy or goalie play. On the NHL level, where everyone can shoot accurately and all goalies are at least very good, this is less of an issue. But we've seen some Cornell teams that can't put the puck on net (oh, Cole bardreau, if only you could shoot) much at all.

A few legit snipers and a very good goalie make a big difference.

Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

Yes, but shooting accuracy (something Cornell has never particularly excelled at) and goalie play (Gillam's save % is actually lower/the same as most other top teams' goalies) can't account for the (pretty big) disparity between Cornell's advanced stats and those of basically all the other teams around them in the PWR. That's not to say Gillam hasn't been very good--he probably saved us last weekend--but if we were truly limiting other teams' chances to shots from outside that Gillam can see, this would be reflected in a truly exceptional save %, instead of just a very good one.

Of course, Gillam might really be an average or above-average collegiate goaltender in terms of individual ability, in which case a very good save % would still be the result of limiting chances to low percentage shots. This doesn't change your point about the disparity in possession metrics but it does make a difference in how you view Cornell's chances of repeating these outcomes given a similar quality goaltender.

Personally, and as always based strictly on numbers, I suspect Cornell's record this season is on the lucky end - even if you allow for more systematic variance in advanced metrics in the college game such extreme outliers are always suspicious. How lucky has this season been, and how likely is Cornell to regress to the mean vs elevating its baseline, are the real questions. On the one hand, game to game Cornell has almost certainly been lucky to win as often as they have given the possession numbers. On the other hand, so many defensive injuries can really alter a team's play. It might very well be that with a healthy D the possession numbers would've been a lot better for this team, so their luck might've just balanced things out. No way to know, really, but hopefully we get to find out with a healthy team next year, and hopefully that team starts controlling possession to such an extent that they just win all of their games. Hey, I can hope, right?

Anyway, I got curious, so I looked up the advanced metrics for the last 3 years (all CHN has) - this year's team put up by far the highest PDO of the three - 103 even strength, 104.25 close. This is the strongest stats-based argument for the "this team was really lucky" position. For reference, last year's team - same goaltender and a lot of the same scorers - put up a 101.26 and 102 close PDO. Two years ago it was just below 98.4 even strength and 97.4 close, although of course the scoring personnel was quite different. Either this team has some kind of magical mix of NCAA-beating talent and execution in terms of scoring/save efficiency, or we should expect a PDO closer to 100 and a record more reflective of possession numbers next year. The smart money is on the latter - it's just hard to imagine a team that is so efficient when they have the puck and so effective at containing high quality scoring chances and yet does not control overall relative shot totals.

Tom Lento

BearLover

Dafatone

BearLover
Thinking a bit more about this past weekend and how Cornell was fortunate to survive it, I'm starting to worry that Cornell has actually just been really lucky this entire season. Our advanced stats are not good. Meanwhile, the advanced stats of the other teams ranked highly in the PWR are almost universally strong--and in nearly every case better than ours. We've had this debate enough on here, but now we have a full season's sample of games to work with, and Corsi etc. really do seem highly correlated with overall success. Outside of the advanced stats, though, until this past weekend, we've looked pretty consistently good...

My theory on advanced stats is that they (at least, corsi/Fenwick) don't factor in shooting accuracy or goalie play. On the NHL level, where everyone can shoot accurately and all goalies are at least very good, this is less of an issue. But we've seen some Cornell teams that can't put the puck on net (oh, Cole bardreau, if only you could shoot) much at all.

A few legit snipers and a very good goalie make a big difference.

Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

Yes, but shooting accuracy (something Cornell has never particularly excelled at) and goalie play (Gillam's save % is actually lower/the same as most other top teams' goalies) can't account for the (pretty big) disparity between Cornell's advanced stats and those of basically all the other teams around them in the PWR. That's not to say Gillam hasn't been very good--he probably saved us last weekend--but if we were truly limiting other teams' chances to shots from outside that Gillam can see, this would be reflected in a truly exceptional save %, instead of just a very good one.

Of course, Gillam might really be an average or above-average collegiate goaltender in terms of individual ability, in which case a very good save % would still be the result of limiting chances to low percentage shots. This doesn't change your point about the disparity in possession metrics but it does make a difference in how you view Cornell's chances of repeating these outcomes given a similar quality goaltender.

Personally, and as always based strictly on numbers, I suspect Cornell's record this season is on the lucky end - even if you allow for more systematic variance in advanced metrics in the college game such extreme outliers are always suspicious. How lucky has this season been, and how likely is Cornell to regress to the mean vs elevating its baseline, are the real questions. On the one hand, game to game Cornell has almost certainly been lucky to win as often as they have given the possession numbers. On the other hand, so many defensive injuries can really alter a team's play. It might very well be that with a healthy D the possession numbers would've been a lot better for this team, so their luck might've just balanced things out. No way to know, really, but hopefully we get to find out with a healthy team next year, and hopefully that team starts controlling possession to such an extent that they just win all of their games. Hey, I can hope, right?

Anyway, I got curious, so I looked up the advanced metrics for the last 3 years (all CHN has) - this year's team put up by far the highest PDO of the three - 103 even strength, 104.25 close. This is the strongest stats-based argument for the "this team was really lucky" position. For reference, last year's team - same goaltender and a lot of the same scorers - put up a 101.26 and 102 close PDO. Two years ago it was just below 98.4 even strength and 97.4 close, although of course the scoring personnel was quite different. Either this team has some kind of magical mix of NCAA-beating talent and execution in terms of scoring/save efficiency, or we should expect a PDO closer to 100 and a record more reflective of possession numbers next year. The smart money is on the latter - it's just hard to imagine a team that is so efficient when they have the puck and so effective at containing high quality scoring chances and yet does not control overall relative shot totals.

This is a great post.

how do the metrics rate puck control and how do they even capture it? is someone reporting it for the teams?

does it measure control in one end versus the other?

the stats seems to point to the last 2 years being pretty close stats wise, yet in person this team was much better to the eye test

Tom Lento

BearLover

Dafatone

BearLover
Thinking a bit more about this past weekend and how Cornell was fortunate to survive it, I'm starting to worry that Cornell has actually just been really lucky this entire season. Our advanced stats are not good. Meanwhile, the advanced stats of the other teams ranked highly in the PWR are almost universally strong--and in nearly every case better than ours. We've had this debate enough on here, but now we have a full season's sample of games to work with, and Corsi etc. really do seem highly correlated with overall success. Outside of the advanced stats, though, until this past weekend, we've looked pretty consistently good...

My theory on advanced stats is that they (at least, corsi/Fenwick) don't factor in shooting accuracy or goalie play. On the NHL level, where everyone can shoot accurately and all goalies are at least very good, this is less of an issue. But we've seen some Cornell teams that can't put the puck on net (oh, Cole bardreau, if only you could shoot) much at all.

A few legit snipers and a very good goalie make a big difference.

Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

Yes, but shooting accuracy (something Cornell has never particularly excelled at) and goalie play (Gillam's save % is actually lower/the same as most other top teams' goalies) can't account for the (pretty big) disparity between Cornell's advanced stats and those of basically all the other teams around them in the PWR. That's not to say Gillam hasn't been very good--he probably saved us last weekend--but if we were truly limiting other teams' chances to shots from outside that Gillam can see, this would be reflected in a truly exceptional save %, instead of just a very good one.

Of course, Gillam might really be an average or above-average collegiate goaltender in terms of individual ability, in which case a very good save % would still be the result of limiting chances to low percentage shots. This doesn't change your point about the disparity in possession metrics but it does make a difference in how you view Cornell's chances of repeating these outcomes given a similar quality goaltender.

Personally, and as always based strictly on numbers, I suspect Cornell's record this season is on the lucky end - even if you allow for more systematic variance in advanced metrics in the college game such extreme outliers are always suspicious. How lucky has this season been, and how likely is Cornell to regress to the mean vs elevating its baseline, are the real questions. On the one hand, game to game Cornell has almost certainly been lucky to win as often as they have given the possession numbers. On the other hand, so many defensive injuries can really alter a team's play. It might very well be that with a healthy D the possession numbers would've been a lot better for this team, so their luck might've just balanced things out. No way to know, really, but hopefully we get to find out with a healthy team next year, and hopefully that team starts controlling possession to such an extent that they just win all of their games. Hey, I can hope, right?

Anyway, I got curious, so I looked up the advanced metrics for the last 3 years (all CHN has) - this year's team put up by far the highest PDO of the three - 103 even strength, 104.25 close. This is the strongest stats-based argument for the "this team was really lucky" position. For reference, last year's team - same goaltender and a lot of the same scorers - put up a 101.26 and 102 close PDO. Two years ago it was just below 98.4 even strength and 97.4 close, although of course the scoring personnel was quite different. Either this team has some kind of magical mix of NCAA-beating talent and execution in terms of scoring/save efficiency, or we should expect a PDO closer to 100 and a record more reflective of possession numbers next year. The smart money is on the latter - it's just hard to imagine a team that is so efficient when they have the puck and so effective at containing high quality scoring chances and yet does not control overall relative shot totals.

The strongest argument against "this team was really lucky" is this easily to understand metric we're overlooking (ECAC stats):

       2015-16      2016-17
GPG      2.09         3.18
GAPG     2.27         2.32

Yes, I agree, higher-possession teams are more likely to be good. But we increased our ECAC scoring by over a full GPG. Over the course of a 22 game schedule, that's more than luck. That's a young group of forwards developing and building on their skills and adapting to the college game more. Most of our top scorers increased their output by nearly 2x. We're getting the puck in the net better than we were able to last season. We went from 10th in the league in scoring to 3rd, while remaining at the top in team defense.

Most interesting in the stats I looked at is that we're far and away the highest scoring team in the 1st period, and near the bottom in the 3rd.

We don't have to worry about Vigneault next year, as he signed with Columbus after this his Junior season

Always lots of credit or blame ascribed to goalkeepers, offensive units, defensive units, individual players, even FANS (?!)- but NEVER a mention of good or bad coaching or game plans. Coaches do make a difference. I'll bet statistics prove this.

Hooking
Always lots of credit or blame ascribed to goalkeepers, offensive units, defensive units, individual players, even LUCKY SHIRTS (?!)- but NEVER a mention of good or bad coaching or game plans. Coaches do make a difference. I'll bet statistics prove this.

FYP

RichH

Tom Lento

BearLover

Dafatone

BearLover
Thinking a bit more about this past weekend and how Cornell was fortunate to survive it, I'm starting to worry that Cornell has actually just been really lucky this entire season. Our advanced stats are not good. Meanwhile, the advanced stats of the other teams ranked highly in the PWR are almost universally strong--and in nearly every case better than ours. We've had this debate enough on here, but now we have a full season's sample of games to work with, and Corsi etc. really do seem highly correlated with overall success. Outside of the advanced stats, though, until this past weekend, we've looked pretty consistently good...

My theory on advanced stats is that they (at least, corsi/Fenwick) don't factor in shooting accuracy or goalie play. On the NHL level, where everyone can shoot accurately and all goalies are at least very good, this is less of an issue. But we've seen some Cornell teams that can't put the puck on net (oh, Cole bardreau, if only you could shoot) much at all.

A few legit snipers and a very good goalie make a big difference.

Then again, I haven't seen a single Cornell season without a good goalie (freshman scrivens / Davenport would probably be the low point), so it's hard to compare.

Yes, but shooting accuracy (something Cornell has never particularly excelled at) and goalie play (Gillam's save % is actually lower/the same as most other top teams' goalies) can't account for the (pretty big) disparity between Cornell's advanced stats and those of basically all the other teams around them in the PWR. That's not to say Gillam hasn't been very good--he probably saved us last weekend--but if we were truly limiting other teams' chances to shots from outside that Gillam can see, this would be reflected in a truly exceptional save %, instead of just a very good one.

Of course, Gillam might really be an average or above-average collegiate goaltender in terms of individual ability, in which case a very good save % would still be the result of limiting chances to low percentage shots. This doesn't change your point about the disparity in possession metrics but it does make a difference in how you view Cornell's chances of repeating these outcomes given a similar quality goaltender.

Personally, and as always based strictly on numbers, I suspect Cornell's record this season is on the lucky end - even if you allow for more systematic variance in advanced metrics in the college game such extreme outliers are always suspicious. How lucky has this season been, and how likely is Cornell to regress to the mean vs elevating its baseline, are the real questions. On the one hand, game to game Cornell has almost certainly been lucky to win as often as they have given the possession numbers. On the other hand, so many defensive injuries can really alter a team's play. It might very well be that with a healthy D the possession numbers would've been a lot better for this team, so their luck might've just balanced things out. No way to know, really, but hopefully we get to find out with a healthy team next year, and hopefully that team starts controlling possession to such an extent that they just win all of their games. Hey, I can hope, right?

Anyway, I got curious, so I looked up the advanced metrics for the last 3 years (all CHN has) - this year's team put up by far the highest PDO of the three - 103 even strength, 104.25 close. This is the strongest stats-based argument for the "this team was really lucky" position. For reference, last year's team - same goaltender and a lot of the same scorers - put up a 101.26 and 102 close PDO. Two years ago it was just below 98.4 even strength and 97.4 close, although of course the scoring personnel was quite different. Either this team has some kind of magical mix of NCAA-beating talent and execution in terms of scoring/save efficiency, or we should expect a PDO closer to 100 and a record more reflective of possession numbers next year. The smart money is on the latter - it's just hard to imagine a team that is so efficient when they have the puck and so effective at containing high quality scoring chances and yet does not control overall relative shot totals.

The strongest argument against "this team was really lucky" is this easily to understand metric we're overlooking (ECAC stats):

       2015-16      2016-17
GPG      2.09         3.18
GAPG     2.27         2.32

Yes, I agree, higher-possession teams are more likely to be good. But we increased our ECAC scoring by over a full GPG. Over the course of a 22 game schedule, that's more than luck. That's a young group of forwards developing and building on their skills and adapting to the college game more. Most of our top scorers increased their output by nearly 2x. We're getting the puck in the net better than we were able to last season. We went from 10th in the league in scoring to 3rd, while remaining at the top in team defense.

Most interesting in the stats I looked at is that we're far and away the highest scoring team in the 1st period, and near the bottom in the 3rd.

I'm not saying it's all luck, I'm saying I'd expect GFA to come down next year unless the possession metrics improve. The tl,dr; of the below is that goals for is an inherently high variance metric just because of the relative rarity of goal scoring events, and therefore I don't expect it to be all that useful as a predictor of future success.

Let's look at the full season, just for the sake of completeness:

       2015-16      2016-17
GPG      2.32         2.97
GAPG     2.41         2.18

One of the problems with the current crop of metrics in hockey is they require huge game samples to really be meaningful. That doesn't mean the metrics are not valuable, it just means you have to adjust your expectations for how much you can assert about a team's performance based on any of this, particularly in the college game. Team goal scoring across seasons is especially bad as a predictive metric since goals are relatively rare events.

Your 22 game goals for/goals against sample is, of course, meaningful as a description of past results, and I'm not going to deny that Cornell has had a marvelous season - I've thoroughly enjoyed following it on paper. However, the question was about whether or not Cornell can sustain this win rate, and I don't think looking at GFA tells us all that much given the sample size. Think about it - the difference between last season and this amounts to 22 goals over 34 games. 22 positive outcomes which are affected by a large number of factors, some of which are effectively random. Consider - this season, Cornell had 150 PP chances in 33 games compared with 97 in 34 games last season, and picked up 9 of those 22 goals on the PP despite a slightly lower conversion rate. Incidentally, that is another potentially interesting stat. Is Cornell drawing more penalties due to systemic improvements (i.e., forcing teams to take penalties or generally wearing them down such that they're behind the play) or is this just a lucky fluke? I have no idea.

Anyhow, here's a little sample size/variance illustration with an advanced metric. Consider PDO, which is save % plus shooting %. It tends to be 100 on a team level in the NHL, and although I haven't done real diligence, in my spot checking it seems to follow a similar trend in the college game. 22 games is about 1/4 of an NHL season. Why is that important? Because of the first table in this article: [www.pensburgh.com]

You can see pretty extreme outlier behavior over an approximately 20 game sample, even in a league where the team level talent distribution is likely to be narrower than the college game. Those outliers tend to pull back towards the mean over the course of a larger sample of subsequent games. But - and this is important - PDO is measured across a much, much larger number of events than goals scored. The variance is naturally smaller, and yet you still see a lot of team-level variation over fairly substantial samples of games played.

Back to Cornell and goals scored this year: PDO + corsi doesn't tell you everything, because PDO is based on shots on goal and corsi is based on shot attempts. In Cornell's case, that's important - from eyeballing the shot metrics on CHN, it looks like Cornell's goal scoring increase over last year comes from both more shots on goal (927 of 1710 attempts vs 890 of 1762 attempts) and a higher shooting % (10.5 vs 8.9).

Based on what we know about shooting percentage (via PDO, which in Cornell's case amounts to the same thing - team save % has been just about .920 for each of the last three years) we should expect the latter to come down. Doesn't mean it will - maybe the current crop of forwards have a preternatural ability to convert shots into goals, or maybe they're just a lot better than most at finding the spaces where high shooting percentages happen - but most likely that will regress to the mean.

The shots on goal rate, that I don't know anything about, and that, to me, is the most interesting thing I'm seeing in Cornell's scoring increase. Is shots on goal as a fraction of total shot attempts something a team can reliably control, or is that also subject to a lot of random variance? Anybody know? Intuitively one would think it's more of a controllable thing than shot conversion, but I don't know.

The first vs third period effect you mention is also somewhat interesting. One possible explanation is fatigue, but another could be game score effects. If Cornell often carries a multi-goal lead into the third period we should expect fewer shots for and more shots against with, on average, a corresponding shift in goal scoring. I don't know if this is true because a) I don't care to do that tallying and b) I don't know what constitutes "often" anyway. One simple thing you could do to dig in is look at GF/GA in the third period conditioned on game state - if Cornell tends to score more when losing entering the third and less when leading, that'd be a good indication of strategic shifts rather than fatigue as the explanation for the goal scoring shift.

Disclaimer - I am not an advanced hockey stats expert and I'm actually not fully convinced by all of them - particularly PDO, which is just as ad hoc and nutty as OPS in baseball, although the latter has turned out to be very robust and the analyses I've seen of the former are promising. That said, they've been pretty useful to me in understanding how the team has been playing in the absence of the ability to actually watch games. I do know a bit about measuring probabilistic outcomes, so that's where most of my assertions around metric quality come from, but those assertions are based on general knowledge rather than domain specific expertise.