eLynah: good show

eLynah has been a great leisure time pursuit these past few months. An incredible time sink, too, and probably responsible for the falloff in my personal productivity recently.

Thank you to everyone who makes eLynah tick.

Thanks to the ticket forum readers who helped me scrounge tickets for the Princeton / Yale weekend so I could bring my boys to see Cornell play at home. (The boys thought the Cornell cheering section at Princeton was impressive until they saw the Lynah cheering section - well, the whole rink, actually.) And thanks to the people who sent me pager scores the past couple weekends when I couldn't be in front of the webcam broadcasts.

I wish the generally civil tone of eLynah was even more extensive but as a mentor (back before people called them mentors) once told me, "There are more horses asses out there than horses." I wish eLynah was one more thing recruiters could show recruits' families as evidence of the support for Cornell hockey by generally sane people with civil tongues. NFW that's going to happen.

I think we all suspected this year was going to be a letdown from last year. Our faint hopes were damped by the fall troubles at home. There was that incredible one-game offensive spike on the road in November when Ryan Vesce was involved in every one one of our 7 goals in the shutout at Princeton. Our optimism probably crested at the Everblades tournament when Hornby slipped in the winner in overtime of the title game, probably the high point of the year. The January troubles made it clear that Cornell was not going to be a top ten team this year, at least not top ten for winning consistency. We were lucky to have David McKee waiting in the wings and continue the tradition of incredible goaltending. Even as Cornell couldn't find the nets on attack, the string of games where we gave up 0, 1 or 2 goals made it possible to believe that on any given night with a few lucky bounces on attack, we could bring down any team in the nation. I believe that had we made the NCAAs, Cornell would have been the team a North Dakota or BC or Maine or other #1 seed would least want to see in the first round. If not the NCAA champion this year that we could have been last year, we could have been a giant killer.

I'm looking forward to next year. Losing Vesce is tough, but it's nothing like the departures from the NCAA title team (almost) of last year. The most important returnee is the coach. At the time Mike would have been only 6, but Schafer is the one Ned Harkness should have handed the reigns to in 1970.

Bill Howard '74

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

...Our optimism probably crested at the Everblades tournament when Hornby slipped in the winner in overtime of the title game, probably the high point of the year... [/Q]

The last 3 weeks of the regular season, capped by the St. Lawrence / Clarkson sweep was a close second, if not the high point for me. After the rough January, we found our form. Sweep at Vermont/Dartmouth, revenge on RPI, sweep of Yale/Princeton... Then, coming into the final weekend, we showed our mettle and won two critical games, earning us a bye week and almost winning the RS title. And in the process, also earned a share of the Ivy League crown. Incredible!

We can't forgot the two victories over Harvard this year either!

[Q]Chris 02 Wrote:

We can't forgot the two victories over Harvard this year either! [/Q]

True. 10 years ago that itself would make the season a success.

[Q]KenP Wrote:

The last 3 weeks of the regular season, capped by the St. Lawrence / Clarkson sweep was a close second, if not the high point for me. After the rough January, we found our form. Sweep at Vermont/Dartmouth, revenge on RPI, sweep of Yale/Princeton... Then, coming into the final weekend, we showed our mettle and won two critical games, earning us a bye week and almost winning the RS title. And in the process, also earned a share of the Ivy League crown. Incredible!
[/Q]

Even with a 7-1 record, February was a bittersweet month. Exclude for a minute the Union game and we gave up, in order:

2 goals allowed
0
1
1
1
(Union game ignored - for now)
1
1

which is a 1.00GAA for Cornell. But unfortunately you can't exclude one game that's inconvenient to the Red story line. There's the 1-0 loss at Union thrown in there, registered as a 3-0 loss in the scorebooks because you have to count the two empty-netters at the end. Had Cornell gone 8-0 in February including, say, a 2-1 victory over Union (Vesce healthy, Vesce injured, Vesce hurt but playing, you'd think it possible to put two shots into the Union nets), we would have finished atop the ECAC standings, gotten into the Top Ten and maybe top eight in the polls, had incredible momentum behind us going into the playoffs, and had we not won the ECAC playoffs but at least made it to Albany, probably would have been a likely candidate for an at-large berth. And maybe, maybe with a bit of luck, we would have made it past the first game of the NCAA playoffs, at which point it's just one win short of a trip to the final four. And anything can happen in a one-game series, as we found out this past Sunday.

Ain't it fun to play what-if?