Cornell presence at Thursday's game

How many folks will be in Placid Thursday for the RPI-Dartmouth game? I plan to don all my Cornell paraphenalia and go sit with the RPI fans.

Pre-game, some of us will be meeting at Mr. Mike's pizza on Main Street. (Best pizza I've had in Lake Placid.) We haven't fixed on a time, but since it's a 7:30 game, 5:30 should be plenty early. (I want to be there for the start of warmups in case I get the urge to heckle Boucher for being a safety sieve. )

Unfortunately, some of us (myself and 4 others included) will be still in sunny Ithaca on Thursday night taking prelims. But have no doubt, we will be there on Friday.

you can count judy and i in - as long as no deer have anything to say about it!

this is going to be a REALLY interesting week-end!

am thinking that sporting cornell stuff and sitting with RPI thurdsay to show support is in fact superb idea. LGR!

We will be there, but maybe not early enough to eat with you. I'm sure we can find you somehow.

you can count judy and i in - as long as no deer have anything to say about it!

screw the deer. it didn't stop us last year...

and GO RED! (by this I mean, RPI on Thursday, Cornell the rest of the days)

am thinking that sporting cornell stuff and sitting with RPI thurdsay to show support is in fact superb idea.

NO!!! As long as my team is still playing, I can't and won't show support to any other team, especially to R-P-frickin-I. Frankly, the only thing I'll be rooting for on Thursday is a game that goes 26 overtimes and beats the hell out of the team that advances to play Cornell.

Also, just because we have 2 wins against them this year, doesn't mean that RPI is the less dangerous team. In fact, I'd argue that RPI is the 2nd hottest team in the league right now, brimming with confidence after having felt they were robbed vs. Cornell, and the subsequent destruction of Colgate and Princeton.

I've heard "I just don't wanna see Dartmouth in the playoffs" so many times since January it's old. Well, that's tough, because they're one win away from it, so we better be ready. If we can't beat them, we don't deserve to move on. Dartmouth has had a weird season. Go look at the game recaps on uscho for their wins since January. Here are some snippets:
They scored three times in the last four minutes to beat RPI.
They scored three goals in 6 shots vs. Union to win.
They beat us with 1 minute left in OT.
They were down with 2 minutes left vs. Colgate and won in regulation
In the first QF game, they let Colgate score the go-ahead goal with 44 seconds remaining, and then tied it with 15 seconds to force OT (and they won in the 2nd OT).

Dangerous, sure. Explosive, possibly. But all this came in the 3rd period, which shows they have a habit of getting down by the 3rd. I'll take Cornell over anyone when given the task of locking down a 3rd period lead. They played 6-7-4 since January in the regular season, including 5 losses and 2 ties to teams not even in the playoffs anymore (not to mention a loss to Vermont earlier in the year). Gaudet seems like he doesn't know what to do with his goaltending situation. As is with most teams in the ECAC, flip 2 of their miraculous wins I listed above, and they missed the playoffs.

You can play the "Dartmouth has our number" card all you want. Looking at that team I see a chance for revenge, and a less confident team. We've gotta be able to beat everyone to win.

And how stupid would we look to root for a team Thursday only to get beat by that same team the next night? ugh. I'm rooting for nobody but Cornell.

I agree that RPI is just as dangerous, if not moreso, than Dartmouth. I think Cornell matches up a little bit better with RPI in terms of skaters, but Marsters is generally better than anyone Dartmouth has in net. Of course, if Dartmouth wins the PIG and Gaudet goes with Boucher, all bets are off - it'll either be impossible to score or Boucher will give up 2 soft goals early and get yanked. He's had that kind of a season.

As for other factors - assuming a Cornell win in the SF RPI is the better opponent for ranking purposes. Of course, assuming a Cornell win in the SF isn't really safe.

Bottom line, and as I think everyone here knows - it makes absolutely no difference who wins the PIG. If Cornell loses, it'll hurt badly. If Cornell wins, nobody will really care much.

I think Cornell fans should root for Dartmouth just because nobody else will.

In the last 24 hours, thinking about placid, i have come to the conclusion that it rally doesn't matter who plays cornell on friday. i feel confident that cornell can beat either team if they come out and put their best foot forward. yet, i still intend to cheer on RPI on thursaday. i have 2 reasons. 1) i wanna see that jerk Boucher go home ASAP and 2) I want to have the opportunity (note: i am not saying we will DEFINITELY win if we play RPI) to watch RPI eat thier words (whatever they actually were) about RPI being able to beat cornell.

Thus, LGR!

As long as my team is still playing, I can't and won't show support to any other team,

Amen Rich.

What Keith said. Fly 'em in pizzas from Canton, but don't cheer for 'em.

Screw RPI, THE SUCK! Screw Dartmouth, THEY SWALLOW! As far as I'm concerned, we've got a bone to pick with either one of these two pretenders, I feel a need for vengence on both of them, I cannot actively route for either one. I know anything can happen in a single elimination tournament, but that aside if we cannot beat either of those two teams in our own playoff tournament when we're seeded #1 we don't deserve to move on to the NCAAs.

Cheers to everyone who made it already or will make it eventually to Placid. LET'S GO RED, LET'S GO RED, LET'S GO RED, LET'S GO RED...

I've never understood this concept of cheering for an opposing school because they'll cheer for us in return. There is one team to cheer for - they wear Carnelian and White. All others are something lower than pond scum and should be treated as such.

CU in Lake Placid (Section 12, row M). LGR!!!

Jeff, if your post is in response to John Whelan's initial post, I don't see where he's stating that he's going to cheer for RPI in the hopes that their fans will reciprocate in kind. In fact, most of the posts here assume that John was going to sit with RPI as a some sign of allegiance --maybe he just wants to have fun ticking off some opposing fans and figures that he can get under the skin of the RPI fans with his Cornell paraphernalia more readily than the Dartmouth fans. (Ok, that's a stretch, since it struck me as well that John was saying that he planned to root for RPI given his Boucher-safety sieve comment.)

Also, I generally don't go so far as to actively cheer for another team, but I certainly will pull --and even be vocal about it-- for other teams when the results benefit my team. Saturday at Lynah, each time the Brown-Harvard score was announced I yelled out "Come on, Brown!"

Pulling for another team because it helps Cornell's situation isn't rooting for them, it's rooting for Cornell.

The only good time to really root for another team is durnig the NCAAs when it's perfectly acceptable to root for an ECAC squad. But then again that's essentially rooting for Cornell too - you want our conference to win because it makes us look better.

add another reason. I don't want to hear Dartmouth's "pep band" any more than necessary

good reason. RPI's band is decent, unlike the horrible Dartmouth one. There's also the fact that I like some of the RPI fans....

Realistically, if Cornell can't win at LP I hope that Clarkson or RPI do. I don't intend on being vocal about cheering RPI on during the game, but I'd be lying if I said tha I didn't want to see Dartmouth leaving before the friday games.

So then by your definition, Keith, is it OK to root for Clarkson ( ) against Harvard because playing Clarkson in the final is better for our NCAA selection criteria?

Actually, I have a complicated set of allegiances that kick in when Cornell doesn't have a direct interest in a game, and just about all of them tell me I'd like to see RPI beat Dartmouth (and Clarkson beat Harvard). Just look at the 2000 title game, where Cornell fans pulled for RPI and Colgate fans for SLU, for purely emotional reasons.

Sure, it's then OK to pull for Clarkson. But then again, maybe you think it would be easier to beat Harvard the way they've played down the stretch and certainly increasing Cornell's chances of winning the Final is more important than increasing our RPI/TUC.

Basically, I'm not really rooting for anything except Cornell wins in the ECAC tournament and am rooting for things that help us in the other tournaments (e.g. Lowell, NMU and UAF losing).

...and that's really the Catch-22 here. Say Team A is awaiting the winner of a game between Team B and Team C. Team C is very evenly matched with Team A...very close in the standings to one another, both bubble teams for an NCAA at-large bid, but Team C beat team A twice during the regular season with 2 OT wins. Team B is just plain horrible and Team A and everyone in the league has had their way with them all season. Nationally ranked #1 Team D is lurking in the other bracket and is 27-2-0 on the season...it's just assumed they will easily win the tournament final.

You are a fan of Team A. Who do you pull for in the Team B-Team C game? A win against Team C would pretty much lock up an at-large bid. But you have just as much of a chance of Team C ending your season. Should Team B put together a Belarus-like upset of Team C, Team A has a decent chance of an easy ride into the Finals to face Team D. But a win vs. Team B actually hurts your chances of an at-large bid due to wacky things happening in other conferences, and your only hope would be to upset Team D for the auto-bid.

Let's make our current, real-life situation more clear-cut. Say it's next year, and all 12 ECAC teams are in. Instead of Dartmouth, say that RPI is playing UVM for the right to play Cornell (UVM was #11 and had a 9-point season...Cornell already advanced to the final FOUR, and the RPI-UVM series went to a 3rd game). Who do you pull for?

Easy. Cornell.