CU troubles in Overtime

Any thoughts as to why we have so much trouble in overtime (N. Michigan, Dartmouth, Hahvahd...)? I sat thinking on Saturday that our physical style would wear down Hahvahd, but by the end it seemed only a matter of time before they scored since they controlled it so much. We seem to do most of our scoring now in the 2nd period, oddly enough...

Stewart

I know that there will be some who disagree with me on this one. . .but I am of the opinion that the big rink gave them time to simply skate around our checks. It happened all night long and was blantly apparent in the overtimes. They were fast and man they could flat out skate. Ironically our size tired out the wrong team, in the end they just had more legs.

which leads to a humble question: how big is the ice in worchester?

I would think it should be close to the normal 200' x 85' (or somewhere in that vicinity). I could be wrong. . .

The Worcester (pronounced locally as Wus'-tah) Centrum has standard 200x85 ice.

I don't think it was so much that they were skating around Cornell's checks as that there were no checks to skate around. The D was giving the Harvard forwards plenty of room and not backchecking, probably because of Harvard's speed. If the D tries to take the body and misses, that gives the forward a free ride to the goal. What was irritating was when Harvard would enter the Cornell zone on a 2 on 3 and the extra Cornell player back would give the Harvard guys enough room to pitch a tent. Let the D play it safe and have the other guy hit the bloody guy with the puck, right? *shrug*

Yep, Age is dead on all the way.

Harvard began the game having a similar problem (I'm watching the tape now), and their solution was to use a forward as a swing man, following the play back into the defensive zone and covering the puck carrier like a cheap suit.

The Red really were tentative -- this doesn't look like lack of drive, but more of a conscious tactical decision (the vaunted "positional" play). Well, in chess the trouble with pure positional play is you wind up missing combinations that lead to captures and advantageous exchanges. I guess the same thing happened Saturday.

The best thing about Mike, however, is that he will figure out exactly what needs to be changed to create a working system. I have *no* idea what style QU plays, but if we should get to the QF, the UNH game looks like another "size v. speed" game, and the team will be ready.

Greg, I don't have a great hockey mind like most of you here so I would like to know how it works--why wouldn't the coaching adjusment get made sooner? At LP I thought every break between periods would bring the adjustment to challenging circumstances, and it never seemed to happen....wouldn't you think they saw what we saw? Was it a failure to adjust game plan or failure to execute, do you think?

I havent' seen a great hockey mind here yet.

I think we did see adjustments going on by both teams during the final. I think part of the effectiveness problem was that while Cornell would have liked to have shifted to a more aggressive style as the game went on, they were also losing their legs and unable to play the big hitting game for all the reasons pointed out above (abandoning coverage, getting beaten going back, etc).

If we could do it over again, I'm pretty sure Cornell would come out taking the body and beating the crap out of the Crimson, and I think we'll see that this weekend. It's been a successful style and there's no indication that it can't neutralize speed. It may be even more effective to balance that attack with small darters that stretch the defense and cut down an overzealous opposing forecheck, but you dance with the girl what brung ya. (Betcha we see some guys of that ilk magically appear in the next few recruiting classes, however -- the Abbotts may be a start).