goalies

ok, not to reintroduce a 'controversy' that isn't really there (and forget about the argument about who is better), but what does everyone see as the advantages/disadvantages of both going with the current goalie system (underhill friday/leneveu saturday) versus schafer switching to playing one on a more consistent basis at this point in the season for the home stretch (in prep. for the playoffs?), seeing as how they are both playing amazingly? (or maybe this is a pointless discussion-if it ain't broke, don't fix it--the team as a whole is holding opponents to an incredible GAA, so why make individual changes?)

i sometimes wonder how it would be if one played a significantly larger share of the games--i'd guess we'd see a lot more individual accolades for them on a weekly basis (and maybe even for the season-say, if leneveu played the whole way through he could be ROTY). clearly though, this is secondary to the team success-im sure either of them would trade in individual accolades or playing time for a chance to play in the NCAAs...

Maybe they'll continue playing every other night...including the playoffs. They obviously perform well on the current schedule, and having a fresh goalie for every playoff game wouldn't hurt. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this happens. It's not a lack of confidence in either goalie, it's an overwhelming amount of confidence in both goalies.

Right now I think it'd be hard to bench either guy based on their performances. If I were coach I think I'd stick with the rotation as long as neither guy shows any signs of slipping.

Harvard won a national championship alternating goalies right through the Final Four.

The Big Red netminding duo is responsible for 4 out of the 9 shut-outs in the ECAC so far this season.

To allow one to play regularly might cause the other to get rusty. The current system seems fine.

Since there's really nothing to add to this thread, I mean if it aint broke. . .don't fix it! It's that simple. Not a bad set of circumstances to have to deal with, two of the top five goalies in the nation on the same bench. On a lighter note, at this weekends Brown game, section A was quite creative in their jeers of Yann Danis. He is from Quebec and therefore his native language is French, so they yelled at him in french (seems obvious) but boy did they get into his head and it was more than amusing. During intermissions, their locker room door was ajar and these hecklers had the Brown assistant coaches laughing so hard at one point they had to leave the locker room. Oh well, I don't feel so bad about wrecking a nice French Canadian goalie when I know we have one of the best on our roster.


LGR!!!!

from the cornell athletics web site:

Big Red in the News: Cornell was recently featured by TSN Magazine and USCHO with columns highlighting the Cornell-Harvard game. The Dec. 31 issue of U.S. College Hockey Magazine also included a two-page feature on Big Red netminder Matt Underhill. Look for a feature on Cornell goalies Dave LeNeveu and Underhill coming soon on USCHO and for a Big Red story on NHL.com's "On Campus" feature section (www.nhl.com). Locally, the Ithaca Journal (www.ithacajournal.com) is also set to run a goalie feature.

has anyone seen that uschm feature on underhill?

wow! it's amazing to see all the national attention the team is suddenly getting. it's a great source of pride.

[www.uscho.com]

A column about the goaltending "woes" that Cornell is facing.

The cheers at Cornell in general tend to get everybody laughing. In the closing minutes of the Brown game on Saturday night, when the "This team is the winning team" "This team is the losing team" cheer got going, the linesman whom was about to drop the puck near the Brown bench after an offsides, could not keep from smiling about that one.

LGR!!!

Boy, is anyone else getting tired of that picture of Undy from his freshman year? (Especially since it's in the USCHO banner at the top of the page)

Dude. Only you would every notice that....

I went and looked and sure enough, you are right. 3rd guy from the right is Undy, with the Cornell photoshopped off his jersey.

Just noticed USCHO has a new poll on the most impressive freshman. LeNeveu is second behind Sean Collins early in the voting.

> Boy, is anyone else getting tired of that picture of Undy from his freshman year? (Especially since it's in the USCHO banner at the top of the page)

No more than of that pic of Schafer from his days as an assistant coach, which still surfaces every once in a while in stories on the wire.

Personally, I think they should use his pic from the cover of the '86 Media Guide. He looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy in a Cornell sweater.

Age - can you supply a URL for that poll, please? I'm having trouble finding it. Thanks!

Beeeej

It's on the main uscho.com page in the lower righthand corner.

Thanks! That'll teach me to make a search more complicated than it needs to be. :-{)}

Beeeej

> ...I think they should use his pic from the cover of the '86 Media Guide. He looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy in a Cornell sweater.

)

Greg, I don't know if it's the same picture or not, but I have the '83 media guide -- with what is definitely Schafer as a freshman. It is exactly as you describe! (And it's exactly how I've thought of that picture for the last 19 years!)

(Freshman Schafer is introduced to the Cornell community as: "...a steady performer who adds winning habits to the Big Red..." (I think we could classify that one as an understatement...)).

Coach answers the rotation question - sort of - in Friday's Sun. Though he doesn't say which way it'll go.......


I'm fairly certain it'll be Undy seeing that there isn't that much difference between his and Lenny's numbers and this is Undy's last year. Any opinions? Preferences? Undy seems to want that ECAC title bad! After coming close so many times I really hope that he gets the opportunity!

In other words, tie goes to the Senior?

Incidentally, the article states that we clinch the playoffs with a sweep this weekend. Actually, all we need is one point to clinch the postseason. (Tim Danehey summed it up best: since there are 132 total games in the ECAC season, the only way a team with 24 points can end up in 11th place is if the 12th place team has 0 points.)

Maybe Tim Danehey summed it up too much. How does he figure the math? (Not that I don't believe you, just curious.)

Well, I won't try that math this early in the morning, but a quick look a John's Nutshell page shows that a Cornell sweep clinches at least 7th place for the Red (guarantees finishing ahead of UVM, brown, Yale, Princeton and either RPI/SLU). If the bounces go right we could actually wrap up home ice by Sunday (though I'd rather see Clarkson lose to Union I think).

Math is correct. 132 games, so 264 pts.

Only possible way for 24 pts to be 11th is if only one team has less than 24, and 24x11 = 264 so must be an 11-way tie for 1st (and 11th)...but not possible since nobody has 0 pts....so 24 pts must finish in top 10.


I think that because the Vermont has 7 pts already, I think this means that the worst Cornell can do is finish in a 7 way tie for 5th-11th, and I will yield to someone with way more time than I have to determine if that is possible....and if we could lose that tiebreak.

Gosh, after 18 years, I finally put those Math major skills to work....I guess it was all worth it.

I haven't done the math, but it may still be that Cornell has already technically clinched a playoff berth because of the further effects of the bottom teams' playing one another down the stretch. It may not be possible for the final points among the top 11 teams to distribute evenly enough that all finish over 23. (Then again, it may.) The question is whether there is a scenario that awards:

Brown 13 pts
RPI 12
Princeton, SLU, and Yale 11
etc...

My intuition is that there is not: the accumulation of n-1 of those outcomes will render the nth impossible.

These interference effects get ignored all the time in the wildcard races in baseball and hockey. Teams generally fall out of the wildcard race two or more games before the newspapers recognize that they are statistically eliminated, because games between the teams that they must overtake are not sufficiently considered.

In a related story, Cornell has already clinched a playoff berth in 2002-03.

Tim worked it out; there are combinations of results in which we lose a 10-way tie breaker for 2nd-11th place.

> In a related story, Cornell has already clinched a playoff berth in 2002-03.

Hilarious and disgusting at the same time, Greg...

)

Greg Berge wrote:

In a related story, Cornell has already clinched a playoff berth in 2002-03.

Wow, sounds like something a BC fan would say.

Thanks to Cam McCormick's "off night" last night (he allowed 3 goals in a tie game), the Big Red's David LeNeveu is -- at least for the moment -- the NUMBER ONE GOALIE IN THE NATION! (The margin is as close as it gets -- 1.45 to 1.46).

Let's hope he can hang on to that distinction in the wake of tonight's action! Congrats, Lenny!

(Incidentally, Michigan State's Ryan Miller posted his nation-leading 7th(!!) shut-out this season with a 39-save blanking of Notre Dame last night. He now has an incredible 25 SO's in his career -- and he's only a junior...)

It's relatively easy to demonstrate that a team hasn't clinched a playoff berth. Tim provided a specific example of a combination of results that would have put Cornell in 11th after the tiebreakers.

Of course Cornell has clinched the playoffs now.

I hope I'm asking this question on behalf of the others who don't know but don't have the guts to ask. But if I'm just stupid, please humor me anyway?

How have we already secured a playoff berth for next season, and what does that mean? Does good performance this season mean that even if we're 11th or 12th next season we'll still get to be in playoffs? That just doesn't sound right...

ECAC is moving to a new playoff format next year.

All 12 teams qualify for the playoffs.

"Under the new format, all 12 teams will qualify for the playoffs and the top four finishers will earn a bye past the first round. Teams five through eight will host a first-round series against the bottom four teams.

The winners of those series will then be reseeded to travel to the bye teams in the quarterfinals, resulting in a four-team bracket at Lake Placid."

A) All 12 teams in the playoffs is bush league.
B) Are the quarterfinals still best of 3?

The first two rounds (bottom 8; reseeded top 8) are supposed to be best of three. It would make sense for revenue -- but that's a *lot* of games potentially (a bottom 4 team could play up to 8 ECAC playoff games alone).

All 12 making it is bogus, but it's better than the PIG (5/4 play in game on Thursday at Placid). This also means that the top 8 teams will host playoff series each year, which is good for spreading playoff interest among fans.

The other great thing about the new format, for we old fogies, is that it returns the emphasis on finishing in the top 4 slots. There's something elegant about the rewards being distributed in discrete quantities by third of league: Bye; Home; Away. The things to shoot for are simpler, hence better defined and more substantial.

Now if we added Mercyhurst, Niagara, Quinnipiac and UConn, and let 12 teams out of 16 in, there would be four four-team blocks. Of course it wouldn't be long before they tried to let all 16 teams in.

Agree that dividing into thirds makes great sense: Home, Away, Goodbye.

Amen, Al!

Getting back to goalies, if the weekend results continue, I predict Underhill for the playoffs.

I think it's been clear for a number of weeks now that if Schafer ever decided to go to one for the stretch run or playoffs it would be Underhill.

LeNeveu would have to do something pretty damn special to unseat a senior goaltender who's top 5 in the nation. Come to think of it, #1 in the nation is "pretty damn special," but obviously Underhill has by no means lost his right to the home stretch and playoffs.

Mike Schafer has stated publicly that he has decided to go with one goaltender in the playoffs; he just hasn't revealed to the press which one he'll choose.