ELynah Forum

Quote from: Scersk '97

Quote from: HockeyMan

Quote from: BearLover

Quote from: Scersk '97

Quote from: BearLoverNonetheless, it's official: Yale is better than Cornell at hockey right now.  I don't mean this current team, I mean the entire current program.  They've now been doing this for an extended period of time, despite losing players to graduation, with a great system that Cornell can't ever beat.

So... "extended period of time" = 6 years?  Troll, or too young to understand time?

The more accurate statement would be that Yale is better than Harvard right now, i.e., that they've replaced Harvard as the second-best Ivy.

Nope, they replaced Cornell as the best Ivy.  Six years is forever in sports, and more than enough to show their success is more than one great player or a lucky recruiting class.  Love the talking down to on these forums, though.  It seems like I've been accused of being a troll or an idiot quite a few times in the past few days when it's been obvious I haven't been trolling and I've supported my arguments perfectly well.

Agree.  Yale is the better program right now, no question, and the casual way people are tossing out the trolling accusation is silly and annoying in equal measure. Quite apart from the results, I much prefer Allain's brand of hockey to Schafer's, but I've also thought Yale has been flat out the better team during recent years.  And it's been impressive to watch Yale not merely beat Minnesota and NoDak but hang with them, stride for stride, check for check. I would argue Schafer has some built-in recruiting advantages vis-a-vis Allain (the storied tradition, Lynah, the Ag School, the alumni support), but they're not translating into supremacy on the ice.

I saw nothing "reasoned" about BearLover's assertion, made in the manner of an overheated schoolboy, that Yale's program is "better," whatever that means, than ours is right now.  Where is the support?  Feel free to be pedantic.

I'll help you.  Use Allain's tenure, since you love him so.  We're 4-10-2 vs. them, with two very high profile losses.  They've won 2 ECAC championships; we've won one.  They've "won" two #1 seeds; we've won none.  (But then, the RS "championship" is worth a warm bucket of piss.)

Have they had our number lately?  Yes.  Are they unbeatable, no.  Just show some perspective.  For my part, I'm beginning to be... worried.  Come back to me when we haven't beaten them in the regular season for 10 years or so.  Come back to me when they've been in the final four multiple times, particularly if they win a championship.  Come back to me in, well, three years or so.  Then we'll have a discussion.

They've had the best of us, lately.  So what?  It probably won't last.

A tad defensive, aren't we? Who said anything about Yale being unbeatable? We've won now and then against them in recent years, and we'll continue to do so; what's that got to with the issue at hand? When you say you don't want to have a discussion until after we go 0 for 20 against them in the RS in the next decade, you sound like, well, an overheated schoolboy.

Quote from: BearLover

Quote from: Scersk '97

Quote from: BearLoverNonetheless, it's official: Yale is better than Cornell at hockey right now.  I don't mean this current team, I mean the entire current program.  They've now been doing this for an extended period of time, despite losing players to graduation, with a great system that Cornell can't ever beat.

So... "extended period of time" = 6 years?  Troll, or too young to understand time?

The more accurate statement would be that Yale is better than Harvard right now, i.e., that they've replaced Harvard as the second-best Ivy.

Nope, they replaced Cornell as the best Ivy.  Six years is forever in sports, and more than enough to show their success is more than one great player or a lucky recruiting class.  Love the talking down to on these forums, though.  It seems like I've been accused of being a troll or an idiot quite a few times in the past few days when it's been obvious I haven't been trolling and I've supported my arguments perfectly well.

Agree.  Yale is the better program right now, no question, and the casual way people are tossing out the trolling accusation is silly and annoying in equal measure. Quite apart from the results, I much prefer Allain's brand of hockey to Schafer's, but I've also thought Yale has been flat out the better team during recent years.  And it's been impressive to watch Yale not merely beat Minnesota and NoDak but hang with them, stride for stride, check for check. I would argue Schafer has some built-in recruiting advantages vis-a-vis Allain (the storied tradition, Lynah, the Ag School, the alumni support), but they're not translating into supremacy on the ice.

Quote from: Jordan 04It's no worse than a 1-0 loss.

Oh yes it is.  A riduclous display.  Embarrassing shot totals, and a complete lack of discipline.

Quote from: TrotskyThe only certainty is whenever we lose three straight 10% of the fan base goes on suicide watch.  Relax.  We will win another game in our history.

What is the point of a post like this? Should we not be engaging in critical analysis of the team and its performances?

Postgame threads not what they used to be.  Could we have a fuller recap, please, from someone who was there? Flyersgolf?

It's like clockwork, the defensiveness vis a vis Schafer on this board.  He's clearly had success as a coach here; no one would suggest otherwise.  I for one hope he sticks around a good long while, even if I don't love his brand of hockey. He graduates players who are solid in the fundamentals of the game, and that's no small thing. But surely we can allow honest criticism when that's called for, no?  I've been faithfully in my seat in section L most games this season, and what I see is a mediocre team, lacking creativity and a scoring touch up front and prone to defensive lapses, with a so-so freshman class and not a great deal going on among the upperclassmen.  True, Cornell can't hope to compete with the big scholarship schools in recruiting blue-chippers, but the Yale game made painfully clear that there's a talent gap also with fellow non-scholarship schools.  This gap may be temporary, or not, but it's there.

As for the game itself, a reasonably comfortable win against an undersized and struggling UAH team. Not to much to say, really. I continue to like D'Agostino's play, and I thought Esposito showed a lot.  Good to see Kennedy get a nice goal, off a lovely feed by Gotovets. I was happy to see Jillson playing and moving pretty well. Crowd was a bit on the small side, and somewhat subdued.

Huge thanks to Mitch and Elie for your terrific columns in the Sun--and your massive contributions to this board.  Not the least of your contributions has been your willingness to make tough judgments and ask challenging questions when need be, while always embracing, as Elie puts it, "the magic of Cornell hockey." All the best to you both. Stay in touch.

Quote from: Tom LentoNo no no no no. A thousand times no. Everything you claim the "coaches don't say" is flat wrong. It's a system that depends on footwork, positioning, beating the other team to the puck, and maintaining possession in the offensive zone. If you fail to maintain possession in the offensive zone, you have superior defensive zone play and excellent goaltending to fall back on, so you always keep the games close and you can eke out wins even when you're not executing in the offensive end or when you're just getting beat by superior talent. The failings of recent teams have not been the system, which is why I think a lot of the complaints are invalid - they're based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what Cornell (men's) hockey has been about for the past 15 years.

These are schoolmarmish banalities trying hard to be profundities.  Perfectly obvious points, and entirely in keeping with the core assertion: Schafer's system is a defensively-oriented system that depends to a greater extent than others on superior goaltending.

Quote from: Tom LentoYou, and others complaining about the system and clamoring for these mythical "faster skill players" who will suddenly materialize and carry Cornell to a title, are confusing a relative lack of offensive talent with a failing of the system. In 2003 Cornell had 4 d-men with excellent offensive skills in Cook, Downs, Murray, and McRae. I can't think of any blueliner on this year's team (or any Cornell team since Pokulok left) who could compare with Murray or McRae in that department, and there were maybe one or two as good as Cook and Downs. I haven't even mentioned Travis Bell yet, and he was also solid with the puck. In 2003 Cornell had 4 full lines of forwards who were positionally *amazing* at both ends of the ice, with 2 or 3 legitimately great college power forwards, not to mention a guy who was superb at putting the puck in the net from the top of the crease, a playmaker who's had a few cups of coffee in the NHL despite being 5'8" on skates, and a rookie named Matt Moulson who's got nearly 30 goals in the NHL this year. This year's team basically had one line that matched up well with the 2003 squad. Not to take anything away from this year's team, because I've been impressed with the way the third and fourth line have played, but they just didn't have the offensive depth of the 2003 team.

Please.  No one's saying these players should "suddenly materialize and carry Cornell to the title."  The question, rather, is whether under the current system such players are likely to materialize over the short and medium term and with regularity.  Maybe they can't under any circumstances (though let's not exaggerate CU's recruiting weakness in this regard: this is a storied program, with a superb fan base and a great venue and sterling academics), but that's another question.  And let's not exaggerate the offensive prowess of Downs and Cook, shall we?  As for your last sentence, well...yes.  But perhaps 2003 was an outlier.

Quote from: Tom LentoThe system in 2003 wasn't any different than it is today. It's not the system. It isn't even the recruiting, and I doubt it's the coaching. It's the fact that a team full of national championship caliber players only comes around every so often even at the top programs, and at a place like Cornell the stars align far less frequently precisely because the Big Red *can't get* top line talent. You covet Yale's forwards, but Yale can't get top line talent either, and they will never be able to consistently compete for a national title with their current approach. They will always come up against a team built just like them, but with better and faster players, and they'll lose badly because they'll have no defensive presence to fall back on when they come up against that faster team.

Now you're getting interesting.  Agreed, the stars will align less frequently here and at Yale than they do at NoDak or Wisconsin.  Top-line talent will be harder to come by.  (This suggests, btw, that Ivy teams are consistently overranked nationally.  If they get too little respect in men's BB, maybe they got too much in hockey.)  The question then becomes whether Allain's system is likely to be more successful than Schafer's.  Time will tell.

As we all know, and as the three Red coaches note proudly in interviews every chance they get, the Schafer system begins and ends with defense. The mantra: take care of things in your own zone and good things will follow at the other end.  That's fine, and indeed unassailable on some level. But what the coaches don't say is that it's a system that depends on superior goaltending, and on eking out close wins in low-scoring games.  The margins are very tight.  If your goalie is having an off night, and if your (already limited) offense is sputtering, you're in trouble.  

This team accomplished a lot this season, but I saw tonight what I also saw against NoDak (notwithstanding the Game 1 win) and against BU (even with the tie) and against Yale: that CU lacks scoring punch and is vulnerable against fast teams that dominate the neutral zone.  True, in a one-off playoff game anything can happen, and the Red could ride a hot goaltender and some lucky bounces all the way to the Frozen Four and beyond.  I think this is what Lobo means when he says that Schafer has gamed the system--such an approach would never work if playoff college hockey consisted of best-of-seven series where might generally wins out.  But even in college hockey it's a risky approach.  This team just doesn't have that extra gear that the best clubs have.  

Maybe that's too much to ask for, and we should be, as Tom Lento says, "satisfied with what we've got right now."  A fair point.  But that doesn't make the complaint any less valid.

Quote from: rediceI'm a great admirer of Mike & the job that his coaching staff does at CU.    But, I feel strongly that he cost his team a victory by going into a defensive shell for the whole third period.    I spotted it in the first two minutes.   And, the shell lasted until the end of the period.   Granted, there were penalties to kill.   But,at even strength, there seemed no urgency to forecheck.  If they had spent more time in the BU end, which they seemed quite capable of doing, BU doesn't get so many shot or goals.   And, maybe we're not scrambling and taking penalties in the defensive zone.  When the OT started, CU applied the offensive pressure that was missing for most of the third.

Agreed. I told someone in the second intermission that I feared Schafer would have them go into a shell in the third.  It's not a new approach for this team, after all.

BU is a very good team. Judging by last night, if we played them in a best-of-seven, they win 4 games to 1. As Elie notes, they moved the puck around beautifully on the PP, and could easily have had two or three more goals.

Faceoffs were pretty even overall, but for long stretches in the second half of the game we seemed to lose all the key ones.

Only one tiny addendum to redice's comment. The penalty that really stands out in my mind came in the offensive zone, late in the third...

Quote from: CUontheslopesThe Greening penalty was legitimate. It could've been called as a 2 min minor, but I didn't have a problem with the call. It was a LOUD, hard hit and the QU player sold the call well. A lot of the other calls, however, I thought were very questionable at best. We seem to have this problem against smaller teams all the time. They seem to get away with lots of clutching, grabbing and interference, but when we hit someone, we get whistled. The elbowing call on Birch was a perfect example. Birch had 5" plus on the guy he hit, so the hit was more to the shoulders than the midsection, but the ref calls contact to the head/elbowing. Overall, I thought it was one of the most poorly officiated games I've seen in a long time at Lynah.

The end of the game was refreshing. Cornell started playing Cornell hockey. Bodies were flying all over the place. We were hitting and hitting HARD. We used our size to wear down QU and really started to turn the play in our favor. If Cornell's going to win, it's going to be because they hit harder and beat daylight out of the opposition. In the last few years, that hasn't been happening. If you go back to the better teams from the last decade, there are two things that stand out - outstanding special teams and physical dominance of the opposition. When we use our size and get rough, we do to the other team what their speed often does to us. We make them play our game. That's what we did against Princeton and what we did at the end of the game. Love to see that more.

OVerall, I wasn't too upset with last night's game. It just was not our night. We hit a post, we had our captain tossed, we had a goal scored with 00 showing on the clock. I think we can figure QU out in a rematch. I kept thinking how much we missed Greening on the PP at the end of the game. I think if he's in the game, we win or tie. He makes everyone around him better.

Fair enough re Greening, but from where I was sitting it looked to me like a 2 min minor at best.  And yes, some of the other calls were highly dubious (including the makeup call on Q after Greening was sent off, which made me think the refs too wondered about the earlier call, or at least about the rule as written).

Agree with your other comments.  I would only say that by my count we hit three posts, not one (including on a great effort by, yes, B.Nash, when he joined the rush in the second period and beat Clarke high on the near side). We also missed a couple of open nets.  As Jones said, the team came out flat in the first, but the effort in the third was nice to see.  I really had a feeling we would tie it in those final frantic minutes.

Quote from: Jim Hyla

Quote from: ebilmes

QuoteNot to focus on B.Nash again,...

Then why are you?::help::Yeah he screwed up. But you're, meaning all the B. Nash critics not just you, a lot harder on him than others on the team. I wasn't able to see Greening's penalty, but he does have a history of some dumb penalties, remember last year. If that penalty was for real, it had a much greater impact than anything B. Nash did. However no one bad mouths Greening for that. All we do is say how important he is. If he's so important, and I do believe he is, then that should be the focus of our disappointment, not Nash. Or if you want to, talk about the dumb plays (penalties) R. Nash takes. He had a slash that could have put us 2 men down, if it was called. My point is that when we are off, it's generally everyone's fault; so why is B. Nash always brought up?

Oh geez, here we go again.  B.Nash gets brought up because he keeps making mistakes that a player of his natural ability and his experience should not make.  Period, end of story. Last night he and Whitney had huge problems dealing with the Q forechecking--I thought they were clearly our least dependable pairing.  On Friday night Schafer could be easily seen chewing B.Nash out for icing the puck unnecessarily, and last night Schafer again shook his head when Nash tried a two-line pass that was way too hard and off the ice and resulted in another icing. So we're hardly alone in complaining about his decision-making.  It's baffling why you keep objecting like this.  And please, don't reply that coach keep using him and therefore must know better; nobody is claiming that he's unimportant to the team or that he doesn't have great natural skills.

Quote from: nr53There's a thread over on the hockeysfuture.com board about Lindstrom saying that Murray should be invited to play on the Swedish Olympics team. Seems like fairly good praise though I haven't read the article they reference since I don't read Swedish...

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=703785

The article says that Lidstrom wants Murray on the team for his hard-nosed, physical play, which, Lidstrom stresses, is especially valuable on the smaller North American ice surface.  He says Murray is a very tough competitor, hard to play against, and he notes that Murray and Holmstrom have had some tough battles when the Sharks and Wings play.  It's an "un-Swedish" style play, the article says, mentioning Murray's crushing hit on the Russian Morozov at the '08 world championships that led to a one-game suspension.  "I would never say no" to playing in the Olympics, Murray is quoted as saying by phone from St. Louis. "It's always been a dream to play on the national team ever since I was small."

Quote from: billhowardOur 4-2 loss at Yale (including the ENG) was a game either team could have won. It's not frustrating like last year against Yale, where you didn't have as much hope the next encounter would turn out in Cornell's favor. This time, you've got to like Cornell's chances in a rematch. We've got to solve the little defensive miscues such as giving up the home run pass and maybe have Scrivens fitted for distance glasses. Yale's faster, we're bigger and tougher. Greening and Nash are playing on a different level from most of the rest of the league.

So, Ben Scrivens misplayed - misjudged the trajectory of? - a soft shot from the blue line. It shouldn't have happened but statistically it's going to happen to a good goalie every couple years. We beat Harvard once in OT where it was a hard dump-in shot from outside the blue line.

We were not sharp at least in this regard: On the attack, lots of Cornell passes back to the point, and Yale's attempted clears, dribbled past our guys and into the neutral zone, including on power play. At the other end, Yale was impressive in the ability of the defensemen to be in the right place to get to attempted Cornell clears and keep them in the attacking zone.

If there was an unstar of the game, it was either the seniors / first power play line that couldn't get it done late in the game, or the coach who went with them too much, too long, and without enough rest, and since they didn't score his judgment didn't look sound, whereas as if we had scored, he'd have been the wily genius again. (Greening was part of the PP unit that didn't get the job done late, but he certainly did in the first with the goal (PP) and assist.) On the 5x3 for three minutes in the third, the first line had been out for the 1-up PP part for a minute, Schafer pulled them when the second penalty was called, then took the 60-second timeout before the faceoof, and you had to wonder how much gas was left in their tanks after a 90-second breather. It also seemed that the PP unit was in the 2008-2009 mode of diddling around to set up the perfect shot knowing we had three long minutes here. Yale gets credit for a pretty vigorous 5x4 and 5x3 defense, too, holding us to 1x6.

The Family Nash was a two-man crime wave in New Haven with half our eight penalties. When you saw Riley wheel around and lash out at the Yale player with his stick in the third to draw the follow-on (double) minor, you knew Riley was the victim of an uncalled penalty. The refs saw the Nash retaliation only (penalty #1), and once Riley understood only he was going away for 2, in frustration ("stupid" would be a good word, too) made the mark of Zorro on his opponent, and so got called for a slash as well (it's a cross check on the scoresheet). He lost a $200 graphite stick in the process when it shattered and maybe some respect for not playing smart hockey. (Easy to say when you're not the victim.) I thought he was going to be gone for the game. Maybe the referees, pooling their collective wisdom, realized the only reason Nash went bonkers was because of something they messed up and didn't want to toss him.

Maybe our tiredness also led to that too-many-men called against Cornell midway through the third. Yale took some stupid penalties, too, to wipe out PP advantages and to go two men down. There was an amazingly boneheaded play by Yale's Tom Dignard, 30 seconds into a Yale PP, with the score at 2-2 late in the second, in the attacking zone, where he took about five steps directly at a Cornell player (and got off a nice hit, I must confess, more of less lifting him off hs feet), but it was a charge nobody at Yale argued.  

The stats had the first period shots 22-8 in Yale's favor. They must be breaking in a new kid who misunderstood shots-at for shots-on goal.

Ingalls Rink is way better now for the fan after the renovations of the past two years, especially more bathrooms (one level down), and moving some of the concession carts to allow for more standing room. Lynah faithful will rebel, but some people think seatbacks and more legroom are a good thing, not bad. Comfort vs. urban density. The acoustics still suck. I missed the Cornell pep band. The word was that Cornell-Yale hockey conflicted with the Columbia football game. (One's a competitive sport; the other's a wake.) Aren't there band alumni who still have a trumpet in the closet? Playing at Ingalls is like singing in the shower: Acoustics distort good music and improve crappy music. Fortunately we had the Yale band for the latter.

So much for fears of getting shut out on tickets: Standing room was available at gametime, as it has been virtually every year, every game at Ingalls with the exception of last winter's Cornell game.

Is it always crappy weather at the Yale hockey game? Last year it rained and I remember getting pretty wet standing outside for 15 minutes trying to score a couple tickets. This year there was the edge of whatever is the current tropical storm (Ida?). That and messed up traffic took us 4-1/2 hours to go around 110 miles from NJ, causing us to miss dinner at Pepe's, but fortunately our friends, the Blumenthals, brought in a small box to the game with a couple slices.

Thanks for this.  Gotta love a meaty postgame recap.  One thing, though: when would a PP unit ever get more than a 90-second breather?

Quote from: ebilmesCornell is 6x10 on the PP in two ECAC games.

I agree that Cornell probably would have been assessed a penalty for the fish if BNash hadn't already been in the box. What helped us was probably that the refs didn't issue a formal warning (at least one that was announced) until the 3rd period. If that warning had been issued in the 2nd, they would have had to issue another penalty in the 3rd.

Harvard has a lot of talent, and for the first two periods they looked better than us. Leblanc has tremendous talent and you saw that with the first goal.

We have to stop missing open nets. It's one thing when we're up 5-1 on Dartmouth and Riley misses an open net. But when it's 0-0 or 1-2 against Harvard and we're missing open nets, those can be the difference-makers in games. Nicholls missed a wide open net on a 2x1, which shouldn't be too surprising. But then Riley missed another open net a couple of shifts after that. We ended up finding plenty of offense in the end, but at the time those seemed like huge missed opportunities.

One area in which the team has really improved over last year is the breakout play. This is resulting in some more variety, too. Instead of every breakout play resulting in some variation of dump-and-chase, we're getting some good shots and more controlled possession of the puck in the offensive zone.

Scrivens was stellar last night. He made a couple of phenomenal point-blank saves to keep Harvard from pulling too far ahead. He did exactly what we need from him this year; when we're behind, we need him to make some big saves to give our offense some time to get going.

This was a great weekend, but I don't see us winning on Friday at Ingalls. Yale is arguably the best team in the conference, and they lost twice this weekend. They, and their fans, will be fired up for the first home ECAC weekend. Yale will look to exploit some of our weaknesses in the defensive end, and their forecheck was deadly last year.

Several people have commented now that Harvard outplayed the Red early on, that Harvard looks deep in talent, that Harvard is really dangerous, etc.  I beg to differ. I thought they were ordinary last night, from start to finish. The Red were stronger in the corners, better in the neutral zone, and had far more quality chances.  The final score was about indicative of the play.