ELynah Forum

Quote from: BearLover on February 18, 2026, 11:43:41 AMIn the Post article, the dad is quoted as saying something about having to compete for a spot against "20 Canadians from the farm." Sounds like he may have been recruited but never made the team?

LOL. Somebody posted a clip from the latest "Game Notes" podcast in which Ethan Wyttenbach was interviewed. The hosts straight up asked him why he didn't go to Cornell given the family history. Wyttenbach replied that from a young age his dad told him NOT to go there because it's for "a lot of big Canadians go there" and "that didn't fit my playstyle." As I surmised a few weeks ago, I guess his dad was bitter about never making varsity and blamed it on having to compete with "20 Canadians from the farm."

This type of camaraderie was gone by the time I matriculated in the late 2000s and in fact pretty much every good bar would close within 5 years. The BearLover effect? 

Now that we've locked the NCAAs and met my bar for a good year, I will look back on the most shocking moment of last offseason, Ben Robertson ditching his friends, teammates, coaches, and school in favor of Michigan.

1. Robertson's departure was mitigated by the arrival of Veilleux, another offensively minded left-handed defenseman who is frankly just a better player.

2. Moreover, viewing the portal gains/losses in totality, I might argue that 3 years of Fisher + 3 years of Ashton is worth more than 2 years of Robertson. That is to say, we quite possibly came out ahead.

3. However, I believe this is the wrong framing. The goal with the portal is not merely to improve your team; it's to improve as much as, or more than, the teams we want to beat in late March and April. From that perspective, we did well by "Cornell standards" but not by "making the Frozen Four standards." Particularly since Robertson went to one of those teams we want to beat.

4. If Robertson's goal was to get an NHL contract, I think he has so far failed in his mission. With the caveat that I've watched 0 of his games this year, putting up 0 goals and 18 assists in 36 games for a stacked team which he leads in ice time and quarterbacks the first PP unit is...really not impressive. It's frankly worse than his freshman year at Cornell. Of course, the fact he's on the ice so much is itself a positive indicator, but half a point per game with 0 goals? Really? Unless (and probably even if) he's been playing otherworldly defense, no NHL career for him.

5. Cornell being good this year takes a lot of the sting off.

6. Still, all of this is beside the point: we'd be a better team this year if Robertson were still on it. Imagine the highly realistic world where Robertson and Bancroft return. We'd probably be looking at a 1-seed right now.

7. Overall, if I could press a button to undo everything that has happened since Cornell's 2024-25 season ended, I would not press it. I'm too content with where things stand. At this point, the most troubling part of all of this is...

8. I do wonder whether Robertson's departure set some kind of precedent or is some kind of harbinger of what's to come. Are we going to see our best players transfer out on a semi-regular basis? Or is this a one-off event? That's the key question at this point. It's a problem that has afflicted many mid-majors. Are we one of them?

Quote from: Weder on March 16, 2026, 05:17:11 PM

Quote from: stereax on March 16, 2026, 05:00:34 PMPart of the pain of being in the Ivy League is that we schedule fewer games... so each loss means more.

I'll never be able to find it again, but I saw a clip the the other day of the Wisconsin coach pushing for more regular season games. Don't know how widely held that opinion is among other coaches, though.

I've heard Denver coach advocate for this on the CHN podcast. He cited an increase in revenue. I doubt most schools earn much revenue at all from a couple more home games. The road team traveling for those games loses money. (Some like Brown almost certainly lose money from a couple more home and a couple more away games.) I get that schools are desperately scrapping for anything to boost their revenue sharing budgets, but this change seems self-serving for those proposing it.

Quote from: stereax on March 16, 2026, 02:14:37 PM

Quote from: BearLover on March 16, 2026, 01:46:27 PM

Quote from: fastforward on March 16, 2026, 01:32:49 PMAfter watching the post game interview, I was very impressed with Casey's praise of Ben Syer and indicating he's voting for Ben as Coach of the Year

Well, the other candidate is Reid Cashman who Casey detests

What's the beef between Cashman and Casey?

I think Casey sees him as an extension of Rand. Maybe has something to do with the brawl last year. Casey spoke about it in the Coach's Club meeting that got leaked to this forum...

Quote from: fastforward on March 16, 2026, 01:32:49 PMAfter watching the post game interview, I was very impressed with Casey's praise of Ben Syer and indicating he's voting for Ben as Coach of the Year

Well, the other candidate is Reid Cashman who Casey detests

I just listened to today's USCHO bracketology podcast. I believe the hosts stated several things that are factually wrong. However, they did mention an interesting caveat, which is that they aren't confident the NPI numbers currently available are 100% accurate because this is the first time college hockey has used NPI.

I do note that I spot-checked a few numbers and the USCHO and CHN NPI numbers match, so at the very least those two websites appear to be calculating it the same way.

Quote from: BearLover on November 15, 2025, 01:00:47 PMPeople (rightly) complaining about piped-in music: I implore you, reach out to the athletic department rather than venting about it on ELynah. My bet is that they will listen.

Perhaps reach out to those in the athletics administration, facility management, operations, Lynah Rink categories, as you see fit:
https://cornellbigred.com/staff-directory

@andyw2100

I can't remember in which thread people were talking about this, but per the CHN probability matrix, there is a good chance we end up with the 6, 7, 9, or 11 seed. Very small chance we end up with 8 or 10.

Another funny thing from the CHN stats page is that Ethan Wyttenbach's xG is 11.5 but his actual number is 24. Could be an issue with the statistic but also he has certainly gotten very lucky.

Quote from: adamw on March 16, 2026, 11:15:39 AM

Quote from: BearLover on March 16, 2026, 08:39:19 AMI believe Castagna has 4 ENG this season. Is that the Cornell record for most ENG in a season?

Veilleux has 6 goals and 26 points so far. How does that stack up historically among Cornell freshmen defensemen?

Ryan has 11 goals and 30 points so far. Where does he rank historically among freshmen?

Lastly, CHN's FO% leaders page doesn't work (it lists all the people at 100% who have taken like one single faceoff all year). The NCAA page also doesn't work (it randomly lists absolute numbers for FOs won/lost but not FO percentage). Thus I presume Castagna has the best FOW% in the country, but can't confirm this. My question is whether his percentage this season also ranks #1 in Cornell history (among players with a minimum number of attempts).

Just for you - because you are my buddy, of course - the site now weeds out the 100%'ers - and this link will also load sorted by FO% right off the bat ...

https://www.collegehockeynews.com/stats/overall.php#FOPCT

Thanks. Incredible, Castagna at 65.5% and second place at 61.1%.

Quote from: andyw2100 on March 16, 2026, 11:04:46 AM

Quote from: Chris '03 on March 16, 2026, 09:43:50 AMThe DJ has to go.  Painful and repeatedly kills the organic energy.  Nobody needs random music blaring in the fifteen seconds before a faceoff after a goal for example.  Or during the handshakes after a playoff series.  Or... almost any time.

I couldn't agree more. Pretty sure most here agree. I just don't know what it would take for us to convince the powers that be to stop it.

Probably a few of us emailing the Lynah staff/AD staff would be enough to do it

One more thing: I would guess that Castagna's number of faceoffs taken per game is also #1 in the country and maybe #1 in Cornell history.

Kraft has been a great player since day 1.

Quote from: stereax on March 16, 2026, 08:35:43 AM

Quote from: BearLover on March 16, 2026, 08:09:13 AMGreat job cleaning up the spam. Has the sign-up issue been fixed too?

if you see down at the bottom of the forum's main page, the most recent joiner was last december, so i'm wagering no.

i checked a week or two back, still broken

Seems like this season would have been a good opportunity for more fans to join. Too bad