ELynah Forum

Hmmm... it still sounds pretty fun to me and reasonably simple to get a drink without having to storm the slope (not that you shouldn't):

1)  Get yourself a flask.  Treat it like a fish.  If I can sneak whole bottles of liquor into a post-9/11-scared Michigan Stadium, you can smuggle an actual flask past a few cops dealing with free reentry policies.  Wear a coat.  Put it down your bra.  Be creative.  Be confident.

2)  Preparation:  Start your day with a nice Chianti, substitute your carbs at breakfast (goodbye pancakes and eggs, hello kegs and eggs!), and do some shots before you go.  They can't search your bloodstream.  (Helps with that confidence, too!)

3)  Bringing bracelets is a great idea.  It doesn't have to be perfect, just "don't come and examine this thing, occifer" perfect.

4)  Even without a bracelet, you can still have an of-age person buy you beer.  Of-age person goes up for beer, brings it back to a fake-bracelet (or long-sleeved) person in center of slope:  rinse, repeat.  Do you really think that the police are going to be going around arresting underage folks for possession in the middle of the slope?  Talk about a recipe for a riot.  The drafts are only $1 (even though it'll likely be crappy Coors--welcome to reunion tent drinking, oy!), which I think is pretty damn cheap.

5)  Continue the buzz.  Remember that it's called Slope *Day* for a reason.  I suggest Bloody Marys, since they work well for longevity.

Have fun, and get smashed!

Ah-hahaha, yes... Northern Michigan University is in Marquette, MI, so your confusion is, somewhat, excusable.  :-)

Hmmm... time to put on my townie hat and add some more context.

My first Lynah memories are from 1985 when my Cub Scout troop watched the team play Western Ontario, the first game of the season.  For some reason, that particularly good team only squeaked out a 5-4 OT victory, but, nonetheless, I was hooked pretty early.

I've seen our penalty traditions mutate over the years.  I list, in succession:  a constant chant of "asshole!  asshole!  asshole!"; "Aaaaaaaaah, see-ya!  Asshole."; "Aaaaaaaaah, see-ya!  You goon..."; and, finally, the current "Aaaaaaaaa, see-ya!  Murmurmur... You murmurmur...".  My preference has always been for switching between numbers two and three according to the offence, with number one reserved for the worst offenders.  As usual, it would be better for us to decide on something and really YELL it.

Hmmm... see one game, miss 10 games:  great percentage there, Chris '03.  I would certainly annoint myself the head analyst of Cornell hockey with those stats.  

Gleed has made some freshman mistakes, but fewer than most freshmen.  We might be putting him up there in the Burgoyne or McMeekin category before he's left Cornell.  He is a *very* good player.

Anyway, who else can "make them Gleed!"

For comparison, let's look at the career of one Matt Cooney:

Matt Cooney
Yr   Cl   Po   GP   G   A   Pts   PIM
1994   Fr   W   12   0   2   2   32
1995   So   W   26   7   3   10   52
1996   Jr   W   34   13   21   34   104
1997   Sr   W   23   9   9   18   45
               95   29   35   64   233

Now, Cooney was certainly more noticeable than Iggulden--who exactly could fail to notice a guy averaging around 2 PMs/game?--but he was similarly not an offensive powerhouse over his first couple of seasons.  What happened junior year?  Brad Chartrand.

Chartrand, who hadn't exactly been over-acheiving in his first three years, exploded for 43 points in his senior year.  Cooney and Chartrand together were the most unstoppable offensive pairing I had seen after '94 (I watched a lot before then, but I didn't pay the same attention, so leave out Derraugh, Andison, et al.) until Vesce and Baby.  To watch Chartrand and Cooney play the "power kill," as we called it at that time, was a thing of beauty.  I will always remember throwing my trombone about three rows down the stands after a Chartrand shorthander at Clarkson--I was listening on the radio at a basketball game.  Mmm... Grady... but I digress.

My point is that line chemistry is extremely important, and Iggulden just doesn't seem to have a place.  As they say, though, past results do not exactly predict future performance.  One can fill out a long list of Cornell hockey players that have stepped it up for their junior and senior campaigns.  Maybe next year we'll add Iggulden to that list.

Wow, let it never be said that all Penn students are boorish, ignorant churls.  Wouldn't it be great if each section introduced itself to the opposing goalie with some proprietary litany of taunts like the Penn student?  I guess that all someone would have to do is get a few stalwarts together and pass out a cheer sheet...

If I were currently an undergraduate, I would see that article as a warning never to let Lynah degenerate into something blandly offensive like, say, Michigan.

Hey John,

Which behavior is more lame?

1)  Reading something for vicarious pleasure, and chortling a bit.
2)  Criticizing something that one has read for vicarious pleasure when it hasn't provided enough pleasure.

Lay off the easy targets, there, Sparky.

There are a few really good things about the current Colgate band:

1)  They exist.  Back in my day, they didn't, or at least I don't remember them existing.  Now that I think of it, there was a pathetic little band one time when we went to Hamilton.  In any case, going to Hamilton was like playing in an almost empty refrigerator that hadn't been opened in six months; it was very cold and there were lots of rotten apples--whiny, tennis-ball-throwing kids, drunken frat boys screaming "Play taps, Cornell, play taps!" and other general malcontents.  Games at Colgate *have* to be much more entertaining now.

2)  They actually partied with the current Cornell band.  Now, if the current screaming freshman hotheads can chill and learn from their elders, everyone may realize just how precious this is.  I think I went to two parties with other bands during my time at Cornell:  at Clarkson a couple of us had a great time, maybe twice--in fact, one of those parties may have been one of the best college parties I've ever attended; at Dartmouth we drank up a storm in one of their frats, were introduced to "Conno," and immediately drank said introducers under the table.  (A very familiar sound to that story...)  The only other place we stayed was RPI, once, and it ended up with a bunch of us sitting in a dorm room watching porn without the soundtrack (it was garbled by scrambling) and adding our own dialogue.  Clarkson, despite overtures from our band the next couple of years, decided it was all-important to stay at the Wonderland--why?--in Ithaca and party by themselves--I guess their current leadership had their heads up their asses--and Dartmouth never materialized again.

3)  They aren't Harvard.  Can anyone even imagine hanging out with the Harvard band?  I thought so.  Now, Brown might be interesting--pot, anyone?

Here's my advice to the current membership of both bands:  party as much as possible with each other, because, when you're around other pep bandies, no matter what "flavor" they may be, you're amongst people that might actually understand you.  Enjoy what you have, build more bridges, and drink some beer together.  Spread the love.

Yes, Pierre was awful; yes, Pierre "has no hair;" yes, Pierre was perhaps the greatest figure of malice over my young college hockey watching world; but now I'll state it for the hereafter:  I love Pierre Belanger.  Pierre reffed what was, perhaps, the best reffed college hockey game I've ever seen, and even stranger is that he reffed it with the ref I hate most, Gallagher.

The year was 1996-97, the year of a pretty good Red with captain Matt Cooney, goalie Jason Elliot, and everybody's favorite (well, if Lynah is understood to represent everybody) Steve Wilson.  By no means was this the team of destiny that the team of the year before had been, but this team, largely through the stonewalling of Elliot, was expected to compete well.

The normal hated opponents, Clarkson and Harvard, had accepted another team into their midst, Vermont.  Vermont was the "team to beat" that season, and still smarted over not facing us in the championship final the year before.  (Thank you, Harvard.)  Boy, did the Catamounts have people to hate that year:  the whole first line--J.C. Ruid and the midgets, Perrin and St. Louis; Mike Gilligan, as usual; and, most hated of all, that bastion of conceit, all-everything-but-nothing goalie Tim Thomas.  Thomas made a regular show of taunting the faithful, boasting quotefully about his team, and, unfortunately, playing well.  This game, however, was not to be his.  However interesting the hockey game was--and it was--the real battle was waged between the men in the striped jerseys.

After warmups, we in the band played our tunes, anticipating the start of the game.  It was the time of the ill-fated two referee experiment in the ECAC, so many former "greats" were getting into the act.  We had heard rumors... just rumors of the unthinkable.  For me, though, the unthinkable had already happened when the first orange-armed zebra hit the ice:  Gallagher.  Gallagher, who could be counted to call everything against the Red;  Gallagher, who skated about like a portly poppinjay;  Gallagher, whose picture we have scraping puke off the ice at the S(H)IT that year:  John Gallagher, my most hated of referrees, had just skated onto the ice to ref what was to be one of the most important Lynah matches of the year.

Then, the unthinkable happened.  Pierre Belanger skated out after him.

I had reacted with an expletive when Gallagher took the ice; I reacted with a much more strongly worded expletive when Pierre followed him.  One could hear the groans go up over the Lynah crowd:  these two refs had caused more woe for the Cornell hockey team over my time watching (around 10 years at that point) than any others.  Here was Pierre, back again.  I hadn't seen him ref a game since high school.

The game started, and, as expected, Gallagher made his presence known.  The first three penalties were on the Red.  They were ridiculous, touch calls, made by a man who seemed to be watching a different game through green-hued glasses.  Then the unthinkable happened, again...

I have not had that much time in my life to contemplate pure evil.  Our world of today is full of many shades of gray.  The media exposes many things before evil has a chance to take a true hold.  The closest we commonly come in this country to pure evil is the serial killer, and when the media reports his or her capture, we are surprised:  the life seems too outwardly normal, the clothes seem too nice, the hair seems too well-kempt.  But the eyes, the eyes are black and cold.  You can tell that there is something off-kilter in the eyes.  Pierre Belanger has serial killer eyes.

Pierre called the rest of his penalties on Vermont.

Since that day, I've had many opportunities to recollect with my friends, and we come up with many theories.  Perhaps it was a grand power struggle between Gallagher and Pierre, and Pierre was not about to let this whippersnapper of a horrible ref stand in his way of calling a bad game.  Perhaps Pierre, being French-Canadian, hates all other French-Canadians and decided to take it out on the team of St. Louis and Perrin.  Maybe, just maybe, Pierre wanted, that day, to be a good ref.

But I think the answer lies in the eyes.  For the statistical anomaly that is the history of Cornell hockey, there are Pierres.  For all the good in the world, there are serial killers.  The forces of nature are often beyond our comprehension, but they often strive towards a balance.  Cornell hockey and humans as a whole have striven to stay unbalanced; we have, often, had to fight nature to survive.

That night, Pierre was a force of nature, and, that night, nature was on our side.  We won, 6 to 4, and Tim Thomas broke his stick over the goal.

Hmmm...  I wonder if we've all watched Sagan's Cosmos...

Just a wild guess...

Boy, that guy who said those things about Elliott was an imbecile.  Hmmm... but as I remember, everyone was constantly talking about how much better Elliott was than Skazyk.  Maybe that profoundly dumb guy just thought Elliott was overrated.

I... I mean... he must have felt pretty sheepish when Elliott proved him completely, unutterably wrong.  I guess even great players have an off day (or an off stretch) every once in a while.

So, how has that guy... what's his name?... oh yeah, Murray... how's he been playing lately?

McCutcheon, hunh?  From Pittsford, NY, you say?  Hmmm... that's near Rochester, isn't it?

Looks like I'm going to have to say the name again.

Imagine a rink much like Clarkson's but with better acoustics, i.e., somewhat ugly and antiseptic, but with a lower roof.  Imagine my pleasure when I saw that there was a reasonable Cornell contingent already there and standing.  Imagine my dismay when I realized that the whole crowd had been issued yellow and brown "Thunderstix."  Imagine my utter disbelief at the "Thunderstix."  Imagine how much I hate "Thunderstix."

Oh, did I mention that I consider "Thunderstix" to be tools of the Dev-il?

Anyway, other than that, one just has to look at the box.  I mean, we scored three times in the very early part of the first.  Just about when we got used to watching the game again after the first score (in 50 seconds), we had to start singing Davy again.  How horrible.

WMU looked, well, absolutely flabbergasted in the first until they took that time out.  After the time out, they still were being outplayed.  Their coach must have put the fear of Jee-bus in them during the break, since the second was a different story.  I can't say that WMU played better than we did, but they certainly held their own.

The goal:  at some point, LeNevue had to make a sophomore mistake.  Puck heads down the ice, LeNevue hesitates, LeNevue heads out of goal, puck ends up in the net.  It was no big wup--probably won't happen again, as Schafer said in the USCHO summary after the game.

The third:  most of the WeeMus decided to trickle out--beat the traffic, you know--and Cornell started to look dominant again towards the end.  There was a point towards the very end of the game where we held it in their end for about five minutes, it seemed.  5-1, 6-1, and "which team is the winning team?"

I noticed Pegoraro quite a bit, who was quite speedy.  Vesce was truly on the top of his game tonight, and the last goal looked like something out of Sega hockey.  They had, as most teams, no answer for Bâby's uncanny ability to shield the puck and look over his shoulder for the great pass.  Murray looked a bit out of sorts tonight, and Gleed, who has looked very good in the other games I have seen, may need to spend a bit of time gauging opposing team's forwards when he's on the bench--he got beat on one where, if he had looked at who it was (their speedy captain), he probably should've taken the body early.  So, not one of our best defensive outings, but very satisfying offensively.

Actually, much like the sweet silence of absent "Thunderstix," the evening was, on the whole, quite satisfying.

[q]Unlike another Boston-area coach...[/q]

Rich, of whomsoever could you be speaking?  Oh, I'll say it:  that Bruce Crowder from Northeastern is one prissy little ninny.

Excuse my wrongly used tags:  shows you how long it's been since I've posted, and I can't edit it because I didn't log in.  I guess I'm turning into a real techno-moron.