ELynah Forum

Quote from: VIEWfromK on February 14, 2026, 12:54:34 PMThis has definitely started to feel like the dog days of the season.  Is it the inexperienced team?  The unbalanced home and away schedule?  Or is it just the typical ECAC gauntlet?

It hasn't been pretty the past couple of games but they are still earning points which is a terrific characteristic.

They have previously been able to ride a different hot hand for their scoring.  Right now they need someone to step back up.

That will probably be the best game RPI plays all season.  The Cornell home game is circled on so many calendars that they always face the other team's best effort.

Hopefully tonight when they get their golden opportunities they burry them.

Someone who has actual stats on this (Adam, maybe?) should correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is February is when first year players struggle a bit. Add in the unbalanced home/road schedule and I'm not surprised they're struggling.

I suspect this team will be closer to what we thought they'd be in December than what they looked like at the end of January, but that's still pretty good.

It all depends on if they can get it together for the last couple of weeks and then take advantage of a bye round in the playoffs.

Quote from: Weder on February 05, 2026, 09:09:38 AM

Quote from: billhoward on February 05, 2026, 07:54:35 AMCass Park built 1972 provided overflow off-hours ice time for students for years when Lynah fans / intramural duffers were in thrall with a Cornell team that had gone unbeaten, we all thought with just a little more ice time we were the next Dan Lodboa '70 (three straight goals in the third period of the NCAA title game to lift Cornell to that unbeaten season). Lynah Rink cost $30 an hour to rent, $235 in today's money, Cass was cheaper, I recall. Plus available. Certainly after midnight. Gad, it was cold. I got my girlfriend to come twice. I think her sorority sisters dared her to do it. But twice?

The non-enclosed part of the original Cass Rink is because there were federal outdoor recreation funds available but in the case of rinks the outdoor part meant it had to be exposed to the elements. Roof, yes, walls all the way to the ground, no. The rest of Cass Park is gorgeous, lots of soccer fields, the lake and inlet, and walking trails. One of the reasons why Ithaca is a great place to live. Except right now 8am, Olympics opening day (for hockey), Ithaca is 3 degrees F vs. about 25 in metro NY.

Cass Park has been fully enclosed for a few years now.

No kidding? Playing beer league games at Cass Park at night when the temps dropped into the low teens was quite the experience. Driving to Lansing was a pain in the ass but it was the preferable venue.

Quote from: adamw on January 17, 2026, 12:53:48 PMFWIW - I just ran some other super secret numbers - and my rudimentary analysis of those shows some things like ...

Quinnipiac is top 10 in the country in things like "defending opponent controlled entries" and "contested loose puck win %" and "o-zone controlled entries leading to scoring chances"

Cornell is middle of the pack in all three on that.

Make of that what you will.

That lines up with what I saw in tonight's game. Quinnipiac just looked more controlled through the neutral zone and on zone entries than Cornell pretty much throughout.

I thought Cornell was a little better on the forecheck and Quinnipiac was maybe a little sloppier in the defensive zone, but the differences there were not as stark.

Quote from: BearLover on December 07, 2025, 11:46:21 PM

Quote from: tml5 on September 04, 2002, 02:40:54 AMWell this sucks.  Someone tell me why they always do this on a tournament weekend?  Ah, for it to be last fall when I was too gimpy. . . no, wait, I take that back.  (Relatively) non-gimpy is good.  Think I can get top of section G if I go in on Monday morning?

There was a time not that long ago when students were hopeful they could get season tickets at the top of section G...

LOL that was me. 😂

I wonder where I ended up getting tickets... wherever they were, I'm sure I had a great time at the games.

I don't know if anybody mentioned this but Cornell's post-holiday schedule is kind of wild. 8 straight at home followed by 7 of 8 on the road seems odd to me, especially given that 7 of 8 on the road is a league scheduling thing (so Colgate has to do it too).

Anyway, it just caught my eye. Carry on.

Quote from: BearLover on November 23, 2025, 09:00:07 PM

Quote from: BearLover on November 12, 2025, 03:19:58 PMCornell needs to win at least 3 of its next 4 to have a realistic shot at an at-large bid.

Still alive for an at-large bid.

They need to win at least 3 of their next 4 to keep it rolling....

Quote from: BearLover on November 12, 2025, 08:27:31 PM

Quote from: Tom Lento on November 12, 2025, 07:22:38 PM

Quote from: Dafatone on November 12, 2025, 03:39:02 PM

Quote from: BearLover on November 12, 2025, 03:19:58 PMCornell needs to win at least 3 of its next 4 to have a realistic shot at an at-large bid. I doubt Dartmouth is actually very good so that will not remain a "good loss."

Hoping for some good crowds, don't know if they sold more season ticket packages after earlier reports of underwhelming sales...

And we have officially hit "it's too early for that" season.

But it's never too early for silly historical stats!

Fun fact, within the last 10 years Cornell has advanced to the NCAAs as an at large with a 4-4-0 start (2022-23), a 5-5-0 start (2018-19), and a 4-3-1 start (2016-17). They've also failed to advance with an 9-2-2 start (2015-16, and they were up to 11-2-2 before the wheels came off the bus that year) and a 9-1-0 start (2021-22).

In general I think getting through the first third of the season at .500 or above is kind of fine for Cornell in terms of the ratings math. More wins makes the at large chase easier, of course, but ultimately playing .500 hockey for a third of the season isn't a death knell, just as playing lights out for a third of the season isn't enough to secure a bid.

Notably the 9-1 start in 2021-22 included three 3x3 OT wins which were then weighted as 55% of a normal win. So it was really a 6-1-3 start.

Thanks, I wondered about that - I figured there was some weirdness because a true 9-1 start would need a monumental collapse and that wasn't so apparent in the season record.

The other big miss season, however - they lost something like 8 in row between January and February. Yikes.

Quote from: Dafatone on November 12, 2025, 03:39:02 PM

Quote from: BearLover on November 12, 2025, 03:19:58 PMCornell needs to win at least 3 of its next 4 to have a realistic shot at an at-large bid. I doubt Dartmouth is actually very good so that will not remain a "good loss."

Hoping for some good crowds, don't know if they sold more season ticket packages after earlier reports of underwhelming sales...

And we have officially hit "it's too early for that" season.

But it's never too early for silly historical stats!

Fun fact, within the last 10 years Cornell has advanced to the NCAAs as an at large with a 4-4-0 start (2022-23), a 5-5-0 start (2018-19), and a 4-3-1 start (2016-17). They've also failed to advance with an 9-2-2 start (2015-16, and they were up to 11-2-2 before the wheels came off the bus that year) and a 9-1-0 start (2021-22).

In general I think getting through the first third of the season at .500 or above is kind of fine for Cornell in terms of the ratings math. More wins makes the at large chase easier, of course, but ultimately playing .500 hockey for a third of the season isn't a death knell, just as playing lights out for a third of the season isn't enough to secure a bid.

Quote from: stereaxI just want some good ass hockey, man. And hope. And I think Casey should give us both.

Same same same.

Quote from: BearLoverI'm not even convinced yet he's a great coach—I mean, he probably is a good coach, but what basis do we have? A slightly over .500 record in 12 years at Clarkson?

I admit I don't understand how to evaluate college hockey records with all the OT/SOL point BS from the past several seasons, but FWIW Casey's record on CHN is listed as 234-185-56 for a .552 win percentage.

Keith Allain was 282-254-54 (.524) at Yale.
Schafer was 561-300-117 (.633) at Cornell.

I think there's really no doubt that Casey Jones is at least a good coach, and probably an excellent one. I'm also inclined to think that if Allain was capable of leading a team to a national title Jones is too, although for a good coach in the Ivies I suspect that's mostly a function of luck.

Whether or not he's a good fit for the Cornell HC position remains to be seen, but there's no real reason to think he isn't.

There is also no real reason to think he'll be as consistently successful as Schafer was. Nothing against Jones, Schafer was just a truly remarkable coach.

Quote from: Al DeFlorio

Quote from: George64Finally, some good news!  Will Professor Steve Strogatz do for math what Carl Sagan did for science?

Can't access the Times, but Strogatz co-authored a brilliant piece of instructional software for differential equations that was sold by Addison-Wesley back in the 90s.

I read a few of his Times columns years ago, they made some fairly complex stuff readily accessible.

Had I known about this software when I was in college my life might be very different, but I didn't and neither did the guy teaching math 213 at the time. I nearly flunked the class and had to alter my major, and it all worked out for the best.

Quote from: stereax

Quote from: arugulaTop pair guy on a very good team. Excellent.

Robertson replacement?

Sure looks that way.

Out of curiosity, anybody know if Wolfenberg was healthy the last half of the season? My vague memory is he left the lineup after an injury and never made it back but I wasn't paying much attention to lineups between February and Placid.

Quote from: BearLover

Quote from: abmarks

Quote from: BearLover

Quote from: George64

Quote from: billhowardBuczek seems a coach others would want to lure away. A WAG would be that he might stay in Ithaca for a salary package in the $200K-$250K and maybe bonus money: win Ivy RS, win ILT, winning 1-4 rounds of the NCAA tournament. Some of this might want to be alumni-funded.

Other estimates?

Universities usually draw down about 5 percent of the endowment principal to fund a position. So, to pay Buczek $200k per year, plus benefits of say $40k, would mean the Richard M. Moran Head Coach endowment would need $4.8 million on hand.  Certainly possible.  More than s few lax players end up on Wall Street.

I feel like we need to do a better job fundraising if we're losing lacrosse coaches to Johns Hopkins.

Historically speaking, Hopkins is by far the more prestigious lax program.  Coaches don't leave Hopkins to come to Cornell, but they do go the other way.

Not "by far." Cornell is a lacrosse blue blood, easily one of the top 10 historical lacrosse programs, and has been competitive for a national title almost every season the past 25 years. Hopkins is a top 5 all time program more prestigious, but not so much more prestigious that we should be losing coaches to them. Anyway, the point is if we ponied up the money to pay coaches then we wouldn't be losing them to Hopkins.

Lacrosse is to Hopkins as hockey is to NoDak, so it really is something special over there, so when coaches leave almost any job for Hopkins I doubt money is the dominant consideration (and it would not at all surprise me if Hopkins paid at or near top of band regardless). As it happens Hopkins has hired its last two coaches (Pietramala and Milliman) from Cornell, so folks around here are maybe a bit more sensitive to the comparisons between the programs. FWIW I suspect that neither of those cases was about either money or prestige, really - Pietramala is a Hopkins alum, and Milliman was hired away after COVID cut the 2020 season short so he was choosing between coaching an elite program that would play lacrosse next season and one that wouldn't.

Buczek was an all time great at Cornell, so this is probably closer to a dream job situation for him than it was for either Pietramala or Milliman. I certainly hope so, because it seems like his tenure is off to an incredible start.

Quote from: jtwcornell91

Quote from: Tom Lento

Quote from: jtwcornell91

Quote from: Tom Lento

Quote from: Scersk '97

Quote from: Tom LentoThe QF game against a rested and frankly far better NoDak team was not close, and their only other win in the old 12 team format (2002) had them favored in the first round against a pre-ECAC Quinnipiac team. They lost the QF to a rested but not very much better UNH team that year.

Unusual strong disagree on 1997. That NoDak game was close! Were they better than us? Sure. But the only broke it open halfway into the third.

What stings about 2002 was that we could've been the last beneficiaries of the Clarkson rule, which did not happen because of another painful memory.

Memory fails me, then, I thought they broke it open in the second. I didn't actually see the game, those were radio days.

Was that the game with Eddy Skazyk warming up in the tunnel because Jason Elliott was getting shelled?

Skazyk wasn't on that team. Jean-Marc Pelletier was the backup that year.

I dug out the HOCKEY-L recap and apparently the warming up in the tunnel story was from the Lake State game in 1996, so it was Skazyk after all.

Sorry, I meant JMP was the backup for the NoDak game, not that he was the guy warming up in the tunnel. I hadn't heard that story about Skazyk!

Quote from: jtwcornell91

Quote from: Tom Lento

Quote from: Scersk '97

Quote from: Tom LentoThe QF game against a rested and frankly far better NoDak team was not close, and their only other win in the old 12 team format (2002) had them favored in the first round against a pre-ECAC Quinnipiac team. They lost the QF to a rested but not very much better UNH team that year.

Unusual strong disagree on 1997. That NoDak game was close! Were they better than us? Sure. But the only broke it open halfway into the third.

What stings about 2002 was that we could've been the last beneficiaries of the Clarkson rule, which did not happen because of another painful memory.

Memory fails me, then, I thought they broke it open in the second. I didn't actually see the game, those were radio days.

Was that the game with Eddy Skazyk warming up in the tunnel because Jason Elliott was getting shelled?

Skazyk wasn't on that team. Jean-Marc Pelletier was the backup that year.