ELynah Forum

Quote from: Trotsky

Quote from: underskillI wonder if Casey is going to try to rebalance the class sizes at some point

It tends to happen on its own.  Large classes have a tail of frosh who never see the ice, hence they never develop, hence they continue to get beat out by incoming guys the next year, and eventually they leave.

Regression to the mean.

Quote from: BearLover

Quote from: ithacat

Quote from: BearLover

Quote from: ithacat

Quote from: IcebergGood for Western Michigan. For a while, they were one and done in the NCAA's and then they go on to have this dominant season almost out of nowhere

Agreed. Probably not on most fans radar in the preseason. 5 grad students, 9 transfers...but only 6 NHL draft picks. They do have more flexibility when rebuilding a roster.

I'm seeing 8 draft picks. I don't like the teams that build through transfers and grad students. WMU is basically Quinnipiac. But I'd still rather them win than BU.

Thanks for the correction.

Since the pandemic, there have been four national champions. Two (Denver x2) were won with blue-chippers. Two (Quinnipiac and WMU) were won with transfers and grad students. Cornell is going to have to either improve recruiting or find a way to get more transfers if they want to make a frozen four.

With the extra pandemic eligibility ending, the grad student effect should wane. The transfer effect, however, has room to grow. Maybe this is the right time to bring in a new coach, who will be focused on establishing his tenure under a new set of rules.

I know the exodus is depressing right now. Transitions suck, and this year is a big transition for the program.

But there's also reason for hope. Here's how Clarkson and Cornell finished in the ECAC standings during the 13 years Casey was head coach at Clarkson:

Year   Clkson   Cornell Cornell +/-
2024   5   2   3
2023   6   3   3
2022   2   4   -2
2021   2      
2020   2   1   1
2019   3   1   2
2018   3   1   2
2017   6   3   3
2016   5   7   -2
2015   8   7   1
2014   5   4   1
2013   9   10   -1
2012   7   2   5
      Total:   16
      Per Year:1.33

So, if Casey gets the same performance out of Cornell that he did out of Clarkson, we'll be, on average, one or two places below where Schafer would have had us.

Do we really think that Casey can do no better in Ithaca than he did in Potsdam, with all the resources, traditions, and support that he'll have at his disposal at Cornell?

Casey's got a bigger hill to climb than Schafe did with all the changes college sports are going through. Maybe the program declines because of outside forces, rather than internal effort. Maybe the current exodus puts us in a hole that we can't climb out of.

Or maybe the exodus means that we have fewer players lamenting the end of the "glory days" of the Schafer program and more players who come in, excited that, even as freshmen, they are going to have lots of opportunity to contribute, and all get so much ice time together, that by the time they become seniors, they are going to be such a well-oiled machine that the exceed all expectations.

And maybe not. But with no expectations, every win is going to be awesome. I'm looking forward to that.

Quote from: Chris H82

Quote from: Dafatone

Quote from: 617BigRedNext three Frozen Fours: Vegas, DC, Chicago...

Regional sites and hosts for next three years:
www.ncaa.com/championships/icehockey-men/d1/future-info

Maybe after that we can finally get first two rounds on campus sites...

I remain the only person on here who wants us to go to a Sioux Falls regional.

And I'd take Bison Crap, Montana. It'd still probably be a 5 hour drive (this is a damn big state).

Yeah, but you can cover 450-500 miles in those five hours in MT.

Quote from: Chris '03

Quote from: jtwcornell91

Quote from: upprdeckRegional attendance is a hard nut to crack.

Pointing out a small crowd for Albany is wrong


Albany attendance last time was about 2500/3500
Wooster was 6000/2800
Colorado was 2000/5000
allentown was 2000/3000

PSU in Allentown and winning Attendance 7K this year

Teams/locations/ and playing the fri/sat games all help attendance.

I guess the sites are set for a few years, but I think one of the western sites should bit to host two regionals in the same year, one Thu/Sat and one Fri/Sun; then you can boost the attendance of the "middle" two days by capturing the fans that are otherwise waiting around in between their team's two games.  And for that matter, you'll probably convince more people to travel to the regionals in the first place knowing they don't have a day to kill out in Bison Crap, Montana or wherever the regional is being held.

This. I favor two super regional sites that are as fixed as possible year to year. Make the conferences host so there's no PSU type issues. Make it easy for fans to plan and develop traditions year over year. And guarantee eastern conference champs stay in one of the two east brackets and west champs stay west. Make it more worth the fans' while to take a Thursday and Friday off and still give coaches the rest day they want. First game at five on Thursday and Sunday final at noon.

I love this idea. This would make it easier for fans who need to fly in to commit. Or at least get two regionals within driving distance of a major airport. If it had been Toledo and Detroit, one could get a flight into Detroit and drive to Toledo on the off days.

Quote from: Beeeej

Quote from: pjd8Maybe we're already doing the best we can with scheduling. But it really disappoints me when we play Q in MSG. I see zero benefit to scheduling them for an extra game. Could we really not entice a team like Northeastern, a school that obviously cares about how it is viewed nationally to potential students, to a stage like Madison Square Garden?

Whether or not we can entice the team to play in MSG is not the only consideration. The best Big Red Apple games have been sold out or nearly so because they were against opponents with large, devoted alumni populations in NYC - Michigan, Penn State, UConn, even UNH (and of course BU in the Red Hot Hockey years both has a large, devoted NYC-area following and the benefit of the historical Cornell rivalry). I don't think Northeastern really fits that bill. Of course neither does Quinny, but at a certain point I imagine Coach Schafer was running out of time and options and just picked up the phone hoping not to have to cancel entirely. I suspect that's how we ended up with Harvard in 2018-19, too - but at least they have a solid NYC footing.

I'd be a little surprised if UNH had a bigger base in NYC than Northeastern, but I have no real data to base that on. I've just always felt that NU was more closely aligned academically than UNH. That may be a private/public thing, as well as which disciplines the schools focus on.

But I'd take any of the schools you listed above over Q. Maybe Notre Dame would also be a good candidate. And yes, sometimes it comes down to who you can get to answer the phone and say yes. More schools will say that if we stay competitive, and more games like that on our schedule will help us stay competitive. I feel like we've lost some of that ground with covid rules.

Quote from: stereaxBC's out. Does that mean we're better than both BC (we won our conference's championship and one natty round, they did not win the championship and lasted just as long) and MSU (directly kicked their asses), the two best teams in college hockey? Much to ponder.

I think it speaks more to the depth of the field this year. Even Bentley played BC strong.

I get why the brackets were the way they were, but maybe the one tweak they could have done was to switch Denver and Q to avoid this matchup so early. Yes, Denver was a number 3 seed. But just like we were the worst number 4 seed to draw, Denver was the worst number 3 seed to draw, especially with their recent tournament record. It was a super intense game, and probably will end up being the most intense game of the tourney.

The flip side is, BC was going to have to defeat Denver (or their usurper) at some point to win the title. But I don't think the tourney wins can be used to rank the teams in any way. I think it's simply defines the champion and all the teams that weren't the champion.

Quote from: adamw

Quote from: pjd8

Quote from: adamw

Quote from: chimpfoodAnyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

Cornell has proven that they can beat tough teams and lose to non-tough teams. I don't think there's a huge risk to our win percentage by scheduling all tough teams. I think injuries, how the team is gelling, maturity and headspace of individual athletes, etc, have a bigger influence on how each game will go on a given day.

What scheduling a tough team over a non-tough team does for you is that it gives you an opportunity to win a game that has a potential for winning a pairwise comparison with another team that's on the bubble. Non of the teams right above us in pairwise played Sacred Heart, so we didn't get a H2H comparison benefit from those games.

If we had beaten ASU, we would have won that comparison, and if we had played Mankato instead of Sacred Heart and won, we would have won that comparison. That's without an improvement in RPI in other case. The subsequent RPI improvement might have picked up another comparison, putting us on the right side of the bubble.

True enough - though it's hard to cherrypick a schedule like that. How do you know which teams will be the exact teams on the bubble near you? So - outside of 2 or 3 teams - it doesn't matter. Since there's only 3 criteria, and RPI is the tiebreaker. Usually teams a few more rungs up the ladder have better common opponents and RPI - which means you'd need to beat them 3 times without a loss for H2H to matter. It just so happens there are limited COPs with MinnSt/ASU this year, so the 1 H2H win in your example would've mattered.

Yes, I used those examples because a one game win would flip the comparison. That's not always going to happen, but every once in a while it will.

I agree with you that it's hard to cherry pick for those situations when scheduling is done long before you know who the bubble teams will be. But over years of scheduling, you know you're far more likely to hit that situation by scheduling teams like Northeastern/UNH/Mankato than you are scheduling Sacred Heart. Plus, scheduling another HE/Big Ten/NCHC team will nudge your RPI a bit.

But I think the bigger advantage (and better argument) is the experience of playing with the "big boys" more. I think playing UND was a better challenge to get the guys to elevate their game. We're not going to get a morale boost from beating an AHL team. We're just going to ask why we didn't sweep them.

Quote from: BearLoverHas anybody studied this? Shouldn't be too hard to figure out the "true" advantage of home ice.

I recently read an article (which I can't find quickly now) that talked about what we learned from Covid, and one of the lessons was that home game advantage was real - but only if you were used to playing in front of a loud crowd. Programs without that didn't lose any advantage when fans were kept away.

The other observation from that NBA season was how much not traveling over multiple time zones helped teams. And that's been a big discussion in Big Ten football this year. Penn State is feeling the travel burden (just getting onto a direct flight to USC adds a two hour bus ride to a bigger airport), and West Coast schools have seen their performance drop with jet lag.

As that becomes more obvious to sports in general, it make get harder to get western teams to come to Lynah, especially when it's easier to travel to a Boston campus if you're willing to take the time zone hit.

As I'm watching today's game, maybe we should try to entice Penn State to Lynah.

Quote from: adamw

Quote from: chimpfoodAnyone heard any rumblings? People are starting to hear stuff and post on the USCHO forum but I haven't seen us mentioned in any of those. Locking down another home and home with a hockey east/B1G/NCHC school would be nice to make sure our OOC schedule is strong enough to be competitive in the pairwise. Do we maybe finally get Arizona state at home after going down there for what seemed like 5 years straight? Find another winter break tournament perhaps? Curious to see how it turns out

Common myth that I don't bother trying to correct people on, except coaches and Ivy League grads

playing a "tough schedule" doesn't help you. Playing a tough schedule and winning the games helps you. You can play a crap schedule and win all the games, and it would be the same as playing a "tough" schedule and winning 50%. It's a direct inverse correlation.

Cornell has proven that they can beat tough teams and lose to non-tough teams. I don't think there's a huge risk to our win percentage by scheduling all tough teams. I think injuries, how the team is gelling, maturity and headspace of individual athletes, etc, have a bigger influence on how each game will go on a given day.

What scheduling a tough team over a non-tough team does for you is that it gives you an opportunity to win a game that has a potential for winning a pairwise comparison with another team that's on the bubble. Non of the teams right above us in pairwise played Sacred Heart, so we didn't get a H2H comparison benefit from those games.

If we had beaten ASU, we would have won that comparison, and if we had played Mankato instead of Sacred Heart and won, we would have won that comparison. That's without an improvement in RPI in other case. The subsequent RPI improvement might have picked up another comparison, putting us on the right side of the bubble.

Being on the bubble means it goes the other way some years, too. But what I tougher schedule does guarantee is more experience playing teams with different styles and a level of play that forces you to dig deep. Cornell did well this year in the national tournament because they found a way to shift into a higher gear. Let's give these players more experience in those kinds of games.

Quote from: Scersk '97

Quote from: VIEWfromKWhat was Casey's out of conference plan when he was at Clarkson?  It will be interesting to see if the approach is different at all than Schafer's (adjusted to fit within the Ivy League scheduling confines of course).

Teams I'd like to see at Lynah, in no particular order:

Code Select Expand


RIT *
Mankato
Michigan Tech *
Maine
Northeastern *
Vermont *
UNH *
Western Michigan
CC
Alaska-Anchorage
Alaska-Fairbanks
Wisconsin *
North Dakota


Those starred are a bit down on their luck right now, and would probably be very happy to see an outstretched hand. (I guess I'm willing to extend the olive branch to Vermont, mostly because a return to Gutterson would be a definite trip for me.) Maine and North Dakota, and their fans, are always welcome, as far as I'm concerned. There are good relationships built or to be built there. Wisco is a big stretch, because of the idiotic insularity of the Big10 schedule, which, considering recent events you'd think the conference should start to redress. But they should come. We and they get along.

I would love to see most of these teams as well. Maybe I'd take the Alaska teams, RIT, and UVM off the list.

The UNH or Northeastern connection is particularly interesting. If you look at UNH's schedule this past year most of their wins came from out of conference, and they were all against ECAC/AHL/Independent teams. They went 8-1-1. I don't know if this was intentional, but they had plenty of strength of schedule from their conference games, and what they needed for an NCAA bid was a higher win percentage. They got really close with their nonconference games. They were a few wins from getting there.

What if we took the opposite approach to scheduling? Let's assume that we'll get the win percentage we need from our conference play (because if we can't get a good win 5 from our regular season and/or win our tourney, I don't see us performing well in the NCAAs). Then, as insurance against not getting the autobid, let's load our nonconference schedule with as many heavy hitters as we can to up our strength of schedule.

Maybe we're already doing the best we can with scheduling. But it really disappoints me when we play Q in MSG. I see zero benefit to scheduling them for an extra game. Could we really not entice a team like Northeastern, a school that obviously cares about how it is viewed nationally to potential students, to a stage like Madison Square Garden?

Maybe not. I don't know much about the scheduling process. However, when I think about the Q nc game and the Sacred Heart games, and I look at how winning three games against common opponents or head-to-head with teams on the bid bubble, combined with a slightly higher RPI might have gotten us an at-large bid.

And maybe we schedule those games and we don't win enough get there. But having two precious nonconference games against Sacred Heart guarantees we've wasted two Pairwise opportunities.

Quote from: TrotskyFrom Anne: "DOUB-LE-MAJ-OR!" is going to be a great cheer! ::banana::

This is what I love about sports. There's always something to look forward to.

The cardiac comment reminded me of the old nickname Cardiac Kids. I haven't thought about that for a long time.

Cornell's not out of it yet.

Hey Kempf, let's talk about your mistake in an interview so you can feel extra bad about it.

Unbelievable.