My Opinion of Cornell after the Princeton game

[Beeeej]

I was standing on the back row, right above the end of the Cornell bench closest to the band - near Age, et al.

Beeeej

[vicb]

Princeton ain't exactly a NC$$ Tourney Contender.  I expected Cornell to put it to them and they did.  Should be a much more even series this weekend up North.  Not Saying Clarkson or SLU will win but I think the game will be much closer.  Those of you going up should be seeing some great hockey.

[Mike Nevin]

There was some earlier discussion of Evan Salmela.

I think he is a potentially great Power Play point guy because he wants the puck, likes to shoot, and I thought, has a good shot.  Not a Doug Murray -- less power, but potentially more accuracy.

However, he is not a great point guy because he doesn't yet show the hockey sense it takes to make that snap decision of when to pinch or not, or when to pass on the shot, so it doesn't get blocked and become a breakaway for the other team.  

I wouldn't be surprised to see him eventually end up back in the power play point spot.  He seemed to be making a few freshman mistakes.  No doubt, those will get worked out in a hurray.

[Jeff Hopkins \'82]

I'll add my 2 Cents.

It was not the game I expected.  After our slow start last weekend, and Leroux's press, I expected a game more like last year's.  We have great size, and can counterattack with the best of them.  Our lack of depth on defense is going to be an ongoing theme for a while.  And good thing the announcer learned how to pronounce "Vesce."

Definitely a different style of offense than last year.  I didn't see a lot of heavy cycling like we got out of Baby.  I actually think Princeton outhit us.  But this is a fast, counter-attacking team, that can turn the play in the opposite direction on on odd-man rush damn quickly.  They struck me as more in the "western" mold than last year's team.  

One key observation:  O'Byrne needs to stay out of the box.  While I think some of the calls were borderline, he's likely to develop a reputation among the refs, leading to more calls.  And I'm not overly impressed by our PK.

I didn't think McKee was called on to make too many tough saves, but I think the defense made his life a little tougher than it needed to, especially on the PK.  The defenders were not especially aggressive checkers.  It seemed like the box tended to collapse in on him, and led to a lot of screened shots, and all the scrambles in the slot.  Princeton always had two men on either side of the goal, and our defenders didn't make much of an effort to displace them.  If their outside men on the powerplay were any better, they'd have eaten us for lunch.

Our first goal just deflated Princeton.  And after the first period, when they didn't score on all the powerplays, you could see that Princeton just wasn't going to make a game of it.  I almost turned to my friend after the first period to say "This game's over", but thought I wouldn't antagonize the woofing gods.

Nice work by our point men on the powerplay, especially Cook.  Pinched at the right time, and kept the puck in well.  Nice to see Charlie get a goal for his effort.

Hornby/Abbott/Abbott played a good workmanlike game.  Once they got to play, they kept Princeton on their heels.  Actually, my companion noted in the second period that she wasn't aware that there were two Abbotts (since they hadn't played together much with all the early penalties).  I also found it somewhat cute that the bench minor was served by Hornby.

And where was Hynes?  He didn't seem to be a presence.

JH

[calgARI \'07]

That wasn't Stachurski during the Red-White game despite the fact that his jersey said "Stachurski" on the back of it.  I've seen Stachurski play a little bit in practices and in the Red-White game.  He is certainly well behind the top seven defensemen.  His skating is very suspect and makes bad decisions.  Some of this could be attributed to the fact that he has been playing on olympic ice in Finland for the past couple years.  I was surprised that he was not better, however, considering he came from a very good league and Schafer spoke pretty highly of him last season after he had committed.  Unless there are a lot of injuries on the blueline, I would be surprised if he ever played.

[Josh '99]

And lest anyone get down on Salmela for those "freshman mistakes", keep in mind Murray made his share of those when he was a freshman too, and he turned out OK.  :-)

[jason]

My favorite quote from the USCHO recap:

[q]"It could have been 7-0 after the first period, said Princeton coach Len Quesnelle. "There was a point in the first period when we were looking at each other around the bench in sheer frustration."[/q]

Reminiscent of Parker's quote about boys skating among men after last year's Cornell-BU series at Lynah.

[ugarte]

Jason N '95 wrote:

My favorite quote from the USCHO recap:

[q]"It could have been 7-0 after the first period, said Princeton coach Len Quesnelle. "There was a point in the first period when we were looking at each other around the bench in sheer frustration."[/q]

Of course, I disagree with him.  We spent so much time down (at least) a man in the first.   And I actually thought Princeton kept the puck in our end a lot.  We weren't scoring off of constant pressure.  3-0 was pretty much where it should have been. Maybe 3-1.  Quesnelle should give his squad more credit.



Post Edited (11-10-03 17:59)

[Sarli]

Well Murray had his share of penalties as a Freshman. However, I remember him having a huge shot on the power play and seemingly would lay out at least one guy a weekend. I don't remember anyone on Cornell really plastering a princeton kid.  So as long as O'byrne gets in a couple nice clean hits I'll take 6 PIM a weekend (that's a bit much for a single game though). He can't be afraid to use his size. Will he get whistled just because he's bigger than the litte twerp he flattened, most likely.  Also I didn't see him take any slap shots, so can't judge.  Can't argue with his size.  Remember that Baby had a lot of PIM too until he learned to skate at a D1 level.

Also on McKee, he did get a shutout, which is a feat no matter who you play especially with the amount of PP time for Princeton.  Although more than once I recall thinking: 'good thing these bums can't shoot'
He seemed to give up a lot of rebounds, but more often than not on Sat. he seemed to direct them away from the slot.  I seem to remember our previous goalies giving up rebounds, but our D-men would always be the two closest guys to the puck, so it looked very controlled.  The current crop is still learning their positioning.

Hey if Cornell can score 13 goals/wknd they'll win plenty (not going to hold my breath on that)
I think we are all a bit slanted as we are trying to recall what last year's top players were like as freshman.  Remember when they were freshman Cornell was not a national contender and I'm not sure they were faced with the same expectation of winning every game and allowing less than 2 GAA. So let them learn.  Might there be a loss or three because of freshman mistakes? probably, but there is a reason all these Frosh are here and playing: Coach believes they will produce.  For now that's good enough for me.

[Beeeej]

Sarli wrote:
So as long as O'byrne gets in a couple nice clean hits I'll take 6 PIM a weekend (that's a bit much for a single game though). He can't be afraid to use his size.

8, actually.

Beeeej

[atb9]

About the rebounds...Lenny was a master at redirecting shots into the corners with his stick...I noticed McKee trying it a few times during the Saturday game against WMU but he seemed uncomfortable doing it (and I was uncomfortable watching him do it).  He's still learning.

[Jeff Hopkins \'82]

I agree.  We were somewhat outplayed in the first period, hence all the penalties.  It could very easily have been 2-1 Princeton.

JH

[jason]

Consistent with reality or not, it's still a good quote. :-)