Cornell 2 @ Quinnipiac 5 Post Game Thread

[ebilmes]

So, as people who were at the game get back, what did y'all think? Davenport let in four goals - his fault? How was our play? We outshot Q, but managed to lose. Quinnipiac leads the ECAC in points: how good are they?

[dbilmes]

I just got back from the game. If you weren't there, you missed the hideous sight of the Quinnipiac Bobcat doing the chicken dance on the ice during the first intermission, as well as the obnoxious and way-too-loud public address announcer and the irritating piped-in music. The alumni pep band did a great job, though, especially the cymbals player.
As for the game, there's no one culprit you can point to for the loss. Defensive mistakes led to Quinnipiac's two even-strength goals, the second of which gave them a 4-2 lead and really was the back-breaker. First we gave the puck away at our blue line and had the Quinnipiac player hit the crossbar with his shot. Then we immediately gave it away again in our zone, and this time the Quinnipiac player went top shelf again and scored. Our penalty killing wasn't that good, and on the second Quinnipiac power-play goal it looked like our guys were back on their heels throughout the entire power play.
Even so, the Quinnipiac goalie made a couple of great back-to-back saves on point-blank shots by us at the end of the second period. If one of those goes in, it's a 3-3 tie after two periods and we probably would have won the game. We outskated Q for long periods of play, but they were definitely the more physical team. I can't really fault Davenport for any of their goals. Those guys know how to put the puck in the net if you give them a chance, and we gave them too many.
At this point in the season, with the team we have, we have to be satisfied with splitting a pair of road games. This was a winnable game tonight, but we didn't make the plays when we had to. Romano was hardly a factor at all tonight, and the same could be said for most of our freshmen.

[nyc94]

Harvard lost. . . again.  ::uhoh::  1-6 ECACHL, 2-6 overall, 0-4 Ivy, and at BU on Tuesday.  I bet they're psyched for exams.

[Chris '03]

[quote nyc94]Harvard lost. . . again.  ::uhoh::  1-6 ECACHL, 2-6 overall, 0-4 Ivy, and at BU on Tuesday.  I bet they're psyched for exams.[/quote]

Too bad they don't get to take exams until the end of January!

[nyc94]

[quote Chris '03][quote nyc94]Harvard lost. . . again.  ::uhoh::  1-6 ECACHL, 2-6 overall, 0-4 Ivy, and at BU on Tuesday.  I bet they're psyched for exams.[/quote]

Too bad they don't get to take exams until the end of January![/quote]

Well they only have one game in December (Dartmouth at Bright on 12/16) prior to the Great Lakes Invitional so they have some time to work on things.  Of course, they have BU, Quinnipiac, Princeton, and Vermont before the end of November.

[Beeeej]

[quote dbilmes] The alumni pep band did a great job, though, especially the cymbals player.[/quote]

Especially since they only brought me one!

Seriously, the organizers and participants of the alumni pep band did an outstanding job.  I was really only needed for "Davy," the alma mater, and a few of the regular "cheers," since a talented enough snare player can cover cymbal duty as well on most other songs, and Brian's a talented enough snare player.  But I was happy to help; I sometimes feel like the free ride to Grand Rapids in 1997 is a debt I can't ever quite repay.

About the game, all I have to say about that is this:  Q wanted it, and they took it, but we didn't exactly make it difficult for them.  That fourth goal, the back-breaker, came complete with an engraved invitation, a silver platter, finger sandwiches, and a bottle of lube.  Maybe Leneveu, McKee, or Dryden get two miracle saves in a row instead of just one, but our defense keeps hanging Davenport out to dry, and not surprisingly, that will keep resulting in goals.

The boys simply looked tired in the third, and Q was still raring to go.  Seeing Q's season thus far on the way into this game, I suspected something like this would happen, and there you go.  But now at least I've seen a game at the Northford Jiffy Pop Center before they move to the new place.

Let's take two from Wayne State next weekend.  God knows it'll make me feel better...

[The Rancor]

sounds like we got spanked.

[calgARI '07]

Cornell was unquestionably the better team tonight, especially early. In fact, I'll go out and say it was one of the better games they've played this year. Quinnipiac plays a much different system than any other team in the ECACHL and it made a big impact as the game progressed.  Fisher made two spectacular saves in the second when it was 3-2 and that was the difference in the game.  I would have been worried of Quinnipiac dominated this game but they didn't.  They were very opportunistic and played well within their up-tempo system.  Pecknold really tipped his hat to Cornell in his post game remarks and that should indicate something.  I expect Cornell to go to Florida with a 10-2 record.

[billhoward]

[quote "This isn't the Ivy League!" -- Quinnipiac fan, screaming, as one of the Bobcat icers drew yet another (perceived marginal) penalty, in the third period with the game in hand if not yet comfortably in hand.]  [/quote]

"Don't we know it," was the immediate rejoinder.

That was about the only one-upsmanship Cornell fans could muster after the first period. The Big Red played well much of the game until a third-period snooze-a-thon starting about five minutes in that included Quinnipiac's fourth goal. The goal came immediately after a failed Cornell breakout/turnover; Davenport and the pipe made a spectacular save, only to see Cornell give it back moments later and Brendan Wong put the puck home at 7:19. But Quinnipiac played well, too. We always see things through biased eyes, and it does feel as if Quinnipiac got a few more breaks than Cornell.

Cornell's power play looked decent moving the puck around, I thought, and taking lots of shots, I thought, but the books say differently: in seven attempts, just five shots got on goal and one went in. Quinnipiac was 2 for 5 on just 4 shots, which is a pretty fair percentage (the last QU PP opportunity was with just 14 seconds left when Mitch Carefoot took exception to the evening's activities, so it was really 2x4). Quinnipiac drew more penalities early on and it looked as if that could be a difference, especially when we got a PPG on the second Q penalty just 6:46 into the game by Topher Scott.

Cornell's freshmen didn't seem quite as evident as in some other games. Which is odd, because the Northford Ice Pavilion is sort of like a low-juniors hockey rink with low ceilings, low levels of lighting, low-cost stands, and low-rent chicken wire mesh along the sides. (Not knocking it: We've all played pickup hockey in worse.) Just like home last year for the frosh, or just like away-from-home when you played at the least desirable barn in the league. One exception to the barely-visible-freshmen note: Joe Scali (#28) got in the line-up (Justin Milo was not dressed - PM Ari if you want details ) and he was flying everywhere, throwing checks and exuding energy. Alas, one of those energetic checks was from behind at the end of the first and led to QU's first goal. Ah, youth.

For the obligatory Davenport-played-great, Davenport-sucked, Davenport-went-too-far-out-of-the-crease paragraph: It appeared, looking through the mesh netting, that he was having trouble tracking the puck against the low, silvery ceiling, and with the dimmer illumination. My camera said it was half as bright (one f/stop less) as Lynah. A couple times, a moment after the crack of the shot, his head jerked in a different direction, as if he was reacquiring the puck. Four times, unfortunately, reacquiring meant reachng back with his stick to fish it out. It still feels as if Davenport is, if not to be spoken of in the same breath as, well, every Cornell goaltender of the past decade, then more than capable most nights, and not the root cause of our 6-2 record, which come to think of it isn't all that bad.

Topher was the only -2 (plus/minus) player for the night. He got the first goal but that was his only SOG. He was on for the ill-fated two-takeaways-one-goal crusher by QU in the third (not sure if was part of an aborted line change). And he got sent away for diving 5 minutes into the third when QU's Dan Travis drew the third of his four penalties. Down 3-2 early in the third and you lose a PP advantage, that hurts. That's about when it felt as if the energy was fading for Cornell. And it reached a low point 12 minutes in, now down 4-2, and Michael Kennedy gets whistled off. At that point it was pretty clearly Game Over, Cornell having already has its miracle two-goals-in-the-final-two-minutes effort against Dartmouth. I don't think you get two of those in one season.

The high point of the evening, other than looking around QU's Northford Ice Pavilion and thinking, "there but for the grace of good SAT scores go I," was Michael Kennedy's goal 13 minutes into the second off a drop pass from Tylor Mugford, that got the score back to a one-goal deficit three minutes after QU scored.

For the part of me that wants to watch exciting hockey, the 2006-07 team provides that in droves. If we're gonna lose games, it's better to go down 4-2 (plus the ENG) in a game that's high energy, than watch Cornell lose a 2-1 muck-it-up-in-the-corners game where you just know there's little chance the previous couple teams could get a single tying goal in the final five minutes.

Take two from Wayne State next weekend [edit: plus two from Union and RPI at Lynah Dec. 1-2] and we head into exams and Florida at 10-2. That's not bad. We get the second crack at Quinnipiac in the final homestand of the season, Friday, Feb. 16. Too bad we couldn't have Q's travel partner Princeton be the Friday game as a warmup, letting QU take its lumps at Colgate before limping into Ithaca. The other danger being we win a grudge match Friday against the Bobcats and let down Saturday vs. the Tigers.

So we lost but it wasn't a horrible loss. We outshot QU reasonably well, 29-22, and there was not glaring, fatal problems with the team other than the already known ups and downs in the defensive end.

The Big Red dismounted alumni marching band was great although there wasn't much it could do with QU's musical broadcasts throughout the game and stoppages.

[Beeeej]

[quote billhoward]Take two from Wayne State next weekend and we head into exams and Florida at 10-2.[/quote]

Kind of dangerous looking at even a home weekend against RPI and Union as a fait accompli, isn't it?

[billhoward]

No more dangerous than hoping for McKee to complete the final 5 minutes of the game and hold on to his shutout.

We've had no problems with RPI or Union the last couple ... wait, strike that. I had to sit through the lethargic loss at RPI last year.

[GB]

The oblivious Quinnipiac fan emphatically reminding us of the score was hilarious.

[Beeeej]

The only thing that would've been more hilarious than someone crowing about a one-goal lead in the second period would've been our coming back and winning.  :`-(

[Brian Deerr '04]

Perhaps I'm only seeing it because I'm looking for it, but it seems like (since I arrived at Cornell for the '00-'01 season) we have a tendency to wait until every man on the ice is exactly where he wants to be before we attempt to break out of our zone.  Given the trouble we seem to have doing that, I wonder if we wouldn't be better off being a little more aggressive in that aspect.  Aside from our terrible defensive zone play, the most disappointing moment of the game was definitely the Bobcat chicken dance during the first intermission.  I just can't understand why they didn't bring out the Skate-a-saurus to fight him for the rights to that song.

While it's an admittedly small sample size, I'm a little concerned that we came out so flat for the start of the 3rd period two nights in a row.  However, I will agree that with the exception of the poor play in our own end and some questionable decisions throughout the game, we did outplay Quinnipiac for the most part.

I'm encouraged by the hustle we showed while forechecking this weekend.  Sawada's hard work led to a goal the other night.

Beeeej, it was a pleasure to have you join me on the percussion last night.  You did a fine job and it was nice to have somebody next to me who knows hockey.  It makes the game that much more enjoyable, even in a loss.

Finally, given Colgate's slow start to the season, how will this play out for us over the remainder of the season?  We've gotten used to having a very strong travel partner in recent years - can they step it up to make us a more dangerous pair?  It seems like there is a lot of parity between the travel partners at this point, with the North Country trip being slightly tougher than the rest.  Thoughts?

[Omie]

Just got back to Ithaca. First the good things, I was surprised we outshot Q considering they are one of the most offensive-minded teams in the ECAC so the defense wasn't terrible. However, we need to start going for goals from in front of the net and not the point. PP looked ok but again Bitz is being a non-factor. Did McCutcheon get a bit hurt in the 1st? He was kinda limping part of the game. The second Q goal was a beauty the screen was just perfect and Davenport had no shot whatsoever. But the 3rd goal was just horrendous it was the same types of goals that Harvard scored (back door) and Davenport was just giving out too many rebounds. It might just my opinion but whoever said Davenport's strength is his positioning, well that was not the case in this game. Fischer had great saves especially in the second he had back-to-back saves after a 2 on 0 that were just "wow". I think of all the players nobody really stood out, maybe Kennedy a little. When we took Davenport of the net with 2:32 to go my only thought was "If this didn't work against Dartmouth why would it work now?" It wasn't a blowout but Quinnipiac is a real contender and we just didn't seem to want the win. The PP and PK still need lots of work and we shouldn't underestimate Union or RPI, last year they gave us enough trouble. Now onto next weekend and beat Wayne State and improve our special teams.

LGR!

PS I took video of the Bobcat doign the chicken dance, omg was that awful!