Cornell 2 Yale 2 (ot, final)

[Liz '05]

How much time is left?

[RichH]

0:27.4.  Timeout, Cornell

[cth95]

Decent play but what a crappy way to lose a point.

[Al DeFlorio]

Bad night for Cornell sports.  Give away a hockey win and wrestlers lose to Lehigh.  Charging penalty with two minutes and change to go and up by one.  Unbelievable.

[dbilmes]

More and more, it's looking like this just isn't our year. We also had a key goal scored against us earlier this year which deflected off the back of Davenport's skate.

[Trotsky]

To be fair, we also had two gift goals against Maine (which didn't matter).

I'm taking the positive spin.  It was a great defensive effort, and a second great night for the penalty kill.  Things to build on.

[redhair34]

[quote Trotsky]
I'm taking the positive spin.[/quote]

I'm trying to, but can't.  A tougher team would have bounced back from the adversity after the very unfortunate own goal with a good effort in the overtime period.  But we didn't.  Yale pretty much dominated overtime.  The one bright spot in the extra frame was when Krantz stood up for Davenport after Boucher (goon *cough, cough*) slashed him.  They knocked us around all night and Krantz was pretty much the first guy to answer back.  Someone should have taken a run at Boucher in the first period after he headhunted Romano.

[KeithK]

[quote dbilmes]More and more, it's looking like this just isn't our year. We also had a key goal scored against us earlier this year which deflected off the back of Davenport's skate.[/quote]Well, coming into October no one thought this was our year.  So no surprise there id it turns out that way.

[Avash]

Cornell is now 102-1-6 when leading after two periods (since the start of the 00-01 season).

[redhair34]

[quote Avash '05]Cornell is now 102-1-6 when leading after two periods (since the start of the 00-01 season).[/quote]

and Yale has contributed two ties to that record the last two seasons.

[calgARI '07]

This team has completely lost its focus.  They aren't playing with any sense of urgency or hunger.  They just don't look like they are having much fun.  This Yale team played the same way they did when Cornell played there the second weekend of the season yet this was a pretty even game.  It just shows had badly Cornell is playing now to the level to which they have played.  Some guys are contributing nothing.

The team did not attack at all in the third period and probably should have still won 2-1.  Doesn't matter.  They had plenty of time and a couple powerplays to deliver the knockout punch and they didn't.  This team is not generating anywhere near the amount of chances or shots that they need to to win consistently.  It comes back to the lack of energy and hunger coming from this team.  

I wonder what has happened to Topher Scott.  He has not been the same player since before the Finals break.  Very little enthusiasm and he is not winning the battles that he usually has been.  The last six games has been the worst stretch of his career at Cornell IMO.  

No sure what Schafer is doing putting Fontas on a line with Romano.  Romano is far and away the team's best offensive player and Fontas is not exactly anywhere near him.  I actually liked Fontas's game tonight in terms of his PKing and defensive play but he isn't going to help Romano.

I defend Troy Davenport a lot but he was a difference in the game tonight.  Didn't like the first goal and second was just fucking unacceptable.

The powerplay is still predictable and pathetic.  The two players high just play paddy-cake with the puck in hope of a shooting lane opening up.  Surprisingly never happens considering every coach in the country knows what Cornell does on their powerplay.  What is so preposterous about the two units is the complete unwillingness to use the low options.  When you have guys like Scott and Romano, that is just plain stupid.  

Thought Carefoot was very good again tonight and he's been the team's best player over this brutal stretch.  A couple other guys were good as well like Romano, Krantz, Seminoff, McLeod but in general, not many guys are playing any better than average.  McLeod deserves a lot of credit for how steady he has been considering the fact that he has never played defense before and that he hadn't played in real game in two years.

Again, the overall team dynamic is weak right now, lacking most if not all of the intangibles you need to have success.  This team will not go anywhere unless they can find that hunger and enthusiasm that really signified the team early in the season.  And I will continue to blame the leaders of this team for the struggles in this area.

[French Rage]

[quote redhair34][quote Trotsky]
I'm taking the positive spin.[/quote]

I'm trying to, but can't.  A tougher team would have bounced back from the adversity after the very unfortunate own goal with a good effort in the overtime period.  But we didn't.  Yale pretty much dominated overtime.  The one bright spot in the extra frame was when Krantz stood up for Davenport after Boucher (goon *cough, cough*) slashed him.  They knocked us around all night and Krantz was pretty much the first guy to answer back.  Someone should have taken a run at Boucher in the first period after he headhunted Romano.[/quote]

Also, it's Yale and at home, it's hard to put anything short of a win in a positive light.

[RichH]

[quote calgARI '07]focus...urgency or hunger.  ...energy and hunger....enthusiasm.

dynamic...intangibles...hunger...enthusiasm...leaders.[/quote]

This totally isn't fair of me, Ari, since the meat of your post had a lot of real substantial content and analysis.  But it's the bits I snipped out here that really starts making you sound like the hundreds of hack sportswriters all over the country who use the whole "intangibles" angle to fill their crappy little fluff-heavy pieces for the Topeka Dispatch.  This phony type of "analysis" is starting to leak into this forum more and more.  The rest of your post (as do the majority of your other game-analyses) did a fine job discussing the good and the bad performances that we can observe as spectators.  But I don't buy this "leadership" and "desire" as observable quantities mumbo-jumbo.  That's just trying to make someone seem smarter or more "in-the-know" than others.  Cornell didn't win tonight not because our skaters weren't led properly to the appropriate hunger-level.  We didn't win because we didn't put the puck in the back of the net enough and didn't take care of the puck at a crucial point in the game.

I agree there might be a leadership problem, but there's more evidence in that with the fact that nearly the entire freshmen class was left home last week for a critical league weekend than any bounce of the puck could reveal.

At least nobody has used the phrase "knows how to win" yet.  Leave that to the idiot writers who need to fill inches on their 18th editorial about Tom Brady and Derek Jeter.

[calgARI '07]

[quote RichH][quote calgARI '07]focus...urgency or hunger.  ...energy and hunger....enthusiasm.

dynamic...intangibles...hunger...enthusiasm...leaders.[/quote]

This totally isn't fair of me, Ari, since the meat of your post had a lot of real substantial content and analysis.  But it's the bits I snipped out here that really starts making you sound like the hundreds of hack sportswriters all over the country who use the whole "intangibles" angle to fill their crappy little fluff-heavy pieces for the Topeka Dispatch.  This phony type of "analysis" is starting to leak into this forum more and more.  The rest of your post (as do the majority of your other game-analyses) did a fine job discussing the good and the bad performances that we can observe as spectators.  But I don't buy this "leadership" and "desire" as observable quantities mumbo-jumbo.  That's just trying to make someone seem smarter or more "in-the-know" than others.  Cornell didn't win tonight not because our skaters weren't led properly to the appropriate hunger-level.  We didn't win because we didn't put the puck in the back of the net enough and didn't take care of the puck at a crucial point in the game.

I agree there might be a leadership problem, but there's more evidence in that with the fact that nearly the entire freshmen class was left home last week for a critical league weekend than any bounce of the puck could reveal.

At least nobody has used the phrase "knows how to win" yet.  Leave that to the idiot writers who need to fill inches on their 18th editorial about Tom Brady and Derek Jeter.[/quote]

I understand where you're coming from (particularly about Jeter and the Patriots) but I find it very difficult to underestimate these intangibles.  The team isn't playing with the same enthusiasm as they did against Yale earlier in the year or against UNH.  Meaning they weren't finishing every checks, they weren't busting their asses consistently and they weren't driving to the net.  Sportswriters may talk about these things too much but coaches and players talk about them as well.  Schafer has ripped on the leadership a good amount lately.  

Having a swagger and edge to your game makes a difference and I think this is a particularly evident with Cornell the past few years.  Yeah, there was a lot of talent, but those teams played with a lot of emotion and consistently went that extra mile to make things happen.

I think the hunger, leadership, etc. correlate directly to the big things, notably scoring goals and winning games.  Hockey is little things including intangibles IMO and all that together produces the bigger things.  Just my opinion though again, I certainly see where you're coming from.

[sah67]

Some unstructured comments after getting home from the game:

This was definitely a heart-breaking tie, and a win we desperately needed.

No matter how you want to see the waved-off goal that led to Romano's missed penalty shot (it was difficult to see how the goal actually went in from my vantage-point in D), Feola definitely didn't seem to have control of the situation after the play, and never made it clear that a penalty shot was coming up until practically when Romano started skating.

Besides Bitz's goal, (and I'm not sure what surprised me more, a Cornell PPG, or Bitz doing something useful) he seemed to still greatly disappoint for most of the game, lacking aggression and puck control.

Speaking of greatly disappointing...nothing new can be said about the PP which still looks abysmal.  Perhaps slightly better from last weekend in terms of # of shots taken, and time taken to set up plays...but still absolutely pathetic.

Other under-performers in my opinion were Barlow, Krueger, and Sawada, who after playing excellent in the last few games, just really didn't seem to make his presence felt tonight.

Great to see Nash, Gallagher and Romano back in the lineup, as they all played strong tonight, particularly Romano and Nash.  If only Romano can get better with his aggression and control of the puck on the boards...the kid's got such amazing moves and is a deadly scoring weapon, but seems to lose the puck everytime he's even slightly challenged.  Seminoff and Krantz again were excellent on D, as was Davenport.  The PK seems back on track...but for how long?  Fontas and McLeod also contributed nicely, and didn't seem to cause any nervous situations...both also took shots I believe.  I think keeping at least one of them in the lineup might be useful, in place of maybe Barlow or Salmela, but I'd love to see Scali and Milo back on the ice as well...and rumor has it that Glover was unhappy about being a healthy scratch tonight, and will play against Brown.

We seemed to play the traditional Cornell-style "score and then hang on for dear life" strategy after each goal, instead of aggressively forechecking and trying to put the puck in the net for extra insurance.  Several times I noticed during the game that during periods of 5x5 play, we seemed like we playing a PK.

After reviewing the archived game on CSTV game to see Davenport's fuck-up own goal, I can find no reason to excuse him for trying to play that puck.  Seminoff and Mugford were all over it, and no matter why he fell on his ass, he shouldn't have been in the position he was, and it was no fault of Seminoff's that the puck went off his skate.  Davenport had been doing his usual make-everyone-nervous-by-coming-out-of-the-crease-to-play-every-puck routine all night, but also seemed to be solid and had some good saves...not challenged too intensely though.  

The last few minutes of regulation and the entirety of OT were hard to watch.  It just seemed like we had given our all, and then simply gave up.  Yale absolutely dominated us in OT, and there were multiple scoring situations for them, that just barely got cleared or deflected by our seemingly lost defense.  The Davenport screw-up just seemed to take all the air out of our tires, when it should have motivated us to put one more in.