Senior letdown

[Al DeFlorio]

[quote DeltaOne81][quote Jeff Hopkins '82]And SHU never happened.  ::nut::[/quote]

... again ...[/quote]
Given that Shaun Hannah is the coach at SHU, we should schedule a game against them sometime::whistle::.

[French Rage]

[quote Al DeFlorio][quote DeltaOne81][quote Jeff Hopkins '82]And SHU never happened.  ::nut::[/quote]

... again ...[/quote]
Given that Shaun Hannah is the coach at SHU, we should schedule a game against them sometime::whistle::.[/quote]

Only if Ken Dryden, goalie for the undefeated 1970 team, can attend.

[CM cWo 44]

[quote Jeff Hopkins '82]I don't have a problem with us losing to Maine, or even to SLU and Clarkson on the road this year.  But we should have beaten Yale and Brown.  Full stop.  

And SHU never happened.  ::nut::[/quote]

uhhhh, WAYNE STATE?!?! At Lynah no less. Now that's inexcusable. They're awful.

[billhoward]

One downside to the increased secrecy or privacy about player injuries is that when a player is hurt (but still plays) fans who don't know of the injury may attribute the poorer play to the player rather than his injuries.

So if Ari is right about Bitz' lesser play and lesser leadership, it could be for either reason, but we won't know until after the season if at all.

There's a rough parallel in the workplace: When I see a coworker underperforming, or coming in late and leaving early, or slacking off, or sending nonsense memos, it could be two things: The guy's underperforming, or he's doing drugs again. Reason No. 2 was actually the simpler answer that I preferred to believe, even if it was probably wrong. Look at President Bush and the last couple months: If you don't like the job he's been doing, you could believe he's just not performing, or you could conclude he and Laura are privately running a glaucoma-abatement smoke-a-thon. Just a thought ...

[fullofgas]

from bill howard:Look at President Bush and the last couple months: If you don't like the job he's been doing, you could believe he's just not performing, or you could conclude he and Laura are privately running a glaucoma-abatement smoke-a-thon. Just a thought ...[/quote]
If only that were true we'd all be much better off.  I don't think a Rasta would be sending his kids to die for nefarious reasons.  But this is probably a discussion for another forum...

[KeithK]

Can we keep the political comments in the JSID forum?

[Johnny 5]

The seniors who really let us down are the ones who bailed before this season began. At one time Cornell hockey was fairly unique among successful Div.1 programs in that most (almost all) of its players were actual student athletes. A four year commitment & graduation mattered. It would seem that such is no longer the case. Now the lure of the professional ranks (and big money) is as prevalent here as at any other major college or university. Too bad. Graduation didn't hurt Ken Dryden any. But, then, he could spell dedication.

[Trotsky]

[quote calgARI '07]That year at exactly this time, Cornell won just once in a seven game stretch and looked just as horrible as they have recently, even on home ice.  That team went on to win 7 of the final 8 regular season games and was certainly capable of winning in Albany.[/quote]

That year, Cornell had Dave McKee in goal.  Over that 8-game period, he let in 1 or 0 goals six times.

This year is not a tragedy -- 1993 is a tragedy.  But they will probably hover around .500 for the remainder of the season, for the flaws that people have identified over the last few weeks.  If some scorers get hot, maybe we'll have some fun in Albany.

To the dinosaurs, the year I would compare this to is 1983.  The team was just one year past back-to-back NCAA appearances, and it has a tremendous freshman class including Duanne Moeser, Pete Natyshak, and some guy named Schafer.  They had an on-again, off-again early season, then went catatonic in early January and didn't recover until mid-February.  From then on, they won out -- their final four games -- but the ECAC only took 8 of 17 teams to their playoffs, so they fell short.

This year's team won't have the conference elimination problem.  Hopefully, we'll get to see how far that late rush can take them.

[calgARI '07]

[quote Trotsky]

That year, Cornell had Dave McKee in goal.  Over that 8-game period, he let in 1 or 0 goals six times.
[/quote]

Yes, and he had his fair share of struggles up to that point in the season.  I'm sure many will disagree, but I think Davenport has just as much if not more upside than McKee.

[KeithK]

[quote calgARI '07][quote Trotsky]

That year, Cornell had Dave McKee in goal.  Over that 8-game period, he let in 1 or 0 goals six times.
[/quote]

Yes, and he had his fair share of struggles up to that point in the season.  I'm sure many will disagree, but I think Davenport has just as much if not more upside than McKee.[/quote]For the sake of argument I'll accept that statement.  The difference McKee was able to fulfill his potential to a maximum degree at least in his sophomore season.  If Davenport has a high ceiling we haven't seen him play up to that level yet.  Hopefully he will, though I'll be skeptical about his ability until he elevates his game a bit.  (Though in fairness McKee was no world beater three years ago either.)

[jkahn]

[quote KeithK][quote calgARI]  I'm sure many will disagree, but I think Davenport has just as much if not more upside than McKee.[/quote]For the sake of argument I'll accept that statement.  The difference McKee was able to fulfill his potential to a maximum degree at least in his sophomore season.  If Davenport has a high ceiling we haven't seen him play up to that level yet.  Hopefully he will, though I'll be skeptical about his ability until he elevates his game a bit.  (Though in fairness McKee was no world beater three years ago either.)[/quote]
McKee was pretty damn good his first year,.920 save %.

[calgARI '07]

[quote KeithK][quote calgARI '07][quote Trotsky]

That year, Cornell had Dave McKee in goal.  Over that 8-game period, he let in 1 or 0 goals six times.
[/quote]

Yes, and he had his fair share of struggles up to that point in the season.  I'm sure many will disagree, but I think Davenport has just as much if not more upside than McKee.[/quote]For the sake of argument I'll accept that statement.  The difference McKee was able to fulfill his potential to a maximum degree at least in his sophomore season.  If Davenport has a high ceiling we haven't seen him play up to that level yet.  Hopefully he will, though I'll be skeptical about his ability until he elevates his game a bit.  (Though in fairness McKee was no world beater three years ago either.)[/quote]

Absolutely.  McKee was unbelievable in 04-05 and IMO put forth the best goaltending performance I have seen at Cornell be it a smaller sample than most.  Davenport has shown glimpses as McKee did his freshman year.  He has had four or five spectacular games and four or five awful ones which is not all that different than what McKee had done to this point his freshman year. This is about the point where McKee took off and got his game to the next level.  

I know it doesn't mean everything in the world, but it is important not to forget how much success Davenport had in the USHL, arguably the toughest junior A league.  McKee was good but not as successful in a far lesser league.  Again, doesn't mean a ton, but having a winning pedigree is very important IMO.

Also notable is that Davenport's best game came against far and away the toughest opponent.

[calgARI '07]

[quote jkahn]
McKee was pretty damn good his first year,.920 save %.[/quote]

His numbers certainly were pretty damn good but his performance was inconsistent just as Davenport's has been.  As I said in the above post, McKee elevated his game at this point of his freshman year and I'm hoping Davenport can do the same.

[KeithK]

[quote jkahn]McKee was pretty damn good his first year,.920 save %.[/quote]True. That's why he ended up playing every game.  My point was just that he played his best hockey in 2005 and that this season was a step up compared to the previous season.

Hopefully Davenport does in fact have a higher upside than McKee, as Ari believes, and actually reaches that level of performance at Cornell.  I'm not that optimistic, but I'd imagine Davenport is capable of elevating his game to some degree.

[Jim Hyla]

[quote Johnny 5]The seniors who really let us down are the ones who bailed before this season began. At one time Cornell hockey was fairly unique among successful Div.1 programs in that most (almost all) of its players were actual student athletes. A four year commitment & graduation mattered. It would seem that such is no longer the case. Now the lure of the professional ranks (and big money) is as prevalent here as at any other major college or university. Too bad. Graduation didn't hurt Ken Dryden any. But, then, he could spell dedication.[/quote]Come on, if you had been Bill Gates and could have left school, would you have stayed just to finish your four years? Most of us go to school to get started in the work world. Once we have that opportunity we start our job. For most that's four years, for some of us slow learners it's closer to ten years. If I could have done it in three, who knows???

As we're on the subject, what would you say about Nieuwendyk?