Just in case you missed it...

[Josh '99]

RichS wrote:

Right...and that's so much more difficult than convincing a kid to spend 4 years in Ithaca.   ::rolleyes::

Actually, for a lot of the recruits, being in Potsdam, or Canton, is a big plus since they are that much closer to home, specifically, the Ottawa and Toronto areas.

Your point about being closer to home is a valid one.

That first sentence is a long version of "I'm rubber, you're glue."  :-P

[RichS]

Al,

Your last statement is oh so true...and I just have to smile....and then laugh, whenever ANY ECAC team gets as high as cornell is in the  polls currently because the ECAC  bashers generally have nothing more substantive to say than ...."they CAN'T be that good...they're from the EZAC!"

I recall hearing that a few years back when Clarkson climbed as high as # 2 or #3.

Of course, it would be so much more fun for us if an ECAC team at least gets to the championship game.  Hopefully, this year!!

[Tom Hamill \'85]

Mark Mazzoleni, Harvard's fourth-year coach: "it was a one-way rivalry. Now it's 50-50 who's going to win the game."

Mark old boy, if you'd like an even steven bet on who wins when Cornell comes to Lynah East, look me up (And I won't tell the Commish you bet on your team).

Tom

[Al DeFlorio]

There may be two ECAC teams that could have a go at it this year.  I'd prefer the other one were Clarkson.;-)

[Greg Berge]

Been a long time since we had a RichS-Al shootout, and it looks like this one's pretty amicable.  I think the old guys are slowing down... (looks at his approaching 40th birthday and shuts up).

[rhovorka]

My favorite quote from the story:
[Q]"Coach has a vision for what the team needs to be," Moore said. "I think he has been frustrated at times because it's an ongoing process and we haven't been able to do it. He's real eager this year. For the first time, he believes we can be in the top of the country."[/Q]
It's my favorite quote because it gives us a small window to look into the hell that must be Mark Mazzoleni's life this season.  The year that his team is finally playing well enough to be the clear #1 in many ECAC seasons... well enough to dominate the league like the Crimson teams of the late '80s and early '90s did...happens to be the year that many believe another team from the league has what it takes to blow away the rest of the nation, and is taking away his press.  Not only that, but that other team is the one that everyone keeps hassling him about having a rivalry with.  It's gotta be driving him crazy.  It also explains why he's been such a pompous a-hole to the media.  I hated Ron TomASSoni, but every time M-ASS-oleni opens his mouth in the press with the whole "Harvard is God's gift to college hockey" attitude, the more he elevates himself over his predecessor in the SOB category.

To illustrate, from http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=255361
[Q]"St. Lawrence, Clarkson and Cornell have pretty much done their yeoman's share of staying at the top, but we need the Harvards of the world to be there."
--Mark Mazzoleni[/Q]
What an ass.  F*** Harvard as well as rooting for them "for the good of the league."  There are 11 other teams I can root for "for the good of the league."

[jd212]

This is why I am convinced the Cornell fans are the most obnoxious in college hockey.  I have heard probably about 4 or 5 interviews with mazzoleni this season, and in every single one, he mentions, at least once,  how good Cornell is and all that jazz... He has a right to think his team is the best around because they have 18 points in the ECAC and Cornell has 10. Granted, they have played five more games than Cornell, but until Cornell wins those games, Harvard will be in first. I also believe Harvard plays better nonconference teams than Cornell does, probably because of their proximity to the hotbed of HE, and the three games they have lost have all been to ranked teams at some point or another. Do you expect them to say, "we want to come in second because we know Cornell is going all the way and we know they are better than us?" Of course not, there is no reason to think they can't beat us next time we play them.  Dartmouth beat us, but that doesn't mean they are better than us.  At this point, I have no more reason to suspect that Cornell will make it to the FF any more than Harvard will.  Just because a coach or player says he thinks his team has what it takes to win it all, it isn't intended as a disparagement to Cornell.  I think Cornell fans should get their pompous heads out of the sand and start realizing that other teams have just as much of a shot as Cornell does. The games are won on the ice...

[littleredfan]

The Harvards ?

If I may quote from Saved By the Bell,

"North, South, East, or West, theres only one.....HARRRRRRRRRVARD"

(in response to the Stansbury (read:Stanford) college recruiter calling them the Harvard of the west)

[Ben Doyle 03]

Jason,

Just so you are in the "know," Harvard plays the #16 strongest schedule  and Cornell plays the #4 schedule (Non-conference games ARE included in that schedule).

Chill-out and go drink a beer. . .:-)

[jason]

Well, Rich might have been a little zealous in his statements (my feelings about Mazz fall somewhere in the "luke warm" to "mildly put off" range depending on the day) but I agree to a degree in that often after reading quotes by Mazz --for example, in the USCHO recap of this year's Cornell-Harvard game-- it strikes me that his praise of Cornell or other opposition is served up in a self-serving/piggybacking fashion. Rather than it being simply "They are good" it is "They are good but what is really important is that we every bit as good too". Maybe that's not a bad thing for a coach to be doing, but it can leave a sour taste in one's mouth when reading that stuff, for example (from the aforementioned recap):

"They're good at that [blocking shots]. That negates a lot of ability going through," Mazzoleni said.

and

"They move the puck well on the power play and we do," said Mazzoleni. "Both teams should have good special teams, we're good teams. Our penalty kill is getting better."

The first quote strikes me as a back-handed compliment and in the second the praise of Cornell feels like a pretense to say complimentary things about his own team. Maybe I just have a heightened sensitivity to this sort of thing when it's coming from the direction of Cambridge...

[rhovorka]

Jason, just as you have the right to think that Cornell fans are the most obnoxious in college hockey (especially considering many of us recently have ummm...asserted our presence on other boards), I have the right to think that Mazzoleni is the most obnoxious coach in college hockey...or at least in the East.  I never demanded that he get down on his knees and proclaim to the hockey gods that Cornell is the greatest team to lace them up in the past 20 years and that his team isn't worthy of licking the bottom Coach Schafer's shoes.  I don't even care if he makes comments about Cornell or not.  His talented team is having a great season, and I never said that speaking about it is any disparagment to Cornell.  I think most of us here would certainly agree that Harvard has the talent to make a lot of noise in the NCAAs, and has had that talent for a few years now.  But the interviews *I* have read (which include the above quote I cited), as well as on-ice incidents such as his stick-chucking outburst last season at Lynah have led me to form my opinion, which is apparently different than yours.  If you think that makes me obnoxious, then that's your prerogative.

And I couldn't agree more about the games being won on the ice.  I just wish Mazz would realize that as well when he opens his mouth.

Edit: I agree with Jason N '95's entire post, but especially the bit about me being over-zealous in my first post.  Like him, my opinion swings a bit, and I just happened to be caught in the nadir of my opinion of Mazzoleni.  :-)  

[jd212]

Ok, so I have a question then. How in the world do you *objectively* determine the strength of a schedule you haven't played yet? Wouldn't you say you can't possibly know precisely what the empirical strength of a team is until the day you play them, because isn't strength determined by a team's performance? If strength of schedule is determined by the previous year's performances of the opposing teams, then it doesn't mean a damn thing, and if strength of schedule is an estimated determination based on an extrapolated manipulation of numbers, well, then that doesn't mean a damn thing either because hockey is a sport, and not an easily predictable one.  So how is it determined before the schedule is actually played?

The way I see it, Harvard has some teams on their schedule, like Brown, BC, BU, and Maine, that have been ranked fairly high when Harvard played them, or will play them shortly (Beanpot). Cornell, OTOH, has played Ohio State, which I don't believe was really ranked, and Western Mich, which also wasn't ranked, out of conference. No, I did not forget about the BU games. But what other teams, as of yet, has Cornell beaten that were ranked, other than BU and Harvard, which was 14 at the time, I believe? I look at strength of schedule as being determined as we play the schedule, otherwise it's a bunch of stats, which don't mean a damn thing. True, we will play Maine, but unless we beat them, the Harvard tie against BC was more impressive. And we haven't seen what Harvard will do to Maine, yet.  My point is, if you guys claim all these stats don't mean a damn thing in December, then don't use them to bolster your argument. I'm just looking at the teams' schedules as we play them, and right now, Cornell is knocking everyone's socks off, but Harvard is certainly holding their own as well.

[Tub(a)]

as you said "the games are won on the ice."

so, to be "objective," the only stat you need is:

Cornell 5
Harvard 2

[rhovorka]

In this case, I do agree with Jason in terms of SOS.  Harvard has done a great job in setting up an excellent OOC schedule, IMO.  It's a little odd that BC and BU played Harvard, seeing as HU has a good shot at seeing these 2 teams anyway at the Beanpot.  And the Badger showdown seems like a pretty good show as well with NMU and Wisc. the likely opponents.  Having BU and Maine as common opponents is a good thing for the top of the ECAC.

BTW...reading Jason's posts get confusing to me as he uses "we" to refer to Cornell, when I have it in my mind that he's a Crimson representative...not just a sympathizer.  :-)

[jtwcornell91]

I assume he's talking about http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2003/krach which has a strength of schedule measure for each team based on the performance so far this season of the teams they've played so far this season.  There's another measure of schedule strength so far at http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2003/rpi and according to that Cornell's schedule is the 6th hardest and Harvard's is the 27th.  ::uhoh:: The main reason for this seems to be that Harvard has played so many ECAC games, and much of the ECAC is doing pretty poorly overall.  WMU may not be as strong as we'd hoped pre-season, but they're stronger than Clarkson and SLU so far.

You can see breakdowns of the two teams' schedules at http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2003/current/Kcrit.Cr and http://slack.net/~whelan/tbrw/tbrw.cgi?2003/current/Kcrit.Ha