UMass 0 at Cornell 0 (Friday) postgame

[profudge]

Agree with most comments made already -  We played hard and with conviction and effort.

-  couldn't understand the tripping penalty on Nichols - thought U Mass guy scissored his legs and brought him down (what did I miss)?

We seemed to be loosing a lot of face offs - only Gallagher seemed to win his share - a good indication of their quickness - several times they tied up our guy and stepped in low and kicked puck back with foot, a soccer pass.  

Liked flashes of confidence and movement we saw from Fr D Berk.    Liked our hustle across the board -  with gold stars to Mugford, Barlow, Fontas,  Greening and Scott who gave it seemed extra effort evey shift.   We did not have the number of shots,  but  we had at least 8-9 good  scoring opportunities (from my game notes) and could not convert.    Their Keeper played well - and made 2-3 great saves.   U Mass has foot speed and hand speed....  They had sticks on our guys  A LOT;  a lot of little slashes and hooks on our guys,  hard to move puck and pass when a lot of that goes one.    Ref was OK  -  He missed things  both ways  and let them play....  The clothesline of Greening from behind (3rd period) wasn't called and on next play Greening just crunched a UMass player as he did most of night.

Overall enjoyable game - on edge of 'bench' all night -  exciting -  good  college hockey!  
LGR

[Ronald '09]

[quote duffs4]That was a great game to watch.  It seemed like cornell gained confidence as it went on and carried the momentum at the end of the game.  I couldn't imagine what it would have sounded like if we scored at the end.  Crowd presence was the best it's been all year.

One thing I think is worth noting is that this was problably the best reffing job I have ever seen at the college level.  That guy was very good at letting the bulls*t go and calling stuff that was actually a penalty.  I hope we see more of it.[/quote]

I agree Chip MacDonald did an excellent job last night.  I did have problems though with some of the linemen's icing calls.  There were a couple times where I thought a player had the red line and a couple that I thought got close enough to a player to be waived off.  And I'll say that I probably disagreed with about an equal number of icing calls on each team.

Overall, really good job by MacDonald and his crew.

[BMac]

I won't repeat what everyone's been saying- clearly, we agree it was a great game.

Patrick Kennedy is a very good stickhandler, which I hadn't realized before. Too bad he doesn't pass, too.

The Riley-Barlow-Greening line was awesome, especially early on.

Sawada needs to throw his weight around. Nobody else is big enough and willing to do it. We've got to have some senior leadership from people not named Topher.

[evilnaturedrobot]

Much of what I have to say is redundant (Scrivens was awesome, UMASS is very good, crowd energy was great, as was the reffing.)

My main gripe is Schafer's refusal to make Greening-Nash-Barlow-Nash-Gallagher the top PP unit.  The difference in talent between them and the Scott-Sawda unit is unit and day, yet topher's unit is getting the majority of the extra man time,  Everyone and their mother knows that Greening-Nash-Barlow has been our best line all year, they should be getting %60-%70 of PP time.

Also, does anyone know what's up with Mike Devin?  He was missed last night.

[sah67]

[quote BMac]
Patrick Kennedy is a very good stickhandler, which I hadn't realized before. Too bad he doesn't pass, too.

[/quote]

A couple of us in B remarked that P. Kennedy had some flashes of Romnano last night with the selfish stickhandling...hope his brother gets on him for that

[sah67]

[quote evilnaturedrobot]

Also, does anyone know what's up with Mike Devin?  He was missed last night.[/quote]

Nagging injury that developed during the week according to today's IJ.  Joe, and Roeszler (thank god) were healthy scratches.  Poor Jacob Johnston

[evilnaturedrobot]

well, he's got almost a month to rest up now, hopefully that heals him up.  I'm looking forward to seeing him on the other side of Nash on the PP again.

[imafrshmn]

major kudos to someone either in the back of A or in thee band who led one of the best "[university]...sucks" cheers i've heard in a while.  "University of Massachusetts..AMMM-HERST..." lol.

[canuck89]

I couldn't agree more.  This was one of the best ref'd games I've seen in 4 years here, especially since the NCAA started calling games more strictly and keeping an eye out for obstruction.  Compared to Dell, Feola, and Hansen, MacDonald seemed to show proper restraint and was definitely very fair.  God, I hate Dell so much...

[amerks127]

Up until the end of the game, I thought our players were trying to get too fancy.  Make that one extra pass, try to make that one extra move to get past the D, but UMass was too fast for that to work.  I really thought they just needed to get more pucks to the net.  Often times a player had an open shooting lane but elected to pass the puck for a golden scoring opportunity that just turned into a broken play.  The only way Cornell could've scored this game was on a garbage rebound type goal.

I was really angry that Schafer didn't put out the Nash's pp-unit to open OT.  It's not like the line was tired, and they create more opportunities on the ice in one shift than Ray Sawada and Justin Krueger have all season.  I'm really starting to get fed up with Sawada's play.  There's no passion for him.  He celebrated harder for his first goal of the season at Dartmouth than Bitz did when he scored the meaningless goal there last year.

It's great to have Brendon Nash back on the blue line...although he got burned for the (I think it was) third goal against BU, he definitely has the most offensive talent of any of our blueliners.  Nash can really generate some offense by pinching down-low at the right times.

I thought Greening played his most physical game of the season, and that helped create some of Cornell's better scoring opportunities.

Otherwise a pretty solid effort by the team, and I think most of us feel we exceeded expectations tonight by not losing to UMass.  The shots don't tell the entire story, although Scriven's was huge when he had to be.

[Trotsky]

There's always a whipping boy when things aren't going great.  Sawada is this year's.

Might as well go into the break now, to give Brendon even more time to heal, and get rid of some of the nagging aches and pains to some of the guys.  I think the effort they turned in last night against a clearly superior team was outstanding.  Overall, as Schafer has said, they haven't progressed far enough to be a breakout team, but I think they have more raw talent than any Cornell team since at least '05, and likely '03.

[oceanst41]

Just got back from the game and thought I'd include my thoughts. First off, not only was this my first game at Lynah in the two years since graduation but it was also my first at Lynah where I wasn't seated in the student section.

So that leads me to my first comment. The crowd sounded excellent. I know being opposite the students really let's them project the cheers to you but I heard from numerous people that it was the best crowd of the year.

Second, this game reminded me a lot of Cornell teams of the past where the plan was to check and cycle them to death and eventually wear the other team out. That was exactly how this game played out. Cornell was really hanging on by a thread until almost the third (Scrivens kept them in this game early, because it easily could've gotten out of hand). His post to post save in the second was a game saver. That forward will be having nightmares about that one.

UMass was a very quick team and gave our breakout fits, especially when the figured out our bread and butter is to hand it off to a forward behind the net and let them carry it out. It was fun to watch the coaching take place as Toot put his forecheckers on the half wall to stop that breakout, the Schafer countered by faking the handoff and having the defense skate it up the middle.

The third period is where Cornell really started to show something. There were a couple shifts in what seemed like a row where Cornell controlled the puck for a few minutes. It started with the Nash-Greening-Barlow line, continued with Topher et al, and then finshed with the 4th line. Really gassed UMass for the rest of the game, they didn't put too much together after that.

Obviously Scrivens played his best game of the year, along with Topher and in all honesty I thought Sawada looked a lot better than any game I've seen him in so far this year too. Also, P. Kennedy may have been a little selfish but he nearly blew the game  when he pinched on the point (covering for Nash I believe) leading to a 3 on 1 the other way. It was down the far end from Section O so I couldn't see who broke it up. Krueger also had an excellent break up of a 2 on 1 in the 2nd.

Finally, boy could this team use some finishers.

[BCrespi]

[quote amerks127] I'm really starting to get fed up with Sawada's play.  There's no passion for him.  He celebrated harder for his first goal of the season at Dartmouth than Bitz did when he scored the meaningless goal there last year.
[/quote]

Could you explain what you mean by this?  I'm not sure I follow what you are saying by the Bitz:Sawada celebration analogy.  Thanks.

[amerks127]

Sure.  Let me first go back and quote Ari's article from Week 15 last year, Traveling Back in Time.

Perhaps more concerning was the night before when Bitz tipped a shot past Mike Devine with under nine minutes left in the third period to make the game 4-1. Bitz celebrated the goal as if he had tied the game or won it in overtime.

All I'm saying is that Sawada scored a soft goal on Devine to open the scoring of the game, and he celebrated the goal in a similar fashion.  It's the only time I've seen him fired up all season.  Before that, I think he'd only put the puck in the net in the Red/White game.

He needs to dig a little deeper and start making an impact somewhere on the ice.  It doesn't necessarily have to come by goals, but Sawada has to do something to elevate his game to that next level.

[Beeeej]

[quote amerks127]Sure.  Let me first go back and quote Ari's article from Week 15 last year, Traveling Back in Time.

Perhaps more concerning was the night before when Bitz tipped a shot past Mike Devine with under nine minutes left in the third period to make the game 4-1. Bitz celebrated the goal as if he had tied the game or won it in overtime.

All I'm saying is that Sawada scored a soft goal on Devine to open the scoring of the game, and he celebrated the goal in a similar fashion.  It's the only time I've seen him fired up all season.  Before that, I think he'd only put the puck in the net in the Red/White game.[/quote]

Dartmouth has had our number at Thompson since before Sawada arrived at Cornell, and he drew first blood.  It's one thing to say he doesn't play with enough intensity.  But now we're picking nits about when and how players are allowed to celebrate?