Union Postgame

[Scersk '97]

As Tom said, the break out and power play continue to be frustrating, but, hey, they've always been frustrating.  I can't begin to tell you how frustrating the break out and power play were in the McCutcheon years...

I'll go with the other side of Tom's comment regarding "wasting talent":  I don't really think this team is all that talented, top to bottom.  The four members of the senior class are either overachieving (Fontas), about right but not surrounded with the right personnel (Scott), or, frankly, underachieving (Krantz and Sawada).  Both of our underachievers came in highly touted and haven't exactly panned out:  Krantz, at least, is much better in his own end than when he started, even if he isn't putting up offensive stats this year; who knows what's wrong with Sawada?  (And then there's that Pokulok guy we lost...)  It's not a great thing when 3/4s of your captains aren't playing spectacularly well.  (One can only hope we have a single (junior) captain next year...)

Just take a look at the stats.  This team is heavily freshman and sophomore driven.  They're going to make mistakes; they're going to get pushed around.  I think those are two really good recruiting classes, though.  One more like those and we're set to make a deep run.  Then it's just the matter of a hot, talented goalie.

Underachieving?  Maybe overachieving instead.  I think the analogy here is to 2001 or maybe even 2000.

So, what I want to see is improvement over last year, which I think we've seen.  I want us to be competitive, which is all you can ask for in a rebuilding year like this.  I want our boys to dedicate themselves during and after this season to becoming bigger, faster, and stronger.  Anything else is gravy.  I can be patient.

(My one coaching thing that I'd like to see is for Schafer to put together an all frosh and soph power play unit.  Give them a couple of years to gel.)

[mnagowski]

[quote Scersk '97]This team is heavily freshman and sophomore driven.  They're going to make mistakes; they're going to get pushed around.  I think those are two really good recruiting classes, though.  One more like those and we're set to make a deep run.  Then it's just the matter of a hot, talented goalie.[/quote]

Can Scrivens be that goalie? He currently has a 94.4% save percentage and  1.58 GAA in ECAC play. With the exception of disappointing RIT opener, the BU game, and some hiccups in Florida, I think he has been everything we can possibly ask for. And unless this secret gets out, I see no reason for him not to play two more seasons on East Hill.

[redice]

[quote Scersk '97]

(My one coaching thing that I'd like to see is for Schafer to put together an all frosh and soph power play unit.  Give them a couple of years to gel.)[/quote]

I'll go one step further.....   Schafer should assemble his lines and leave them alone (except as necessitated by injury).   I have always felt that constantly juggling lines (by Schafer or any other hockey coach) is a signal to the world that you don't know how to put together effective lines.  

That's a bad signal to be sending out; especially to your own players!!

Just imagine how much more effective this team could be if lines were left "unjuggled"  and players could actually build some chemistry with their linemates (i.e. know where their linemates are without having to look).

[Chris '03]

[quote krose]they're just too afraid to post their thoughts here for fear of the Always Positive Brigade dropping a 500 pound bomb on them.

[/quote]

I think the Eternally Realistic Army is misunderstood as the Always Positive Brigade by the success-spoiled undergrads of roughly classes '05-'08.

The one problem I have with Scersk's thinking that the team will come together nicely in a year or two is that the state of college hockey and recent defections seem to defy that optimism. It'd be great to see greening and nash together for two more years. Will it happen? When we start recruiting top end talent, it comes with the price of wondering for how long it will be on loan to the university. The big schools can take the blows because they land multiple blue chippers annually. We're grateful to see one a year.

[Josh '99]

[quote Scersk '97]Yeah, they're not '03, but so what?  Even the magical '03 team lost a close one to Colgate (who finished eighth that year) on the road.[/quote]That game was a screw job.  Fuckin' Alex Dell.

[Doug '08]

The infrastructure is in place for Cornell to be a perennial top ten team.  I know that is Schafer's goal and should be realistic at this point.  

If Schafer wants to stick to the tried and true grind it out style of game, recruiting needs to be done accordingly.  Otherwise, I'd like to see players develop on the other end of the ice as well.

I do realize that this is a rebuilding year and I think the team will be very good next year (top 10).  That being said, given the whole purpose of rebuilding, I'd like to see the coaches, and players go out of their comfort zone a little.

All in all, there is a lot of hockey left to be played this season and to be blunt, I don't think any of us have the faintest clue what the future holds- which is why I love college hockey.

[KeithK]

[quote Tom Lento]The 1997 team did AT LEAST as well as it was expected to, and pulled a minor upset over a higher-seeded Miami team in the NCAAs before getting run over by the NoDak juggernaut.[/quote]
Nitpick: The Miami game was not an upset.  Miami was given the higher seed on the basis of head to head comparison but we outranked them in the overall pairwise.  Today's committee would have put us in white.  The best you can say isthat we were evenly ranked with the Redskins.

[RichH]

[quote KeithK][quote Tom Lento]The 1997 team did AT LEAST as well as it was expected to, and pulled a minor upset over a higher-seeded Miami team in the NCAAs before getting run over by the NoDak juggernaut.[/quote]
Nitpick: The Miami game was not an upset.  Miami was given the higher seed on the basis of head to head comparison but we outranked them in the overall pairwise.  Today's committee would have put us in white.  The best you can say isthat we were evenly ranked with the Redskins.[/quote]

My fondest memory of that game, other than the Matt Cooney empty-netter, was reading that a certain rat-resembling coach told his Miami team that morning "don't bother packing your bags, fellas...we're staying another day."

[ugarte]

[quote RichH][quote KeithK][quote Tom Lento]The 1997 team did AT LEAST as well as it was expected to, and pulled a minor upset over a higher-seeded Miami team in the NCAAs before getting run over by the NoDak juggernaut.[/quote]
Nitpick: The Miami game was not an upset.  Miami was given the higher seed on the basis of head to head comparison but we outranked them in the overall pairwise.  Today's committee would have put us in white.  The best you can say isthat we were evenly ranked with the Redskins.[/quote]

My fondest memory of that game, other than the Matt Cooney empty-netter, was reading that a certain rat-resembling coach told his Miami team that morning "don't bother packing your bags, fellas...we're staying another day."[/quote]
"I got us a group rate for tickets to tomorrow's game!"

[Beeeej]

[quote KeithK][quote Tom Lento]The 1997 team did AT LEAST as well as it was expected to, and pulled a minor upset over a higher-seeded Miami team in the NCAAs before getting run over by the NoDak juggernaut.[/quote]
Nitpick: The Miami game was not an upset.  Miami was given the higher seed on the basis of head to head comparison but we outranked them in the overall pairwise.  Today's committee would have put us in white.  The best you can say isthat we were evenly ranked with the Redskins.[/quote]

They had, however, beaten us earlier in the season at Lynah.

I'll never forgive or understand the ref in that game for not whistling play dead when the Miami player with the puck in our zone lost his helmet.  Everybody in the rink besides that ref knew play should have been dead at that moment, but instead it was a goal, the difference in a one-goal loss.

On the other hand, the Cornell players shouldn't have backed off of him until they heard a whistle.

[ugarte]

[quote Beeeej][quote KeithK][quote Tom Lento]The 1997 team did AT LEAST as well as it was expected to, and pulled a minor upset over a higher-seeded Miami team in the NCAAs before getting run over by the NoDak juggernaut.[/quote]
Nitpick: The Miami game was not an upset.  Miami was given the higher seed on the basis of head to head comparison but we outranked them in the overall pairwise.  Today's committee would have put us in white.  The best you can say isthat we were evenly ranked with the Redskins.[/quote]

They had, however, beaten us earlier in the season at Lynah.

I'll never forgive or understand the ref in that game for not whistling play dead when the Miami player with the puck in our zone lost his helmet.  Everybody in the rink besides that ref knew play should have been dead at that moment, but instead it was a goal, the difference in a one-goal loss.

On the other hand, the Cornell players shouldn't have backed off of him until they heard a whistle.[/quote]
Damned if they do and damned if they don't. If anyone had hit a helmetless player he would have been whistled for a penalty and possibly a major.

[Scersk '97]

[quote Chris '03]
I think the Eternally Realistic Army is misunderstood as the Always Positive Brigade by the success-spoiled undergrads of roughly classes '05-'08.
[/quote]
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to join your organization.

I think if we don't have wholesale departures like prior to 2007, we'll usually be OK.  Better yet, though, get the types like Greening that are going to stay all four.  I think it's worth it to get a two-year man if he's a goalie or a hot-shot forward, but D departures are a bit more difficult to swallow, so I would avoid Pokuloks in the future.

[Rosey]

[quote Tom Lento]Blah[/quote]
Tom, I'm not going to try to refute your message point-by-point.  I will simply say that we are perhaps not so far apart from each other.  My specific criticism is that Schafer can't configure an offense, and has not brought in an assistant who knows how to do so, while recruiting power forwards like Riley Nash and Greening who are then left to fend for themselves, and smaller, faster guys like Topher and Scali who are much less effective at the old Schafer system simply by virtue of size and weight.  Thus, their talent is wasted.

I'm specifically not talking about seasons prior to 2004.  I was thrilled with Schafer for the 1996-2003 seasons.  He was a god among men.  And so forth. :-)

To sum up, I would be satisfied if Schafer would do one of two things: (1) hire an assistant who can coach offense or (2) go back to the old, grinding, defense-minded system and recruit the trees-on-skates that were effective at implementing it.

Kyle

[ugarte]

[quote krose][quote Tom Lento]Blah[/quote]
Tom, I'm not going to try to refute your message point-by-point.  I will simply say that we are perhaps not so far apart from each other.  My specific criticism is that Schafer can't configure an offense, and has not brought in an assistant who knows how to do so, while recruiting power forwards like Riley Nash and Greening who are then left to fend for themselves, and smaller, faster guys like Topher and Scali and Romano who are much less effective at the old Schafer system simply by virtue of size and weight.  Thus, their talent is wasted.

I'm specifically not talking about seasons prior to 2004.  I was thrilled with Schafer for the 1996-2003 seasons.  He was a god among men.  And so forth. :-)

To sum up, I would be satisfied if Schafer would do one of two things: (1) hire an assistant who can coach offense or (2) go back to the old, grinding, defense-minded system and recruit the trees-on-skates that were effective at implementing it.

Kyle[/quote]
FYP.

[Scersk '97]

[quote krose]
I'm specifically not talking about seasons prior to 2004.  I was thrilled with Schafer for the 1996-2003 seasons.  He was a god among men.  And so forth. :-)
[/quote]

Of course, Jamie Russell leaving was the big change after 2003, and Michigan Tech's power play immediately got better after he arrived, but it's also at times been similarly anemic to ours over the last few years.  So I guess it must be personnel.

When's Nieuwendyk going to come back as a "volunteer?" ::innocent::