Harvard at Cornell postgame

[Josh '99]

As an aside, the goal highlights are up on the ECAC site.

Thanks for the heads-up, I didn't know they had video highlights.

[andyw2100]

I know this has been discussed in past years, but I really think it's time to quit the fish. In my view it doesn't add much and I think if it wasn't for Nash's penalty to start the third period, we'd have gotten a delay of game for the fish thrown. I really feel the refs didn't want to put us two men down at that time. That's interesting isn't it, Nash preventing a crowd penalty. He can do all sorts on good things. :-DThe refs  had already made the announcement and there were fish at the beginning of the second as well. Certainly we've gotten penalties in that situation before.

Jim is certainly one of the regulars here who I have a great deal of respect for, and with whom I usually agree. But I've got to say I disagree on the fish. To me, fish at the Harvard game --is-- Cornell hockey. I mean what's Cornell hockey without tradition? Fish at the Harvard game is one of the great Cornell hockey traditions, at least in my opinion.

That being said, it is absolutely insane for anyone to throw fish at any time other than when Harvard comes out to start the game. Anyone throwing fish before the beginning of the second or third period is not a Cornell hockey fan, and has no business setting foot in Lynah rink. I agree that we easily could have been penalized to start the period. One of the officials was actually scraping fish with his skate, to try to clean things up. And on that note, why in the world did the rink staff person that came out to clean up the fish not bring a shovel? I recognize that the rink staff have a hard, pretty much thankless job to do, but not bringing a shovel was just plain dumb. I saw him coming without a shovel, and thought, "OK, someone is coming with a shovel right behind him", but that person never materialized.

We definitely dodged a bullet there, though. We easily could have started the period two men down, and who knows how that could have affected the outcome of the game.

[Jim Hyla]

I know this has been discussed in past years, but I really think it's time to quit the fish. In my view it doesn't add much and I think if it wasn't for Nash's penalty to start the third period, we'd have gotten a delay of game for the fish thrown. I really feel the refs didn't want to put us two men down at that time. That's interesting isn't it, Nash preventing a crowd penalty. He can do all sorts on good things. :-DThe refs  had already made the announcement and there were fish at the beginning of the second as well. Certainly we've gotten penalties in that situation before.

Jim is certainly one of the regulars here who I have a great deal of respect for, and with whom I usually agree. But I've got to say I disagree on the fish. To me, fish at the Harvard game --is-- Cornell hockey. I mean what's Cornell hockey without tradition? Fish at the Harvard game is one of the great Cornell hockey traditions, at least in my opinion.

That being said, it is absolutely insane for anyone to throw fish at any time other than when Harvard comes out to start the game. Anyone throwing fish before the beginning of the second or third period is not a Cornell hockey fan, and has no business setting foot in Lynah rink. I agree that we easily could have been penalized to start the period. One of the officials was actually scraping fish with his skate, to try to clean things up. And on that note, why in the world did the rink staff person that came out to clean up the fish not bring a shovel? I recognize that the rink staff have a hard, pretty much thankless job to do, but not bringing a shovel was just plain dumb. I saw him coming without a shovel, and thought, "OK, someone is coming with a shovel right behind him", but that person never materialized.

We definitely dodged a bullet there, though. We easily could have started the period two men down, and who knows how that could have affected the outcome of the game.

I'm actually OK with fish at the beginning, however I don't know how you stop the others. There will always be the nitwits, what do you do to stop them. If you can't stop the fish from getting in you can't stop the throwing. Maybe it will take a lost game to smarten them up, but I doubt that would even do it.

My main point is that if you allow fish, there will always be jerks who don't care about the team, but just themselves. If we said no fish, maybe over time things would change. I'm old enough, you can say that again, to remember that I had just as much fun, maybe more (see my signature), before there were fish. Winning hockey is what's fun. I'm not saying the incidentals don't add to the fun. After all I do wear a jersey to away games and I do bring Snickers to the band and throw them at away games, but I stop having fun when it detracts from the team and the game. Come up with a way to stop the throwing after the beginning and I'm with you.

[andyw2100]

Come up with a way to stop the throwing after the beginning and I'm with you.

I'm sure this isn't going to happen any time soon, and I'm not sure it would even be a good idea, but perhaps if the administration's attitude towards fish-throwing eased up some there would be less of an issue with inappropriate fish flinging. In the mid 80s, when I was a student, I don't recall there being a strong "no fish" sentiment from the administration. I don't remember if they said "no fish", and just did nothing to enforce the policy, or if they simply looked the other way without officially saying anything, but there were a heck of a lot more fish being thrown then than now, and I don't recall anyone being thrown out of the game because of it. For what it's worth, I also don't recall any fish being thrown at any time other than before the first period.

The rogue fish throwers now might be doing it to show their friends how "cool" they can be, defying the authority that tells them they can't throw fish. Take away that "defying authority" aspect of it, and maybe they stop. Or maybe not. I don't know.

Perhaps my strong preference for the fish springs from the following:

As a freshman, I had never been to a hockey game of any kind. I did not buy season tickets my freshman year. I had heard about Cornell hockey, and how it was the thing to do, but had not experienced it myself. That is until I managed to scrounge up a ticket to the Harvard game. Needless to say, I had season tickets my next three years at Cornell, and have had them every year since moving back to Ithaca in 1990. But if I had not heard about the spectacle of the Harvard game and the fish, who knows if I would ever have attended that first game. And while this may sound almost ridiculous, my life would not be as rich without Cornell hockey in it. Some of the best memories of my life involve Cornell hockey, my ex-wife, and my kids. Sure, there'd be (and there are) other memories, but I really cherish these.

Perhaps someone went to their first Cornell hockey game last night, partially because they wanted to see this fish thing they had heard about, and will be posting a message similar to this one on eLynah in 30 years or so. This is why I feel so strongly about the fish.

[marty]

As an aside, the goal highlights are up on the ECAC site.

Thanks for the heads-up, I didn't know they had video highlights.

It's a make up move to prove that they really care about the fans in spite of moving the tourney to sunny Atlantic City.::smashfreak::

[margolism]

... Our power play is looking pretty good, the PK not too bad, ...

After 3 games, Cornell ranked #1 in the country in OFFENSE. (6th in defense.) Also #1 on the power play.

#1 is "pretty good," I'd say. ::cheer::

Margolism, where did you get your stats? Can we find out how we rank in the PK?

http://www.uscho.com/stats/conf.php/conf,d1.html

Scroll down for team stats (includes offense, defense, pp, pk)

[ebilmes]

Cornell is 6x10 on the PP in two ECAC games.

I agree that Cornell probably would have been assessed a penalty for the fish if BNash hadn't already been in the box. What helped us was probably that the refs didn't issue a formal warning (at least one that was announced) until the 3rd period. If that warning had been issued in the 2nd, they would have had to issue another penalty in the 3rd.

Harvard has a lot of talent, and for the first two periods they looked better than us. Leblanc has tremendous talent and you saw that with the first goal.

We have to stop missing open nets. It's one thing when we're up 5-1 on Dartmouth and Riley misses an open net. But when it's 0-0 or 1-2 against Harvard and we're missing open nets, those can be the difference-makers in games. Nicholls missed a wide open net on a 2x1, which shouldn't be too surprising. But then Riley missed another open net a couple of shifts after that. We ended up finding plenty of offense in the end, but at the time those seemed like huge missed opportunities.

One area in which the team has really improved over last year is the breakout play. This is resulting in some more variety, too. Instead of every breakout play resulting in some variation of dump-and-chase, we're getting some good shots and more controlled possession of the puck in the offensive zone.

Scrivens was stellar last night. He made a couple of phenomenal point-blank saves to keep Harvard from pulling too far ahead. He did exactly what we need from him this year; when we're behind, we need him to make some big saves to give our offense some time to get going.

This was a great weekend, but I don't see us winning on Friday at Ingalls. Yale is arguably the best team in the conference, and they lost twice this weekend. They, and their fans, will be fired up for the first home ECAC weekend. Yale will look to exploit some of our weaknesses in the defensive end, and their forecheck was deadly last year.

[HockeyMan]

Cornell is 6x10 on the PP in two ECAC games.

I agree that Cornell probably would have been assessed a penalty for the fish if BNash hadn't already been in the box. What helped us was probably that the refs didn't issue a formal warning (at least one that was announced) until the 3rd period. If that warning had been issued in the 2nd, they would have had to issue another penalty in the 3rd.

Harvard has a lot of talent, and for the first two periods they looked better than us. Leblanc has tremendous talent and you saw that with the first goal.

We have to stop missing open nets. It's one thing when we're up 5-1 on Dartmouth and Riley misses an open net. But when it's 0-0 or 1-2 against Harvard and we're missing open nets, those can be the difference-makers in games. Nicholls missed a wide open net on a 2x1, which shouldn't be too surprising. But then Riley missed another open net a couple of shifts after that. We ended up finding plenty of offense in the end, but at the time those seemed like huge missed opportunities.

One area in which the team has really improved over last year is the breakout play. This is resulting in some more variety, too. Instead of every breakout play resulting in some variation of dump-and-chase, we're getting some good shots and more controlled possession of the puck in the offensive zone.

Scrivens was stellar last night. He made a couple of phenomenal point-blank saves to keep Harvard from pulling too far ahead. He did exactly what we need from him this year; when we're behind, we need him to make some big saves to give our offense some time to get going.

This was a great weekend, but I don't see us winning on Friday at Ingalls. Yale is arguably the best team in the conference, and they lost twice this weekend. They, and their fans, will be fired up for the first home ECAC weekend. Yale will look to exploit some of our weaknesses in the defensive end, and their forecheck was deadly last year.

Several people have commented now that Harvard outplayed the Red early on, that Harvard looks deep in talent, that Harvard is really dangerous, etc.  I beg to differ. I thought they were ordinary last night, from start to finish. The Red were stronger in the corners, better in the neutral zone, and had far more quality chances.  The final score was about indicative of the play.

[Rosey]

Several people have commented now that Harvard outplayed the Red early on, that Harvard looks deep in talent, that Harvard is really dangerous, etc.  I beg to differ. I thought they were ordinary last night, from start to finish. The Red were stronger in the corners, better in the neutral zone, and had far more quality chances.  The final score was about indicative of the play.

I agree.  I saw one good line QB'ed by a natural goal scorer (Leblanc), along with lots of slow and sloppy D that will be eaten alive by a team with multiple scoring lines.  Any team that learns to shut Leblanc down does not, to these eyes, face a particularly dangerous team.  That said, it's early in the season: I will see them at least once more before this season is over, and perhaps my observations will change.

[marty]

Yale actually tied Onion but not until there was only 6.3 seconds left in the third.

[bernie]

i didn't see fish at the start of the third period but i did see what appeared to be a full blue gatorade bottle thrown from section b towards the visiting players when they came on the ice.  i think that's what they were upset about.  we were fortunate to not be penalized

[ebilmes]

Several people have commented now that Harvard outplayed the Red early on, that Harvard looks deep in talent, that Harvard is really dangerous, etc.  I beg to differ. I thought they were ordinary last night, from start to finish. The Red were stronger in the corners, better in the neutral zone, and had far more quality chances.  The final score was about indicative of the play.

I agree.  I saw one good line QB'ed by a natural goal scorer (Leblanc), along with lots of slow and sloppy D that will be eaten alive by a team with multiple scoring lines.  Any team that learns to shut Leblanc down does not, to these eyes, face a particularly dangerous team.  That said, it's early in the season: I will see them at least once more before this season is over, and perhaps my observations will change.

Maybe it's just the contrast from Dartmouth the previous night, but Harvard looked pretty good to me. Sure, their defensemen are slow, but I thought they were slow in the style of some of our big guys from the previous few years, and not slow like the Niagara d-men who never seemed to be where they should be. And they were able to shut down our forwards pretty effectively through the first two periods, committing only one penalty during that time. It's not like our defensemen are perfect, either. How many times have guys blown right by Whitney this year? Nash has five minors through three games.

Harvard also relied heavily on high dumps. More than any college team I've seen, they were content to flick the puck high above our guys' heads, sometimes in the direction of one of their forwards, but also sometimes just into the corner for them to chase after. This enabled them to avoid having to carry the puck across the blue line, and gave speedy guys like Leblanc a chance to race against our defensemen to the corner.

[ithacat]

I know this has been discussed in past years, but I really think it's time to quit the fish. In my view it doesn't add much and I think if it wasn't for Nash's penalty to start the third period, we'd have gotten a delay of game for the fish thrown. I really feel the refs didn't want to put us two men down at that time. That's interesting isn't it, Nash preventing a crowd penalty. He can do all sorts on good things. :-DThe refs  had already made the announcement and there were fish at the beginning of the second as well. Certainly we've gotten penalties in that situation before. They went to talk to Schafer at the beginning of the third, likely discussing it.

As an aside, the goal highlights are up on the ECAC site.

I can live with the first period fishing -- the staff does a decent job of cleaning up the surface. The second and third period fishing is plain stupid. I wish anyone witnessing such foolishness would turn the idiots over for expulsion. I commend the refs for being reasonable in this case. A 5x3 to begin the third might have led to a different outcome.

Personally, I think throwing newspapers and fish and toothpaste on the ice take away from how great the students can be. But, I'm just an old codger.

[ebilmes]

One of the idiots who threw fish in the second period was two rows in front of me. I tapped him on the shoulder and yelled at him for a bit. Sometimes there's nothing you can do, aside from someone making an announcement specifically to the student sections before the game.

[scoop85]

Several people have commented now that Harvard outplayed the Red early on, that Harvard looks deep in talent, that Harvard is really dangerous, etc.  I beg to differ. I thought they were ordinary last night, from start to finish. The Red were stronger in the corners, better in the neutral zone, and had far more quality chances.  The final score was about indicative of the play.

I agree.  I saw one good line QB'ed by a natural goal scorer (Leblanc), along with lots of slow and sloppy D that will be eaten alive by a team with multiple scoring lines.  Any team that learns to shut Leblanc down does not, to these eyes, face a particularly dangerous team.  That said, it's early in the season: I will see them at least once more before this season is over, and perhaps my observations will change.

I'm usually a pretty tough critic regarding my teams, but I thought that overall Cornell outplayed Harvard by a fairly wide margin.  The Red had a lot of puck control, and Harvard scored off of transition, but had relatively little sustained pressure.  The past few times that we have beaten Harvard I had felt we were fortunate in doing so; last night's win was no fluke.