Cornell 2 Yale 4 (Final)

[Al DeFlorio]

Riley was reacting to a slash he recieved as he carried the puck along the blueline.

As Jason described it, that was the first penalty.  Then he took a second one.::worry::

[Tom Tone]

The band stayed home because the cost of staying home is far less than a bus for 2 days, hotel rooms, and extra tickets at Yale and Brown.

Also, for many of them, this is their last home game after 4 years with the band. It's a lot less about what the football team does on the field than what the band does.

[sah67]

I was amazed how many times we let the Yale forwards get behind our D in the first period, particularly during our achingly slow line changes.  It seemed that after dumping it for every change, our players wouldn't even notice the Yale forwards waiting at the blue line for a home-run pass, and there was just no urgency to get back and cover them.  Thankfully this changed by the second and third periods, but it still made me ::doh:: every time.

[Jacob '06]

2. Cornell needed to score on that 5x3 late in the 3rd. (Could barely hold the zone.)

They also needed to be a lot more creative on the 5x4 power plays in the 3rd. They kept running the same exact play, passing to gallagher down by the goal line and then trying to stuff it through the middle in to traffic or into the goalies pads hoping to put home a rebound. Thy did this because it worked for them in the first period for the first goal (with Riley, not Gallagher), but obviously the defense is going to adjust. This got the defenseman for Yale to all collapse in to the middle of the ice leaving the points pretty much wide open, but our pointmen kept bobbling the puck and never got a decent shot off. They need to be able to adjust their styles in the middle of a game to counter adjustments by the defense.

[RichH]

Interested to hear what the B.Nash support group has to say about the second Yale goal, or his taking yet another stupid penalty at the end of a period (this one with less than a minute left in the second).

Wow, you're just filled with hate at an Ari-level now, aren't you?  The people I hung out with for post-game drinks heard me rip B. Nash for having a horrible game.  I can think of 4 examples of miserable plays he was responsible for.  The flub that resulted in the tying goal was obviously most damaging, but one penalty in the corner was very dumb, and there was the one time he fell along boards near the Yale bench and couldn't get up.  It was like his legs didn't work.  To me, it's like the difference between freshman-year Pokulok and sophomore-year Pokulok.  Or in baseball terms for Mets fans, "Good Ollie Perez" vs. "Bad Ollie."  To be fair, Brendon made several decent offensive plays late in the 3rd, but by then, it was too late to salvage this game for him.

1. Nash cannot allow the puck to get through to Little on that second goal

Agreed.  That said, there were several similar plays made by multiple players that Yale burned the exact same way and had breaks in on goal, alone.  This was something that we could NOT figure out last year, especially in the ECAC final.  Yale comes at you HARD and doesn't hesitate.  If you make one flub or uncertain stickhandle, they are ALL OVER YOU instantly and usually strip the puck and skate past.  It's been a long time (probably since the SLU teams of around 2000) since we've seen this aggressive a forechecking team as an opponent.  That reset play were a D holds the puck behind our own net to look for the breakout...doesn't work.  Yale comes right at it.  Last year, they did that "flip-the-puck up and while the d-man gets tangled trying to play the puck, race by him and in for the breakaway" thing so much it was maddening that we couldn't ever read it.  And B. Nash got fooled by it again.  

Now, the good news was the adjustments that the team made in the 2nd and 3rd.  The cherry-picking was reduced, and we read the SKATER rather than the puck a lot better.  Yale kept trying a toe-drag every rush, and we were very good at neutralizing it.

This was a good wake-up call to the freshmen, who have finally seen how fast this level can move.  With D and H, we could do whatever we wanted.

2. Cornell needed to score on that 5x3 late in the 3rd. (Could barely hold the zone.)

Yep.  I like what I've seen so far, but Whitney didn't hold the zone twice, and without pressure.  Rather than collapsing the zone, like a 5x3 should do, they let the defense play them.  There were some chances, but not of the quality we should get from a long 5x3.

Why did the band choose football over hockey? The football team is an embarrassment, and no one really cares about this season, while the hockey team and fans tangibly benefit from the presence of the pep band.

The economic downturn has affected every portion of the University, including student organizations.  They don't have the money to make EVERY roadtrip even in good times.  There's always a few trips they can't make, especially in the fall, and personally, I'd rather see them save their budget for the late-season games and any potential playoff runs.  Let's not forget that these are also students with a lot of commitments.  As a former bandie I can say that when you consider the time many of them make for marching band rehearsals and games that have pretty much been non-stop since late August, it's pretty taxing.  The hockey fans can survive, as we proved last night.

Also, one point.  The pep-band didn't "choose" football over hockey.  The pep-band is a separate group from the marching band.  (Obviously, there is a lot of overlap.)  Given that the marching band is having their final home game, which is probably their biggest event of the year, you weren't going to get a lot of pep-band commitment to go on a long roadtrip anyway.

Also, just because the football team is an embarrassment means that the band should just give up?  So we, as Cornellians, should only support the winning teams?  That's a very front-running attitude, and unfortunate.  

A winnable game which we gave away. Don't try to blame this one on inexperience -- it was the seniors who dropped the ball tonight. Four straight losses to Yale and counting.

Agree.  I think we've closed the gap that obviously existed in a 5-0 drubbing in the league championship game.  I like the poise and adjustments the younger players showed in the face of a very aggressive team.  It was winnable for either team, and it was the kind of game that would come down to who would make the bigger mistakes, and unfortunately, that was Cornell.  This has always been a tough building for us to get wins in (ask CowbellGuy).  Lick the wounds, learn from the game, kick the crap out of Brown, and get another shot at Yale at Lynah in Feb.

[Scersk '97]

This was something that we could NOT figure out last year, especially in the ECAC final.  Yale comes at you HARD and doesn't hesitate.  If you make one flub or uncertain stickhandle, they are ALL OVER YOU instantly and usually strip the puck and skate past.  It's been a long time (probably since the SLU teams of around 2000) since we've seen this aggressive a forechecking team as an opponent.

Agreed.  Harvard also played this style during their halcyon days in the 80s.  Yale does CJ Young scoring scads of shorties kind of stuff.  (Side note:  Shouldn't Schafer, considering how many times he played against teams like it, be familiar with this style and have some ideas of how to counteract it?)

To me, it seems that Yale has put together a "Cornell killer" team.  Assuming that we're going to play a defense-oriented, puck-control style, they are set up to play slashing, counter-attacking style.  They intend to pounce on any mistake we might make and convert it into a goal.  If we play a slightly looser style and make more mistakes?  Well...  even worse, because our team speed can't match theirs.

Now, I'll take that slightly looser style along with responsible defense most any day.  And I'll also take bigger, horse-like players like Greening.  Nationally, it pays dividends.  Note how well we've done in the NCAAs during Schafer's tenure, and then note how Yale got blown out last year.  But, paradoxically, it seems to me that the right response to Yale is to go back into our defensive shell, 1997-style game.  No mistakes, no mistakes, no mistakes and then score on the power play.  It's a nerve-wracking, pepto-pounding style, but when we draw Yale into grind-it-out games it's a fair fight.  I'll take our talent over theirs, then.

The best thing we can hope for come ECAC tourney time is that someone else will take them out.  More and more, we are not set up to play a team like that.