Cornell 4 at Dartmouth 5

[Robb]

Updated pairwise not posted yet (that I can find) but I'm guessing we'll go to 13-14++.  When you take into account the auto bids from the lower conferences I think it's going to be an uphill battle.  I guess if we make it to the ECAC finals like last year we have an outside shot...maybe. However, if we DO make it to the NCAAs I like our chances since we seem to own the first round.  And if we get placed in Albany we (finally) get some home cookin'.  Would love to face, say, Wisconsin and give them a taste of their own medicine.

The reason we "seem to own the first round" is that in 4 of our last 5 NCAA appearances we were seeded higher than our opponent (including the #4E vs #5E matchup with QU from 2001).  The only time we jumped up and bit a higher seeded team (or needed to) was when we beat NU last year, and IIRC, that was the highest seeded #3 taking out the lowest seeded #2 (anyone know where to find past years' final PWR as used to seed the tournament?).  If we go in as a low 3 seed or 4 seed, we will very likely lose our first round game.

[scoop85]

Updated pairwise not posted yet (that I can find) but I'm guessing we'll go to 13-14++.  When you take into account the auto bids from the lower conferences I think it's going to be an uphill battle.  I guess if we make it to the ECAC finals like last year we have an outside shot...maybe. However, if we DO make it to the NCAAs I like our chances since we seem to own the first round.  And if we get placed in Albany we (finally) get some home cookin'.  Would love to face, say, Wisconsin and give them a taste of their own medicine.

The reason we "seem to own the first round" is that in 4 of our last 5 NCAA appearances we were seeded higher than our opponent (including the #4E vs #5E matchup with QU from 2001).  The only time we jumped up and bit a higher seeded team (or needed to) was when we beat NU last year, and IIRC, that was the highest seeded #3 taking out the lowest seeded #2 (anyone know where to find past years' final PWR as used to seed the tournament?).  If we go in as a low 3 seed or 4 seed, we will very likely lose our first round game.

I don't disagree with your logic, but it seems that almost all other ECAC teams with decent seeds haven't had the same 1st round success over the past decade

[dbilmes]

This was a terrible loss. The easy thing to do is to blame the basketball pep band. When they came into the hockey rink after the basketball game, we were ahead 4-2 midway through the third period, and everything fell apart after that. But being a former high school band member, I'm not going to make them the scapegoat!
Even though we were up 4-2 at that point, we hadn't played well most of the game. We were getting into Dartmouth's type of game, skating up and down the ice, and it had the makings of a shootout even before the goals started to mount. Scrivens didn't play his best in the third period, but we also had a lot of breakdowns in front of him. Kennedy's injury really scrambled the lines, and it seemed like Riley Nash and Greening were both on the ice approximately 50 percent of the time. Other players' ice time was also effected. Nichols, for example, got much more ice time than I can remember him receiving in previous games, and while he never stops hustling, he's not a guy you want on the ice for 15 minutes or more.
So you can blame part of our third-period collapse on fatigue by some of our key players. We also took some poor penalties, which led to two Dartmouth PP goals. To me, the turning point came on a Dartmouth PP while we were ahead 4-2. Riley Nash had a great offensive chance for a shorthanded goal which he just missed, but then he fell to the ice behind the D goal and was slow getting up. Dartmouth, meanwhile, was racing up the ice as Schaefer was frantically waving for Nash to hustle to the bench so he could replace him with a fresh player. But by the time Nash got up and made it to the bench, Dartmouth had finished off a 5-on-3 break by scoring to make it 4-3.
Things went downhill from there, and Riley Nash also got caught behind the play a little bit on Dartmouth's next goal, also on their PP.
I'm not blaming Riley for our loss. He played an excellent game overall, but he just had to be gassed by the last part of the game. And he wasn't the one taking stupid penalties or letting in a few soft goals. On the GW goal, Scrivens gave up a huge rebound which Dartmouth capitalized on.
The officiating was also quite erratic, and there were several obvious offsides plays which were never called, as well as long stretches of letting fairly obvious penalties against both teams go unpunished.
This game will be the highlight of Dartmouth's season, coming from behind for a dramatic win against a first-place team on Senior Night. Hopefully, for us, it will just be a forgettable night on the way to making it to the title game in Albany. But those of us who were there will remember how terrible this loss was for a long time. This also continues our recent pattern of following up a good Friday night game with a poor Saturday night performance (i.e Saturday night losses to Princeton, Yale, North Dakota, etc.).

[TimV]

Good post and great last paragraph.  

I thought Cornell played a very aggressive, physical game against Harvard and to a large extent left  lot of their game at Lynah East.  Which it really was, from my seat in section 1 it was amazing that it looked like the entire rink was Cornell fans. Last night, right from the beginning it didn't look like we had any jump and Dartmouth seemed to be continually breaking out, often with a hanger out in neutral ice when we were in their zone.  True, the GWG was off a bad rebound but there was an awful lot of traffic on the crease, and I didn't think Scrivens could be faulted for late goals off rebounds when there was such a crowd in front.  Seemed to me on their goal mouth scrambles they got a good bounce, and ours didn't.  Dartmouths first goal was a beauty.  The hooking call in the third on Scali (?) I thought was really poor - he was lifting the stick of the breaking D player as the puck was fed to him - a hockey play you see ten times a game.  Right after that, I saw D's Estoclet cross-check our guy, the ref's arm go up, and I thought it would be four-on-four, but they sent the cress-checkee off as well, and D made it 4-3 with about 7 min left.

Yes, Sat night has been tough on us.  Is it conditioning?  Dunno.  But we have to have 4 points next weekend.  I couldn't stand finishing behind Union, and I don't wanna hear from that asshole on the USCHO RPI threads.  (If you're reading this, jerk,  yeah I mean you.)::flipa::

[Josh '99]

The reason we "seem to own the first round" is that in 4 of our last 5 NCAA appearances we were seeded higher than our opponent (including the #4E vs #5E matchup with QU from 2001).

Nitpick:  That was 2002.

[KGR11]

Beating a 1 seed would be a tall order.  Beating a 2 seed (currently Yale, NoDak, UNH,and Bemidji) is possible, since we are 2-3-0 against those teams, and we probably wouldn't play Yale in the first round.  I think that if we are healthy for the first round as a 3 seed, we have a chance to win.

[mikek]

Since beating Brown on Sat. 11/14 we've gone 1-5-3 in Saturday games... with the lone win being Clarkson.  During that same time we are 11-2 in all other games including 9-0 in Friday games.  In that same span we've averaged 2.44 goals per game and 3 goals against per game on Saturdays versus 3.23 g/g and 1.76 ga/g on all other days.

Not sure if we're just tired the second night or if its something else but it's a fairly large difference in results.

[Roy 82]

Since beating Brown on Sat. 11/14 we've gone 1-5-3 in Saturday games... with the lone win being Clarkson.  During that same time we are 11-2 in all other games including 9-0 in Friday games.  In that same span we've averaged 2.44 goals per game and 3 goals against per game on Saturdays versus 3.23 g/g and 1.76 ga/g on all other days.

Not sure if we're just tired the second night or if its something else but it's a fairly large difference in results.

I think that we must have caught some sort of Saturday Night Fever from North Dakota. ::thud::

[Killer]

The thing that was driving me nuts was the number of times on the breakout where we seemed to be making these no-look, drop passes to guys coming out of the zone behind the puck handler (have I been missing that in past games where it didn't kill us?).  Dartmouth always seemed to be right on top of it and picked up as many of those passes late in the game as we did.  So, instead of rushing into the Dartmouth end, all of a sudden we're scambling back into our own end on defense.  I'd keel haul the next guy who does that.  Maybe Dartmouth had all the passing lanes clogged (they did seem to be swarming all over the neutral zone), but you'd think we could have been more aggressive in looking for people moving at speed ahead of the puck.

And no, I won't blame the basketball pep band either, but it was a weird momentum shift at that time.