Buh-bye, seniors

[kaelistus]

Underachieved? Are you kidding me. ECAC championship and underachieved? What's wrong with you people? And coach Schafer? He has 4 of these in 12 years or so? Dear god you people have high standards.

And I am not of the belief that you need scoring to make it exciting. Schafer's system is exciting to me. I love how our players line up defensively to form a near (Maybe not so much for UNH but most of the time) impenetrable fortress of blockers. This is ten billion times more interesting than watching a bunch of players storm the goal line in haphazard fashion. Go watch the NHL if you want scoring and leave college hockey to those of us that prefer strategy in their sports.

[Rosey]

Why is that when a team has a bad night, it was the coach's fault for not coaching them properly?  In this game, I think they just didn't play well. Period.

Yeah, I don't blame Schafer for this: his system works incredibly well at producing world-class teams from relatively (and I emphasize "relatively" ) mediocre talent.  The failure tonight was the players', plain and simple.  I wish they had played like this was their last game, because for many of them... it was.

I'm sorry some of you question my fandom, but blind devotion is dildonic.  Wake up and smell the pesticide on the green: this team underperformed expectations relative to their talent and prior achievements.  If you can't accept that... oh, well.  I am mourning the fact that I will not see Greening, Gallagher, Krueger, Scali, Scrivens, B. Nash (or, likely, R. Nash) don the uniform again, with THIS shitty performance as the way they went out.  It's just sad.

[BigRedNH]

This is so stupid.  As an undergrad I suffered and I mean suffered through the end of the McCutcheon era, that was much more fun than this I can say.  I saw that in person and in living color.  Coach is tremendous, that is not blind devotion it is fact.  Cornell will never have the talent that WCHA, CCHA or Hockey East teams have, that is the landscape we live in at present.  In that landscape he molds teams that should be the pride of us all, hard working, selfless, tough, giving up their bodies for the greater good and instead we kill these guys and the coaches because they played badly for one night against an opponent who won the Hockey East regular season.  Glad we are not Denver fans or coach might be shot at sunrise...

Just an aside, Umile is killed up here for never winning the big one.  He has be my count had the best or close to the best team in tournement at least four times and has never won the final game.  There are parts of the fandome of Wildcat Nation (of which I have season tickets) who want this guy fired.  I have a great idea, lets swap coaches.  I guarntee that UNH with Mike would win a National Championship before Cornell with Dick.

Get of your pitty wagons and see this for what it is.  An ECAC championship season and one bad game at the end.  Am I sad, yes...angry at the effort, yes...but to suggest that Coach and this system does not work is wrong.

[MattShaf]

Winning an ECAC title and getting into the NCAAs is a superb year!!! IMO, this team played great hockey week in and week out. They did this all while dealing with the challenges of an undergraduate workload at Cornell!
The coach has his system. His success compared to his peers reinforces this style (4 ECAC titles in 10 years).
I was as dissappointed as any other alum with last night's result but not with the effort. Unfortuately, in a single elimination tournament the results don't always favor the better team, just the better team that night.
Looking forward to next year.
Matt

[Rosey]

Winning an ECAC title and getting into the NCAAs is a superb year!!!

Since evidently I am not getting through to people, my point isn't that Cornell '10 was an objectively bad team: they weren't.  My point was that this was supposed to be the year that brought us back to the highs of '03 and would give us a long run in the NCAA tournament.  Instead, they folded like a cheap suit last night.  They didn't lose a one goal, back-and-forth game: they got beat and looked bad in the process.  Not what I expected from this team last off-season, but certainly what I came to expect following their night-to-night inconsistency throughout the season.

IMO, this team played great hockey week in and week out.

Which team were you watching?

They did this all while dealing with the challenges of an undergraduate workload at Cornell!

And now with Less Fairy Dust!™  Seriously, I don't think anyone contests that the life of a Cornell hockey player is a bitch or that they don't have hurdles to overcome that other national contenders lack by virtue of funding, scholarships, majors-for-jocks, etc.  This is, again, not my point.  So I can avoid repeating myself, read the first paragraph again.

I was as dissappointed as any other alum with last night's result but not with the effort.

Which game were you watching?

Unfortuately, in a single elimination tournament the results don't always favor the better team, just the better team that night.

(edited b/c I was talking past you.) Again, which team were you watching?  Cornell was inconsistent all season.  It's not clear which was the better team overall.

[gored]

I would bring to light a delightful point that made me feel better this morning after last night's bitter loss: Nobody on Harvard's current team has ever played in the NCAA tournament.  And nobody on next year's Harvard team will have either.  No matter what happened to our team, at least we aren't them.

[Rosey]

I would bring to light a delightful point that made me feel better this morning after last night's bitter loss: Nobody on Harvard's current team has ever played in the NCAA tournament.  And nobody on next year's Harvard team will have either.  No matter what happened to our team, at least we aren't them.

Because, when you can't have success, you can at least have schadenfreude.  I'll toast to that.

[kaelistus]

My point was that this was supposed to be the year that brought us back to the highs of '03 and would give us a long run in the NCAA tournament.  

Kyle, I think maybe your expectations are a bit too high. 2003 was Cornell's best year in possibly 30 years. It doesn't happen very often and it's unfair to rate the current team to that level.

Also of note - Cornell was, once again, the best team in the tournament to not offer scholarships. We win that pseudo title year in and year out.

[Rosey]

Kyle, I think maybe your expectations are a bit too high. 2003 was Cornell's best year in possibly 30 years. It doesn't happen very often and it's unfair to rate the current team to that level.

As I said earlier, this team wasn't even as good as 2005 or 2006, despite having more talent.  If they were second-best to 2003, you may have had a point here, but that wasn't the case.

Also of note - Cornell was, once again, the best team in the tournament to not offer scholarships. We win that pseudo title year in and year out.

You have asserted something not yet in evidence: Yale doesn't play until later today.  For reference, how many times in a row has Cornell lost to them again?

[Dafatone]

My point was that this was supposed to be the year that brought us back to the highs of '03 and would give us a long run in the NCAA tournament.  

Kyle, I think maybe your expectations are a bit too high. 2003 was Cornell's best year in possibly 30 years. It doesn't happen very often and it's unfair to rate the current team to that level.

Also of note - Cornell was, once again, the best team in the tournament to not offer scholarships. We win that pseudo title year in and year out.

It might just be, because of the lack of scholarships (among Ivies) or some other factor, that the ECAC just isn't very good.  That's a shame.  We've been the best team in the ECAC, overall, over the past decade.  That's impressive.

Yeah, yesterday hurt.   A lot.  And I was hoping this team could do more.  But that's the thing about single elimination tournaments.  Either it's all "our coach sucks!  we suck!" etc, or we just didn't have it one day.  If UNH can have a bad game to the tune of losing to us 5-2, we can do the same.

[BMac]

What is wrong with you people? They're trolls.

It's the same guys who did this last year- start a bunch of accounts, argue with yourself, start a flamestorm.

Hi, Simon.

[Jim Hyla]

Kyle, I think maybe your expectations are a bit too high. 2003 was Cornell's best year in possibly 30 years. It doesn't happen very often and it's unfair to rate the current team to that level.

As I said earlier, this team wasn't even as good as 2005 or 2006, despite having more talent.  If they were second-best to 2003, you may have had a point here, but that wasn't the case.

To argue about 2005, remember that the major reason we stayed with Minny was 37 vs. 17 saves, and we only got by OSU because of 34 vs. 17 saves. Certainly that's not the high powered offense that many are clamoring for, but if you want to say we got there by good defense and great goaltending I'd agree. That does go away from their argument, however.

2006 is an even worse comparison. Third in RS and losing to Harvard in the finals. We beat CC by limiting them to 23 shots, and then lost to W, being out shot 60 to 40. Again my above comment about style pertains. This years team compares favorably to both of those years and, in my mind, certainly had a more satisfying playoff run than 2006. I'd give up a 1-1 NCAA record to 0-1, for an ECAC Championship any year.

So I don't see how you can use those years as a comparison and say they were better. 2006 was no better and 2005 was debatable, but certainly more enjoyable.They were great years because of the Schafer system, with great goaltending. Without that spectacular goaltending we could easily be talking the same about them.

I think the difference is that we enjoyed 2005 & 2006 better, because we enjoyed the last game better than this year.

[Rosey]

I think the difference is that we enjoyed 2005 & 2006 better, because we enjoyed the last game better than this year.

I think your points are fair, with no argument on this point, especially.  The losses that ended 2005 and 2006 were tough but showed each team playing its best in games that could have gone either way: though losses, they gave me a good feeling to end the year on.  Yesterday's loss did not: Cornell looked bad and certainly did not play its best.

Furthermore, to your point comparing 2006 to 2010, I'd say that the team performed better in 2006 against tougher competition (e.g., Wisconsin, which was the eventual national champion).

I'm not one of these guys that thinks Cornell needs to bring in lots of offensive talent and re-jigger its game to compete: I like the defense-first system, and it suits the kinds of players Schafer is able to bring in.  But it needs to be executed well, and with consistency.  2005 and 2006 both ended with Cornell as a well-oiled defensive machine that just fell slightly short on the firepower.  By comparison, 2010 ended with Cornell giving up five goals before answering with a second late in the 3rd while the UHN players were busy popping open the champagne on the bench.  Yikes!  I'll take a hundred 2006's before another 2010 from the standpoint of Cornell's performance in the big games.

This leads into your point about winning the ECAC championship.  I'm very glad that Cornell won, and I had a great time in Albany (as usual), yadda yadda yadda... but they had the easiest road to an ECAC title that they've had in a long time.  Brown and Backman eliminated the one opponent that would likely have beaten Cornell.  Harvard?  Brown?  Union?  Somehow the ECAC title doesn't seem so impressive given how Cornell got it.  Again, I'm happy to have it, but this is not like winning in 2005, when Cornell wasn't clearly outclassing the other team on the ice in every game.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

When I answered the poll, I wanted an option for "a little of both."  Clearly the inconsistency of this team showed all season.  When they did not show up, anybody could beat us, never mind a playoff caliber team like UHN.

But an ECAC championship is a tremendous achievement.  Let's not belittle that.  It's a shame that the seniors gould not have gone out on a more positive note, but that should not detract from what was a very good season.

I'm usually not one to be pollyanna-ish, but all in all, this was a damn good year.

[adamw]

Since evidently I am not getting through to people, my point isn't that Cornell '10 was an objectively bad team: they weren't.  My point was that this was supposed to be the year that brought us back to the highs of '03 and would give us a long run in the NCAA tournament.  Instead, they folded like a cheap suit last night.  They didn't lose a one goal, back-and-forth game: they got beat and looked bad in the process.  Not what I expected from this team last off-season, but certainly what I came to expect following their night-to-night inconsistency throughout the season.

The problem is - as I stated a couple of weeks ago in the thread Age started - is that ....  I don't know what made people believe this was "the year" ... This team was never thought of, when taking off the Big Red-colored glasses, on the same par with the 2003 team.  I personally never saw that.  Any Cornell NCAA-caliber team CAN make the FF .... but in 2003, the Frozen Four was practically considered a given ... and if it didn't happen, it would've been devastating, because the chances are so few.  Not in 2005, 2006 or 2010 did I think it was on that level.  Yes, it stings, yes they certainly could've made the FF .... but they could also just as easily lose in the 1st round.  In 05 06 and 09, Cornell won tough first-round games --- coming back from down 2-0 in each one of them .... This year, they lost it.  It happens.