Women's Season Stuff

[Towerroad]

Attendance at the last few games (except Clarkson)looks like it is averaging about 400+. USCHO reported the Clarkson game at 2326. I watched some of the game on Redcast and noticed it looked like a lot more people than usual.

For better and worse, I think the attendance is better at home than away.

[Weder]

This list of recruits for next season lists two more players in the Team Canada pipeline. One wonders if, at some point, Cornell will have to forfeit a game because 75% of the team is off at an international competition.

Also worth noting: One of the listed recruits has a decent acting career going.

[ugarte]

Also worth noting: One of the listed recruits has a decent acting career going.

This is like finding out "Christina Applegate is coming to Cornell next year!" was true all along.

[amerks127]

Also worth noting: One of the listed recruits has a decent acting career going.

This is like finding out "Christina Applegate is coming to Cornell next year!" was true all along.

Elie wrote about this all the way back in May.

http://bilmes.blogspot.com/2010/05/hollywood-meets-lynah-rink.html

[Tom Lento]

For most of the decade, the Women were a mediocre to middling team. Even last year the first half of the season was so so. Something clicked about a year ago and the have been a serious force since then. (Anyone care to speculate?).

This years hockey schedule was probably largely set in stone before this team transformed itself and was reflective of the status quo. I would hope that next year we will see more competition with top 10 teams. Attendance seems to be improving and hopefully the travel budget will be available. A lot of the top teams are in the upper the upper mid west (Mn, ND, Wi). Just going by KRACH for this year, BU, BC, Northeastern, and Providence and of course Mercyhurst are a reasonable bus ride away.

Lets hope the team remains consistent and starts playing the other 5-8 elite schools in the regular season (and of course late in the post season)

Cornell typically finished in the bottom 4 of the ECAC over the course of the last decade, but three years ago the team started the climb out of the cellar, qualifying for the ECAC playoffs in consecutive seasons prior to 2009-2010. I think three things happened that made last year so great for the women.

1) Cornell was building for success over the course of the past several seasons. Derraugh brought in several strong recruiting classes, and I think a reasonable expectation was for Cornell to challenge for home ice in the ECAC playoffs and a berth in the ECAC final 4 in 2010, followed by a shot at an NCAA and possible Frozen Four berth in 2011. That's the way the talent and team performance was headed.

2) Cornell's freshmen and sophomores turned in remarkable early-career performances in 2009-2010, particularly in the second half of the season. I suspect several early-season games where key players were not available helped accelerate the development of players who ordinarily wouldn't be asked to carry so much of the load. This helped propel Cornell to an ECAC title and a strong run in the NCAAs a full year ahead of schedule.

3) Women's hockey as a whole was in a temporary down cycle, as many of the top teams were missing players due to national team commitments. While this also affected Cornell and probably had little to no impact on the Big Red's regular season record, it might have made the path to the NCAA finals a little bit easier. I don't know if this affected the final outcome, but it couldn't have hurt for a team that had never experienced an ECAC final four, much less a Frozen Four.


I agree that the schedule is probably what it is for a combination of historical and financial reasons, and it would be great to see some of those top teams during the regular season.


To answer KenP's question - the team's level of success looks to be sustainable, although of course there's no way to know for sure since the bulk of the production is coming from the juniors and seniors. They're not a 1-line team, and the depth of talent has increased rapidly over the past several years, so as long as the recruiting classes continue to be strong I would expect a sustained run of success. As for shifting the balance of power, the Ivies - specifically Harvard and Dartmouth - were national powers for the better part of the last 10-15 years. The rise of BU and BC is recent - those programs are both less than 10 years old - and Northeastern and Providence were former powers until their recent resurgence. On the whole I think the best teams over the last 10+ years have been UMD, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Harvard, Dartmouth, SLU and North Dakota. The balance of power is shifting away from the ECAC a bit with Harvard and Dartmouth struggling more than expected and SLU falling off from their earlier success, but Cornell's rise is keeping the ECAC/Ivy League near the top of the sport.

[scoop85]

Cornell just took a 2-0 lead at Mercyhurst with 8:52 left in the 3rd.

[Chris '03]

Rematch with Mercyhurst tonight:
2-0 Red mid-3rd. (Karlee Overguard scored 11 minutes into both the 2nd and 3rd)

B2 feed was canceled. live stat: http://www.sidearmstats.com/hurst/whockey/index.htm

[Chris '03]

Now 3-0 with about 5 to play.

[Larry72]

Final 3-0!!!  Great job!

[imafrshmn]

Biggest win on the season for the Red!  Also, in my estimation, this game offers solid evidence that freshman goaltender Lauren Slebodnick could be a future star.  With Amanda Mazzotta still out healing her hurt foot, to have this kind of depth at the goalie position was huge.  Congrats ladies.

[Al DeFlorio]

Looks like only three lines skated.  Freshmen Xandra Hompe and Olivia Cook apparently did not play.

[mattj711]

Wish Mercyhurst's video feed for the game would have been working...at least Cornell had audio.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Looks like only three lines skated.  Freshmen Xandra Hompe and Olivia Cook apparently did not play.

Xandra Hompe?  Does anyone else besides me think that sounds like a porn-star name?  ::twitch::

[Jim Hyla]

Looks like only three lines skated.  Freshmen Xandra Hompe and Olivia Cook apparently did not play.

Xandra Hompe?  Does anyone else besides me think that sounds like a porn-star name?  ::twitch::

Do we really have to do this all over again?

[Towerroad]

Looks like only three lines skated.  Freshmen Xandra Hompe and Olivia Cook apparently did not play.

Xandra Hompe?  Does anyone else besides me think that sounds like a porn-star name?  ::twitch::

Do we really have to do this all over again?

You are an Ivy League grad for goodness sake talking about one of your fellow Cornellians. Show some class.