IJ article on next year

[pfibiger]

Brandon Thomas turns in a typically well thought out end-of-season look forward to next year:

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20110323/SPORTS03/103230349/1128/news/Cornell-men-s-hockey-defense-goaltending-will-sturdy-next-season?odyssey=nav|head

[Trotsky]

Well-written.  Thanks for posting it.

[billhoward]

Nice story on "core of returning defenders and goalies bolsters the Big Red." The impact of the incoming players was left for another day and that is the unknown and that looms larger than in recent years. Schafer has called the Class of '15 either the best or potentially the best class in his 16 years.

[Al DeFlorio]

Nice story on "core of returning defenders and goalies bolsters the Big Red." The impact of the incoming players was left for another day and that is the unknown and that looms larger than in recent years. Schafer has called the Class of '15 either the best or potentially the best class in his 16 years.

The key unknown is whether they'll bring some offense to the team. This year's team, with all its struggles to score, loses its two top goal scorers who accounted for half of the team's game-winning goals.

[Trotsky]

Nice story on "core of returning defenders and goalies bolsters the Big Red." The impact of the incoming players was left for another day and that is the unknown and that looms larger than in recent years. Schafer has called the Class of '15 either the best or potentially the best class in his 16 years.

The key unknown is whether they'll bring some offense to the team. This year's team, with all its struggles to score, loses its two top goal scorers who accounted for half of the team's game-winning goals.

You can never really tell until they make the leap to the next level, but based on Mike's comments and BRP's stats it looks like we have some scoring coming in (some will defer):

Code Select Expand

    [b][u]GP G A PTS PPG PIM[/u][/b]
Lowry 54 29 55 84 1.6 41
Cimetta 60 24 44 68 1.1 36
Ferlin 49 24 38 62 1.3 20
Dias 62 22 34 58 0.9 55
S. Miller 40 36 16 52 1.3 52
McCarron 53 17 28 47 0.9 105
Knisley 68 12 27 39 0.6 48
Cole 40 17 21 38 1.0 36
Ryan 45 2 26 28 0.6 22
MacDonald 51 6 21 27 0.5 40
Bardreau 51 10 15 25 0.5 41
Hudon 22 10 10 20 0.9 n/a

For kicks, here are the comparable numbers for current / recent players courtesy of Heisenberg:

Code Select Expand

    [b][u]GP G A PTS PPG PIM[/u][/b]
Collins 60 51 64 115 1.9 34
Roeszler 48 42 71 113 2.4 28
G. Miller 49 40 51 91 1.9 56
R. Nash 55 38 45 83 1.5 87
Kary 61 35 32 67 1.1 118
Axell 42 14 36 50 1.2 53
Berk 59 8 34 42 0.7 34
P. Kennedy 26 23 18 41 1.6 42
Esposito 51 15 22 37 0.7 44
M. Devin 59 8 25 33 0.6 92
D'Agostino 43 9 24 33 0.8 34
C. Moulson 60 6 27 33 0.6 66
Mihalek 50 9 20 29 0.6 26
Birch 35 7 18 25 0.7 46
J. Devin 47 8 15 23 0.5 80
Jillson 48 5 18 23 0.5  6
Nicholls 47 4 14 18 0.4 107
Seymour 40 3 7 10 0.3 100

Obviously there are significant differences due to schedule length, strength of the league they are coming from, whether they are still growing etc.  One thing seems pretty clear, though: PIMs are down, either in hockey in general or in Schafer's recruiting profile.

[pfibiger]

What's interesting about Schafer saying that is that it seems like a couple of the highest-scoring forwards, the biggest "gets" in recruiting: Phillipe Hudon and Stevie Miller, are possibly deferring at least a year (Heisenberg still has Hudon listed as coming next year while BRP does not. Heisenberg also has Knisley deferring and Bardreau coming next year, the opposite of BRP)

[billhoward]

Have we lost players who deferred a year and then decided to do something else?

[Trotsky]

Have we lost players who deferred a year and then decided to do something else?

Casson Masters (Princeton), IIRC.

[jtwcornell91]

Have we lost players who deferred a year and then decided to do something else?

Casson Masters (Princeton), IIRC.

Oh, well, that's no big deal then. ::uhoh::

[KeithK]

Has anyone done a study correlating juniors performance to college performance so we could try to project? (Using such things as league strength as a variable.) Folks do this kind of thing in baseball relating minor league performance to projected major league performance, so it's certainly possible. (Baseball has more stats to work with though.)

[Trotsky]

Has anyone done a study correlating juniors performance to college performance so we could try to project? (Using such things as league strength as a variable.) Folks do this kind of thing in baseball relating minor league performance to projected major league performance, so it's certainly possible. (Baseball has more stats to work with though.)

I haven't seen one but I'm sure some gearhead out there is working on it.  

Since baseball has had a lot of work in this area the conceptual framework (e.g., what factors to consider, what constitutes good sample data) is probably well developed.  Good project for an undergrad statistics student.

[David Harding]

Nice story on "core of returning defenders and goalies bolsters the Big Red." The impact of the incoming players was left for another day and that is the unknown and that looms larger than in recent years. Schafer has called the Class of '15 either the best or potentially the best class in his 16 years.

The key unknown is whether they'll bring some offense to the team. This year's team, with all its struggles to score, loses its two top goal scorers who accounted for half of the team's game-winning goals.

Another interesting question:  How often are the two top goal scorers seniors?  Top three?  Top four?  My sense is that most players do develop over the course of their years at Cornell and become more productive.

[Trotsky]

Nice story on "core of returning defenders and goalies bolsters the Big Red." The impact of the incoming players was left for another day and that is the unknown and that looms larger than in recent years. Schafer has called the Class of '15 either the best or potentially the best class in his 16 years.

The key unknown is whether they'll bring some offense to the team. This year's team, with all its struggles to score, loses its two top goal scorers who accounted for half of the team's game-winning goals.

Another interesting question:  How often are the two top goal scorers seniors?  Top three?  Top four?  My sense is that most players do develop over the course of their years at Cornell and become more productive.

Using the TBRW Report Generator I went back through the Schafer years looking at the number of Seniors among our top 5 point scorers.

0 2 (2001*, 02)
1 5 (1997, 98, 99, 2004, 05)
2 5 (1996, 2007, 08, 09, 10)
3 3 (2000, 06, 11)
4 1 (2003)
5 0

*2001 was a special year as there were no Juniors either: all top 5 were underclassmen and there were no Seniors in the top 11 scorers (the top senior was a true blast from the past: Andrew McNiven).

So this a significant loss of scoring, particularly since it is goal scoring heavy.  I also researched your specific question: how many times have our top 1, 2, 3 goal scorers been Seniors?

0 10 times
1 2 (1997*, 2006)
2 3 (1996, 2010, 11)
3 1 (2000)

*In 1997, a senior was tied for first, making it more like a 0.5

As you can see, the majority of the time the leading goal scorer isn't a senior.  Sometimes this is just a matter of waiting for Matt Moulson to move up through the classes.  The last time we graduated the top 2 goal scorers was... last year (Gallagher and Greening) when we actually lost our #3 as well (Riley).  That was a truly significant loss since those 3 were far and away the leading goal producers and yet... people stepped in this year, and will again next year.

The Thomas article quotes Collins as saying Mihalek and Axell might move up to the top lines.  Those were not the names that readily sprung to mind, indicating that it's very difficult to predict what guys in supporting roles are capable of once they get put in the hot seat.  I thought Espo showed some very promising flashes late in the year and in AC I thought he was probably the third best player on the ice after the Devins.

Or maybe D'Agostino can lead the team in goals from the blueline.    (Something I don't know has been ever done, although Dan Lodboa came VERY close in 1970.)

[pfibiger]

Our top two goal scorers this year combined for 29 goals, the previous year they had 14 (the top two non-seniors would have had 16 since Collins, Kennedy and Jillson all scored more goals than Roeszler last year). The top two non-senior goal scorers this year scored 15 goals (Esposito and Collins). We lost a lot of goals, but it's pretty likely some of these guys will step up like Devin and Roeszler did.

[billhoward]

Last year we could put out a line of five seniors and exiting players (Riley Nash) who put up nearly half the team's 107 goals. We lost more last year than this. Or maybe we're overanalyzing. This was a rebuilding year, we're losing some valuable players and people who provided teamwork and leadership, and it also sounds as if the potential of the incoming class will make Cornell even more competitive in the next couple years.

The 2010 team had the talent to make the Frozen Four and didn't. This team had the talent to make the ECAC final four and (thanks to Union's timely collapse earlier) we made it to the title game.

I continue to stand in awe of all the effort that goes into http://www.tbrw.info/ that makes it easy to find all that Cornell hockey trivia. Thank you, Greg.