Cornell 1 RPI 2 (ot)

[Brian Sullivan]

Brian, unless I've been grossly misreading your columns (not likely), they seem to be exactly what Kyle is describing. Here are just a few excerpts from your latest x-rated column:

"the Engineers... blew the Big Red"
"enjoy a night's 'rest' in its own bed" (internal quotes added)
"coronary-inducing"
"the gate was shut and locked for the frustrated Ivy icers"

And although they weren't in this column a few other frequent ones:
"score"
"put it in the crease"

You should see the stuff I leave on the cutting-room floor.

[TheMatrix]

Ask and ye shall receive. I found the no-goal video and added zoom and slow motion. I apologize for the watermark and run-length but I believe it's the only way you can see what happened. Besides, if you actually care enough about the call to watch the video you probably don't mind blowing 2 minutes. As best as I can tell, at 1:20 of the video, the puck goes off either Collins or the defender. I am not sure if the puck went off the boards behind the goal and bounced into the crease or off the sieve first. The puck then drops straight to the line and never actually crosses. You see something dark that looks like the puck to Collins's left but it is the tip of the defender's stick (not to mention it looks behind or inside the net then suddenly the puck is on the line).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j208srtcu4
Note: it may take a few minutes for the 720p version to be available as I just uploaded it.
Edit: Just for the record, that's not me screaming "THAT'S A FUCKING GOAL!"

For good measure: España.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=291f-JUw7KI

Senior Night ceremony still forthcoming.

[jtn27]

From the video, it looks like the puck was about to go in and then hit one of the player's skates and was deflected.

[ursusminor]

Watching Luke Curadi (RPI #5) in the "non-goal" video, I am wondering like I did when he committed to RPI, why he didn't end up at Cornell. A 6'5", 250+ lb defenseman with red hair. It seems a perfect fit. (Granted that he is a below average skater).

[Trotsky]

I'm not going to quote all the times it's been mentioned, but this team has never had momentum. Unless you consider up and down is momentum. I'd say that at no point in the season could you ever be comfortable in feeling we should win or lose against any of the teams we played.

In mid-November it felt like the team would never lose again, never give up a goal again, etc, etc.  They had played well in sweeping at Harvard and Dartmouth, then come home and blown out Princeton and Q 4-0 on each night.  The freshmen class was brilliant and D'Ags was scoring a ppg every shift.  Gotta admit I felt pretty damn good about the team, just then.  

[ursusminor]

Trotsky,

Considering Trotsky's first and third laws (something doesn't sound right with that ;-) ), is it surprising that the game ended the way it did?

[Beeeej]

The Ithaca Journal is perhaps best known for sucking. I don't think that there's any question that the Sun is the best paper in Ithaca (although as a Sun writer I am a bit biased).

Being "the best paper in Ithaca" is kind of like being the toughest kid in second grade. And if you took all my posts on this forum over the years about individual examples of horrendous writing or editing in the Sun and laid them end to end, they'd... well, they'd reveal how much time I've spent complaining about horrendous writing or editing in the Sun, I guess.

[nyc94]

Don't know what to say, when you have to have it.....
Expect nothing from this team.  I'm looking ahead already.  To next year I mean....

How dare they only finish in 2nd in the conference in a year that they weren't expected to dominate.

How dare they.

::rolleyes::

That was just massive disappointment talking.  Yes, this team has finished higher than we had any reason to expect but I still see the end result as a massive underachievement.  To have the Jell-O Mold in our hand, playing a team well down the standings at home, and blowing the game in the third and in OT....
Not much to feel confident about.

FYP

Why is everyone fixating upon losing a trophy that most of us do not care about typically? The last time we won the ECAC, we began with a number two seed. The only real disappointment that came with the number two seed for me, notwithstanding the poor loss to RPI that caused it, was that we did not prevent Union from winning back-to-back number one seeds. I sat near Union fans during the Friday game and they have begun to view themselves as the "dominant power" in ECAC history. I directed their attention to the rafters. They needed a little perspective. (Also, are hockey fans of a "dominant power" so shocked by how loud Lynah is that they must plug their ears when Cornell scores?).

The team does play proportionately to the quality of our opponents this season. The team has been anything but predictable. Losses to Mercyhurst, UMass, and Brown. Wins and close games with BU, CC, and Union. I am not that worried about the ECAC Tournament. We have the advantage of Lynah in the Quarterfinals. We will have crucial player(s) back. We will face better opponents as a number two seed than we would have as a number one seed. Considering the trend of proportional play, I like our chances playing against a WCHA team in the heart of their territory than playing "mediocre" opponents out East.

It's not the loss of the trophy that is upsetting. It's more the fact that we dropped to 16th in the pairwise rankings. Now we have no margin for error going forward if we want to make the NCAAs; we have to win the ECAC. Had we won, we could have afforded to lose once we got to Atlantic City.

We knew that we would have to perform in the ECACs. That is not news to anyone. ECAC play and our PWR does not exist in a vacuum. UMass reappearing on the PWR affected our rank more than a bad overtime loss to RPI. Cornell had no control over UMass' reappearance on the PWR. If a series of things go right, that would be fruitless to enumerate now because of how many games will be played before the NCAAs, then we have still almost exactly the same probability of getting an at-large as we did going into Saturday's game. 2009, the last time that Cornell got an at-large bid, Cornell needed to make it to the ECAC Final game to assure it. The tone and outlook of the season did not change even though a more than eight year  streak was broken last night.

If Cornell had defeated RPI we still would have fallen to 13 in Pairwise because of the added TUC loss via UMass.  However losing to RPI lowered our RPI enough to make this irrelevant.  Using the DIY Rankings I tried two scenarios to prevent UMass from becoming a TUC: changing their Saturday win over UNH to a loss and removing the game from the data set altogether. In both cases our losing to RPI still drops us to 16.  Our lower RPI flipped all of the comparisons.  UMass just means we're losing some of those comparisons by a wider margin.

[RichH]

We are a better team than RPI.

I'll report a friend's comment immediately after this game: "Cornell has better players, but RPI played like the better team."  I will say that I felt that for the majority of the game, Cornell controlled play. RPI responded with more opportunistic and energetic hockey.

I'll also steal another friend's (Scersk's) observation. This team's play is dependent on it's concentration.  The two most entertaining and well-played games (on both sides) I saw this season were the two Cornell-Union games.  Union's team stats are eye-popping, and they have a lightning-quick offensive setup.  For the first two periods in Schenectady, and the 1st period in Ithaca, Cornell didn't seem to grasp that fact.  They came out as if they were facing Guelph.  For the 3rd period, despite the result, at Achilles and the 2nd & 3rd period at home on Friday, Cornell had made a deliberate adjustment: they spent much of their time focusing more on a puck-possession game, rather than playing (and reacting to) bodies. That style suits this team well, and it's especially important playing a team such as Union.  When they take care of the puck, instead of just playing bodies, this Cornell team is very, very strong.

For a good chunk of the RPI game, Cornell didn't seem to have that concentration on fundamentals at all.   About 10 seconds before RPI tied it, the guy behind me sighed, "Oh, don't do this again..."  and as Coach Schafer himself pointed out, we had 4 guys in the corner before the winning goal while Cullen neatly camped out right in front of the net, alone, just waiting for the pass.  

Concentration is a big problem with with this team.  To me, this explains the getting up for a good opponent, and playing down to weaker ones.

[jtn27]

Don't know what to say, when you have to have it.....
Expect nothing from this team.  I'm looking ahead already.  To next year I mean....

How dare they only finish in 2nd in the conference in a year that they weren't expected to dominate.

How dare they.

::rolleyes::

That was just massive disappointment talking.  Yes, this team has finished higher than we had any reason to expect but I still see the end result as a massive underachievement.  To have the Jell-O Mold in our hand, playing a team well down the standings at home, and blowing the game in the third and in OT....
Not much to feel confident about.

FYP

Why is everyone fixating upon losing a trophy that most of us do not care about typically? The last time we won the ECAC, we began with a number two seed. The only real disappointment that came with the number two seed for me, notwithstanding the poor loss to RPI that caused it, was that we did not prevent Union from winning back-to-back number one seeds. I sat near Union fans during the Friday game and they have begun to view themselves as the "dominant power" in ECAC history. I directed their attention to the rafters. They needed a little perspective. (Also, are hockey fans of a "dominant power" so shocked by how loud Lynah is that they must plug their ears when Cornell scores?).

The team does play proportionately to the quality of our opponents this season. The team has been anything but predictable. Losses to Mercyhurst, UMass, and Brown. Wins and close games with BU, CC, and Union. I am not that worried about the ECAC Tournament. We have the advantage of Lynah in the Quarterfinals. We will have crucial player(s) back. We will face better opponents as a number two seed than we would have as a number one seed. Considering the trend of proportional play, I like our chances playing against a WCHA team in the heart of their territory than playing "mediocre" opponents out East.

It's not the loss of the trophy that is upsetting. It's more the fact that we dropped to 16th in the pairwise rankings. Now we have no margin for error going forward if we want to make the NCAAs; we have to win the ECAC. Had we won, we could have afforded to lose once we got to Atlantic City.

We knew that we would have to perform in the ECACs. That is not news to anyone. ECAC play and our PWR does not exist in a vacuum. UMass reappearing on the PWR affected our rank more than a bad overtime loss to RPI. Cornell had no control over UMass' reappearance on the PWR. If a series of things go right, that would be fruitless to enumerate now because of how many games will be played before the NCAAs, then we have still almost exactly the same probability of getting an at-large as we did going into Saturday's game. 2009, the last time that Cornell got an at-large bid, Cornell needed to make it to the ECAC Final game to assure it. The tone and outlook of the season did not change even though a more than eight year  streak was broken last night.

If Cornell had defeated RPI we still would have fallen to 13 in Pairwise because of the added TUC loss via UMass.  However losing to RPI lowered our RPI enough to make this irrelevant.  Using the DIY Rankings I tried two scenarios to prevent UMass from becoming a TUC: changing their Saturday win over UNH to a loss and removing the game from the data set altogether. In both cases our losing to RPI still drops us to 16.  Our lower RPI flipped all of the comparisons.  UMass just means we're losing some of those comparisons by a wider margin.

That seems counter-intuitive. Wouldn't it be better for us to lose to a TUC, meaning a team that is somewhat good, instead of a team that is not a TUC and thus not good? I guess that's not how PWR works though.

[jtn27]

The Ithaca Journal is perhaps best known for sucking. I don't think that there's any question that the Sun is the best paper in Ithaca (although as a Sun writer I am a bit biased).

Being "the best paper in Ithaca" is kind of like being the toughest kid in second grade. And if you took all my posts on this forum over the years about individual examples of horrendous writing or editing in the Sun and laid them end to end, they'd... well, they'd reveal how much time I've spent complaining about horrendous writing or editing in the Sun, I guess.

I think that's a fair analogy. My point was more that the Journal sucks than that the Sun is good. Although, you would expect the professional newspaper to be better than the student one.

[Beeeej]

The Ithaca Journal is perhaps best known for sucking. I don't think that there's any question that the Sun is the best paper in Ithaca (although as a Sun writer I am a bit biased).

Being "the best paper in Ithaca" is kind of like being the toughest kid in second grade. And if you took all my posts on this forum over the years about individual examples of horrendous writing or editing in the Sun and laid them end to end, they'd... well, they'd reveal how much time I've spent complaining about horrendous writing or editing in the Sun, I guess.

I think that's a fair analogy. My point was more that the Journal sucks than that the Sun is good. Although, you would expect the professional newspaper to be better than the student one.

Not really.  With rare exceptions, a professional newspaper in Ithaca isn't going to attract the best journalists, it's generally going to attract the best journalists who already want to live in or near Ithaca.  A student paper at an Ivy League university is going to attract many of the best students who want to be the best journalists.

[Scersk '97]

To belabor what Rich just said, or perhaps to add the corollary, when this team concentrates it is deadly.  What I saw during the second two periods of the Union game was one of the most impressive offensive displays  I have ever seen by a Cornell team, or at least a Cornell team under Schafer.  I have to reach back to the Hughes, Andison, Derraugh years to find a comparison.

Yes, the 2003 team's cycle was killer, wearing teams out and grinding them into submission.  But this team, against the best defensive team in the nation mind you, played facing the net.  Skate, skate, skate, turn, indeed.  Delicate touch plays, fantastic rebound control, everything.  And I've never seen a Cornell team better at smelling blood in the water.  When our D starts rushing the slot, particularly D'Agostino, it's a thing of beauty.

So, if we can win our clutch-and-grab league's tournament, I love our chances vs. defensively undisciplined Hockey Least or WZHA competition.  Don't want to see Miami.  Don't want to see another AHA team.

[ugarte]

The Ithaca Journal is perhaps best known for sucking. I don't think that there's any question that the Sun is the best paper in Ithaca (although as a Sun writer I am a bit biased).

Being "the best paper in Ithaca" is kind of like being the toughest kid in second grade. And if you took all my posts on this forum over the years about individual examples of horrendous writing or editing in the Sun and laid them end to end, they'd... well, they'd reveal how much time I've spent complaining about horrendous writing or editing in the Sun, I guess.

I think that's a fair analogy. My point was more that the Journal sucks than that the Sun is good. Although, you would expect the professional newspaper to be better than the student one.

Not really.  With rare exceptions, a professional newspaper in Ithaca isn't going to attract the best journalists, it's generally going to attract the best journalists who already want to live in or near Ithaca.  A student paper at an Ivy League university is going to attract many of the best students who want to be the best journalists.

This is cray talk. The student paper will have teenagers who know fuck-all about anything. The IJ will have a staff that is a combination of young writers building their clip file before trying to move to a bigger paper and more experienced writers that have decided they like horrible weather. The average member of either group should be better than most of the Sun writers. The young writers will have gotten the job based on their own college clip file and the experienced writers are EXPERIENCED WRITERS.

This isn't to say that the IJ is or is not fishwrap, only to point out that teenagers are bad writers and a red sweatshirt doesn't change that. Sorry, Sun staffers. You are probably terrible. Did I mention that I wrote a thing for The Classical? If you want your revenge, please feel free to tell me that I suck too.

[RichH]

Yes, the 2003 team's cycle was killer, wearing teams out and grinding them into submission.

I'll also argue the point that the 2003 era's teams were also strong because they played a puck-possession game. The reason they cycled so much was to maintain puck control.  Those that remember "The Shift" from the regular season game at UNH in 2010 saw that strategy played to perfection.

A couple things I'll add about the Union game on Friday:

1) Our best puck possession guy wasn't even playing, but I saw a couple players have very Ferlin-esque plays.

B) The forechecking!! (Clouds part, angels sing, etc.) That was the most aggressively I've seen CU pressure an opponent in their own end in a long time. A handful of teams have been doing that to us this season, and it's clearly becoming "the book" on Cornell, especially when we try to set up breakouts from behind our own net:  Just send a man in deep right on top of the puck carrier, and we often panic and cough it up.  Very nice to see us turn the tables on another team; I don't think Union expected that from us.