CU at RPI

[jkahn]

Never write off a season.

This. I can think of a half-dozen seasons off the top of my head where CU has erased/redeemed a non-stellar regular season or a stretch of mid-winter doldrums with a strong post-season run.  The '06 team is looked at as a success, forever remembered for taking Wisconsin to 0-0 in the 3rd OT in Green Bay. They were a frustratingly inconsistent 4-3-1 for the stretch-run in February. The '09 team was 2-5-1 from mid-Jan through mid-Feb, but had many of us seriously dreaming of Washington before hitting the Bemidji blow-up.

The end of the 1980 season is one of the best examples.  I will leave it to one of our number who was a fan then to elucidate.

Okay, I'll elucidate.  We finished in the 8th and final playoff spot (out of about 20 teams).  Back then the quarter-finals were one game on Tuesday night at the higher seed.  We thoroughly outplayed #1 BC 5-1  and as the BC alum I was with said, there was no question that night as to which team was the better team.  On to Boston Garden on Friday, we played #2 Providence.  We were down 4-2 after two and being outplayed.  I had first row balcony tickets and in between the 2nd and 3rd, I made a contingent sale of my tickets to a Providence fan for the next night (I was living in southern New Hampshire at the time and had a 4 month old at home so I figured I'd give my wife a break if Cornell wasn't playing).  Providence scored early in the 3rd to go up 5-2 and it didn't look good.  Cornell won 6-5 in regulation.  The next night we defeated #3 Dartmouth 5-1 for the championship.
It's not over 'til it's over.  Last year a lot of people on this forum were writing us off after losing the ECAC semi.  In the end, we felt pretty good about being one of the final 8 teams playing.  There's not a lot of difference between a good season and a disappointing one.  Let's hope those little differences go our way the rest of the season.

[lhayes]

And we only got the 8th and last playoff spot in 1980 with a win in the final RS game.  IIRC, that win was against Harvard, but maybe my memory is gilding the lily.  I'm pretty sure I went to Boston 2 weekends in a row.

[jtn27]

Seriously, you must realize that there are quite a lot of RPI fans who post on USCHO, just like there are a lot of Cornell and who post here, and opinions vary.

The middle level of Maslow's Hierarchy ought to be "has recognized that the object of fan allegiance is accidental and does not correlate with any other characteristic."

50% of internet posters never achieve this level.

I am convinced that the only reason people root for teams that I dislike is that they are too unintelligent, evil, or uncivilized (or all three) to root for a different team. Stop spreading these lies that suggest my beliefs are not true.

[Trotsky]

And we only got the 8th and last playoff spot in 1980 with a win in the final RS game.  IIRC, that win was against Harvard, but maybe my memory is gilding the lily.  I'm pretty sure I went to Boston 2 weekends in a row.

It was BU.  Here's the whole run.

In addition to Jeff's wonderful reporting, here is the final RS win that set it all up.

Note the time of the overtime goal: 9:12.  That was back in the day of 10-minute RS overtimes.

[Trotsky]

I am convinced that the only reason people root for teams that I dislike is that they are too unintelligent, evil, or uncivilized (or all three) to root for a different team.

The Philadelphia jokes just write themselves.  

[gjp84]

My recollection of 1980 is only slightly different. First, the BC game. BC had 3 PPs in the first period, but left the ice down 2-0. It was 5-0 by the middle of the third period and a BC alum and his young son got up to leave. As they were walking up the aisle, a particularly strident Cornell fan (not me) said: "How come you're leaving? The game's not over". To which the young boy said " Oh yeah? BC could beat Cornell in another game any day". To which the Cornell fan replied "There are no more games kid." Beautiful. The PC game, I believe was 5-2 late in the 2nd period, when Brock Tredway scored in the final minute to give us hope going into the 3rd. Roy Kerling won it with a seeing eye slapshot from the point mid- to late 3rd. The Dartmouth game was the only of 4 between the 2 teams that year that Cornell won. They met in the NCAA Final Four consolation game in addition to the 2 regular season games.

The final RS game was a gem (in retrospect). It was at BU, not Harvard, and Cornell needed a tie for the 8th spot. BU rallied from a 5-0 deficit to tie the game and send it to OT where Brian Marrett won it for Cornell to send them back to Boston the following Tuesday against BC.

Over 30 years ago now, but still nice to think back on.

[Trotsky]

As there are a couple discrepancies in the memories, I'll put in a gratuitous plug for one of my (free) Cornell hockey fandom tools.

To recover any box score of any game:

1. Go to the TBRW Report Generator
2. Enter the date of the game in the text field in yyyymmdd format and click the Box Score button.

Note: If you don't know the date of the game, the other buttons might help you.  For example, you can use the Generator to display the Games by Year, or Games vs Opponent, and get the date from those reports.

As always, if you happen upon errors (of which I am sure there are many) drop me an email.  Also, if there are any reports you'd like to see let me know.

/end plug

[Tom Lento]

Only the second RS loss in 13 years at RPI.

Yeah, if only the team had played as well as the video feed.

Oh, well.....lacrosse starts soon.

::bang::

Never write off a season.  We played great Friday.  Our problem is consistency, not ability.  Consistency is a matter of coaching and player discipline, and it's never too late for that all to come together.  Combine it with a goalie who can get hot, and perhaps we have the Kings' 2012 post-season run.

This is shaping up to be a year where Cornell is always in the game, but rarely breaks into a comfortable lead.  Think of us as a .500 team trying to build toward a top-4 bye team.  That will make it a much more fun experience than thinking of us as an underachieving Dreadnought.

I would love for us to come up big next weekend against Yale and Brown.  Nobody is running away with the Ivy title.  We aren't well-positioned, but it's still in reach, it's a fun title to pursue, and those head-to-heads with Yale and Dartmouth will be very important for ECAC standings.

It's honestly hard not to think of them as the best mediocre team you've ever seen when the expectations were a a top 10 team and the talent on the team justifies those expectations.

Isn't this team still very young, with most of the high-end talent concentrated in the freshman and sophomore classes? I honestly don't know - I haven't seen them play this season, so I don't know which players are really the key to on-ice success.

There is one thing that I feel compelled to point out: die-hard fans tend to inflate expectations of talent and production to an unreasonable degree. The final year with Nash/Nash/Greening was touted by several around these parts as a potential national title contender, but I never saw that given the talent on that squad. One line teams don't win national titles, and Cornell had a steep talent drop-off after the top 5 or 6 skaters. Yale had two terrifying forward lines and dominated Cornell that year, but they didn't have the depth and balance they needed to get to the FF either. MSU-Mankato had a half hugely talented forward line that, according to the WCHA faithful, was going to skate rings around Cornell in 2003, and they got crushed. UVM had 3 full seasons with one of the most highly touted lines that I can remember and they got exactly one trip to the FF and 0 titles* out of it.

On paper, this year's team has more depth, if less top end scoring talent, than those 1-2 line wonders, but the only detailed report I've read on this board suggests that there isn't the kind of 4 line effectiveness that characterized the 2003 team. If the lack of consistency is due to inexperience and execution I wouldn't be surprised to see a strong run in the second half of the season. If it's due to a lack of talent on the bottom half of the team they'll probably struggle throughout, and this could well be the best mediocre team you'll ever see. I still wouldn't count them out of the playoffs - a hot goaltender and two lines firing on all cylinders might leave you a long shot for a national title, but it will still let you make a lot of noise in a single elimination format.

If anyone wants to fill in some details and thoughts around this - the more impassive and analytical the better - I'd be eager to read them.

* Unlike Yale, those top-ranked UVM teams never even managed an ECAC title.

[dag14]

I remember the 1978-79 season getting off to a miserable start but I must confess I had to generate a report to get the details.

Cornell was 3-3 going into the Dec/Jan break and went 18-5 down the stretch, including the miraculous come-from-behind victory over Providence where Randy Wilson missed the empty net to let us back in the game and send us to the ECAC tournament.  In spite of the turn-around, we didn't win the tournament but it set up the next year's heroics.

[scoop85]

I love looking at season recaps from the late 70's-early 80's and seeing the scores -- 8-5 seems fairly average final score for the era (ok, just a slight exaggeration).  Seriously, we lost to Clarkson 14-6 in the '79-80 season?

[Trotsky]

I love looking at season recaps from the late 70's-early 80's and seeing the scores -- 8-5 seems fairly average final score for the era (ok, just a slight exaggeration).  Seriously, we lost to Clarkson 14-6 in the '79-80 season?

It's hard to wrap our minds around the offense of that period.  Just look at the Cornell defensive stats of the time, bearing in mind that it was a very successful team throughout the Seventies.

Unfortunately that 14-6 game is one of the few I don't have a box score for.

[Al DeFlorio]

It's hard to wrap our minds around the offense of that period.  

Sometimes it happens in this period.  Went to last night's BC-Northeastern game and less than seven minutes into the game it was 3-2, with four of the goals coming in less than two minutes.  BC scored twice as we were walking out of the rink to make the final 9-3, and there were still more than eight minutes to play.  Eight of the nine BC goals I saw were scored from within eight feet of the net, on two-on-one breaks played to perfection, passes from behind the net, etc.  Some teams know how to score--even in this era.

Cornell, on the other hand, has scored one goal in three of its last four games.  [Desperation EAG goals don't count.]

[css228]

I am convinced that the only reason people root for teams that I dislike is that they are too unintelligent, evil, or uncivilized (or all three) to root for a different team.

The Philadelphia jokes just write themselves.  

If loving this video is uncivilized then I don't want to be civilized.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOuScHlO32o[/video]

[dbilmes]

I love looking at season recaps from the late 70's-early 80's and seeing the scores -- 8-5 seems fairly average final score for the era (ok, just a slight exaggeration).  Seriously, we lost to Clarkson 14-6 in the '79-80 season?

I saw most of our games from 1974-78 and we scored tons of goals and gave up tons of goals. College hockey in general was a more high-scoring sport, but we had mediocre goalies in the late '70s, and when we played the top teams like BU, that was too much to overcome. I'll always remember our 10-9 double OT loss to UNH in the Boston Garden in the ECAC semifinals in 1977.

[ursusminor]

RPI-TV has posted the game video http://rpitv.org/productions/530-hockey-vs-cornell.