What a difference one goal makes

[Trotsky]

I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp.  However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's.  Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent.  That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams.  I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats.  I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin.  We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us.  At least that's what I dream of.

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined.  My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

[KeithK]

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined.  My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

I'm now picturing the one legged hockey player with a great slapper.

[Towerroad]

I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp.  However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's.  Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent.  That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams.  I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats.  I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin.  We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us.  At least that's what I dream of.

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined.  My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

Knowing what we need is hardly a proposition from Wittgenstein. It has been obvious for years. Better Power Play, Improved Offense, and Staying Out of the Box. The question is why we have not done what we need to do? Can this coach do it?

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that the answer is no. Unfortuenatley, with the increased emphasis on concussions and safety, building a team around slow, 6'5" man mountains, who can hit and block is rapidly becoming outdated. The System^tm is showing its age and we have to adapt or become like Football.

[upprdeck]

if the system is so easy why do teams go thru so many cycles? NH was great/ Wisc 2 wins/ ND under .500.

the system has come close. a bad call in buffalo, a bad call in albany, some really  tough oT losses on the roadto good teams no  that long ago. a couple breaks and we could have had 2-3 titles

we will never get  the super elite player more than 1 every 5-10 yrs .  what we do is stay  at a level that can make the run almost every year  to a  shot to make the final 16.

we could be beter but we could also be much worse and we have been before Coach got here

are we so far off from beating teams like denver/neb who are top 10 this year?      

funny how a team gets that elite player and its the system.  when that group leaves and its the players..

[margolism]

My initial point is that we don't really need that much.  We just need one, maybe two players, who can seal the deal.  Some better luck would also be helpful, including fewer injuries.

I don't think a complete overhaul is in order.  To be where we are (which, I admit is only mediocre, but certainly not horrific), with the nation's 6th least productive offense is respectable.  We have had a chance to win or tie all but four games.  We have defeated multiple ranked opponents.      

I do think, however, that when your offense is not very productive, different strategies are in order.  We need to take more shots on goal, even if they are lower percentage shots. Maybe we get one or two crazy rebounds.  One or two flukes throughout the season.  Maybe we get some luck with more offensive zone faceoffs.  How much of a downside is there to this?  Would this result in even fewer goals?  When you are averaging fewer than two per game, I can't imagine that dropping too significantly, if at all.

[KeithK]

My initial point is that we don't really need that much.  We just need one, maybe two players, who can seal the deal.  Some better luck would also be helpful, including fewer injuries.

I don't think a complete overhaul is in order.  To be where we are (which, I admit is only mediocre, but certainly not horrific), with the nation's 6th least productive offense is respectable.  We have had a chance to win or tie all but four games.  We have defeated multiple ranked opponents.      

I do think, however, that when your offense is not very productive, different strategies are in order.  We need to take more shots on goal, even if they are lower percentage shots. Maybe we get one or two crazy rebounds.  One or two flukes throughout the season.  Maybe we get some luck with more offensive zone faceoffs.  How much of a downside is there to this?  Would this result in even fewer goals?  When you are averaging fewer than two per game, I can't imagine that dropping too significantly, if at all.

I think what's important with shooting more is less the percentage of scoring but the percentage of a bad turnover. You rake the wrong low pct shot and you're likely to create a 2 on 1 the other way when it gets blocked. I'm sure Schafer preached against this and for good reason.  But throwing the puck on net when it will actually make it to the crease is a different story and we probably need to do more of that.  Then again, as others have noted, if you don't have enough traffic in front creating screens and in position to get rebounds that's not going to do much good either.

[TimV]

I believe it's a known trend that our recruits are younger than in previous time periods.  It was never unusual to get freshman in at 20-22 years old.  Now most of the freshman are 18-20 years old.  ...

These entering freshmen players would then be ... more like the bulk of Cornell students.

Hell no!  We'll need much more bulkier players than that!!! Those puny Cornell students can't possibly screen or clear the crease.**]

[Jim Hyla]

I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp.  However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's.  Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent.  That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams.  I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats.  I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin.  We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us.  At least that's what I dream of.

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined.  My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

Knowing what we need is hardly a proposition from Wittgenstein. It has been obvious for years. Better Power Play, Improved Offense, and Staying Out of the Box. The question is why we have not done what we need to do? Can this coach do it?

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that the answer is no. Unfortuenatley, with the increased emphasis on concussions and safety, building a team around slow, 6'5" man mountains, who can hit and block is rapidly becoming outdated. The System^tm is showing its age and we have to adapt or become like Football.

I don't know how slowly, you've been preaching this for some time.

And what system are we talking about? The system in the 90s when coach came here and we won a couple of ECAC titles, the system in the early 2000s when we could have won the NCAAs, or the sytem he's using now. It seems like people say that the team is playing the same now as in years past, and it's just not so. Cornell's style of play has changed markedly, even if people don't want to believe it. Does defense come first, yes. But he has given a lot of guys, defensemen included, the go ahead to move offensively. So if by "system" you mean defense first, I'd give you that. If you imply with the ^TM that things aren't a lot different offensively, then I completely disagree.

[BearLover]

Cornell's .500 seasons are equivalent to a sub-.500 season in a more competitive conference--so to suggest their worst years are any better than other perennial good teams' worst years is suspect.  (Yes, there occasionally will be an exception, like Wisconsin this year.)  Moreover, this is a team with great tradition, fans, etc., which gives them a recruiting advantage over many other schools, especially other ECAC schools.  So we can and should expect Cornell to be better than .500, virtually every year.  

Cornell has been a goal away from winning a few more games this season, but they've also been a goal away from losing a few more.  Last year, Cornell was very lucky in these 1-goal games: they were only +5 goals on the season, yet finished 7 games over .500.  The year before they were .500, and the year before that that they snuck into the NCAA's on the last day of the season as a 4-seed.  The year before that they were .500.  You'd have to go back to 2009-10 to find a year where Cornell truly looked like a team set to make noise in the NCAA's.  Since then, all things considered, the results have been mediocre.  This looks like the first time Cornell will miss the tournament three years in a row since 2001.  

The talent is still coming, but how long will that go on?  The fans are starting to drop out (did anyone see all the empty seats during the Princeton game?).  Other teams have passed us by.  All of these things together suggest something has to change soon.

[ithacat]

How about our seniors didn't turn out as good as projected. Ferlin and maybe Ryan and Bardreau gave us something of what I expected. Ryan is still not as good this year as last, lingering injury? Bardreau has not done as well as I expected, after getting picked for Juniors. Lowry probable came close, but of course he's no longer able. Overall I, and I expect most, were expecting considerable offense from these guys and they just didn't give it. Nor do I think it's the system holding them back, I just don't see it coming from them.

Bingo. This is the reason the team has struggled for three consecutive seasons.

The Class of 2015 came in with an excellent pedigree, and many of its players became key contributors from Day One. They helped a team with four seniors earn an NCAA Tournament berth and beat Michigan in the first round. In my lifetime, a Cornell team with a thin senior class had never been so successful.

So we had high hopes that the Class of 2015 would lead the team to be national-championship contenders for the next three years. That hasn't happened.

If this were a common phenomenon for Cornell, I think it would be fair to blame the coaching staff. But I believe that the Class of 2015's trajectory has been unprecedented in the Schafer Era.

Hopefully, it will remain an aberration. I don't want to go through a 20-year period of perpetual underachieving like Harvard had from 1994-95 through last season.

So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that.  The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent.  The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.  

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational.  Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also.  That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement.  These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance.  Players like those are the real aberrations.  Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line."  It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

Sean Collins, I believe, had a fairly big jump in scoring Senior year.

But he also wasn't a great raw offensive talent.  The guys who light it up their first year never seem to improve.

Collins didn't play in the toughest junior league but his numbers were impressive: 60-51-64-115, 2nd in the league in scoring. 4 goals in the league all-star game earned him the MOP. We might have one guy coming in next year who's in the top 2 on his team scoring list, forget about league stats. Compared to the forwards coming in next year, who have a combined line of 160-41-64-105, he looked pretty darn good on paper.

Mike seems to be in love with power forwards as strongly as ever. As the game continues to move in the direction of skill and speed we'll have a difficult time maintaining (or reclaiming) any national relevance. With the increasing awareness and concern regarding head trauma I believe the game will continue to open up. Mike might be stuck in a previous era with no way out.

[RichH]

Cornell's .500 seasons are equivalent to a sub-.500 season in a more competitive conference

"The ECAC is weak" argument doesn't fly anymore. The WCHA is dead, long live the WCHA.

to suggest their worst years are any better than other perennial good teams' worst years is suspect. (Yes, there occasionally will be an exception, like Wisconsin this year.)

What's a "perennial good team" these days, anyway? You mean like Maine, UNH, Wisconsin, CC, Notre Dame? Glancing at the PWR, I only see 3 teams I would define as a traditional Power, in North Dakota, BU, and Denver. The national landscape has been drastically shifted, and maybe your thinking old and outdated. National parity is better than it has been since I've been around.

the year before that that they snuck into the NCAA's on the last day of the season as a 4-seed

Pssst, so did Yale in 2013.

Other teams have passed us by.

I'm so tired of this tired line. Union, while still dangerous, is struggling to avoid playing the 1st round on the road. Yale has re-tooled their run/gun style (you know, the style that had passed us by) to be a defense-focused team. SLU continues their history of a 4-year weak-strong oscillation. Quinnipiac is really the only team that has established and maintained a consistent "reload" talent pipeline better than us.

[Swampy]

So a group of players get to Cornell and collectively have an amazing season, and then collectively barely progress afterwards. As others have said, it makes no sense to blame the players rather than the coaching staff for that.  The only thing unprecedented about the Class of 2015 was their raw offensive talent.  The coaching staff failed to take advantage of this talent.  

I question the premise that their non-development was aberrational.  Here are a few of the top offensive players in the past decade or so:

Vesce
Mouson
Topher
Riley
Greening

You'll notice that their stats barely improved also.  That is, Cornell attracts some strong offensive players, but besides the occasional jump from freshman to sophomore year, we never see any real improvement.  These players' trajectories are in line with those of the Class of 2015.

Ryan
Lowry
Ferlin
Bardreau
McCarron

There is the occasional player whose stats jump significantly from season to season--Roeszler, for instance.  Players like those are the real aberrations.  Moreover, I don't know how you can chalk improved stats up to player development versus factors such as "being on the power play unit" and "being on the first line."  It seems to me that under this coaching staff, players who put up great freshman numbers never significantly improve offensively after that point.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but to use such data convincingly in an argument about the coaching one would have to:

• Compare Cornell data to similar data from schools with high-ranking offenses
• Take into account time on ice, participation in power plays, etc.
• Take injuries into account
• Take characteristics of line mates into account (scoring, speed, size, etc.)
• Take depth of team into account (see lacrosse discussions about how Cornell can't win a NC because 1st-line middies are too tired but coaches are afraid to put in 2nd-line middies)

[RichH]

As the game continues to move in the direction of skill and speed we'll have a difficult time maintaining (or reclaiming) any national relevance.

1) You're suggesting there's no skill in defense, which is a ridiculous statement.

2) It is? Prove it. Union won on the back of a generational d-man. Scoring around the nation's top teams is down even compared to 10 years ago, nevermind the days of the 9-6 shoot-em-ups of the '70s and '80s.

[Swampy]

I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp.  However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

I hope you mean you wouldn't have believed Yale could win the NC. I'm not sure how you're defining "firewagon hockey," but Harkness's teams played an awfully fast, open, very offense-oriented style and won two NC's.

[Swampy]

I'm still firmly in the Schafer is God camp.  However, Yale is valid evidence that an Ivy can play firewagon hockey and win a title -- a thing I would have not believed before they did it.

From what I understand, Schafer based The System on the 3-time NCAA champion Lake Superior State teams of the late 80's and early 90's.  Those teams were built from the net out, though they did have offensive talent.  That model did and can win; it just turned out to be Union rather than us who made it all the way.

After 20 seasons I'm fairly confident that as long as Schafer is the coach, we will see those kind of teams.  I don't at all object to this, but as is obvious we do need to find a highly talented offensive player now and then to get us back to the Frozen Four.

I think many of us believe we need TWO healthy scoring threats.  I remember when we were being congratulated online for landing Ferlin.  We need at least two of these AND they have to improve in the two to four years that they play for us.  At least that's what I dream of.

"Now and then" leaves the unit conversion undefined.  My guess is we need .75 snipers per class to make a run at it.

IMHO, we need one line that can be counted on to average 2-3 gpg without being a defensive liability plus three other lines that can be counted on to hold the fort, collectively average 1-2 gpg, and not be defensive liabilities. This would have us averaging 3-5 gpg instead of the current 1.87. Using current stats on USCHO, it would put us somewhere among the top 21 teams offensively. (Union is #8 with 3.46 gpg, Harvard is #10 with 3.41, SLU is #14 3.07, and Dartmouth is just outside the top 21 with 2.96 gpg. So this is not an ECAC thing.) Minnesota State is currently #1 in scoring with 3.79 gpg and #4 in defense with 1.97 gpg. We're currently #2 in defense with 1.78 gpg and Yale is #1 with 1.65.

Balance wins games and championships.