What a difference one goal makes

[BearLover]

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

Except it is demonstrably weak this year, and the time period from which we're drawing data includes many years during which it was far weaker.  

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 The national landscape has been drastically shifted, and maybe your thinking old and outdated.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.

My thinking may be old and outdated, but the point was regarding teams that are traditionally good almost every year and how Cornell's worst years compare to theirs--which does not require them to be in the top 5 at the moment.  

Pssst, so did Yale in 2013.

Yes--I've been arguing on here forever that all I want is for Cornell to make the NCAA's (even if it means the ECAC is worse), knowing how much variance there is in a single game of hockey.  But the fact remains that for every 4-seed that wins it all, there are probably four 1-seeds that do.  I consider any season where we make the NCAA's a success, but my point was that we easily could have missed.  

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.

Union, Yale and Quinnipiac have been better than us over the past few years, while Cornell was clearly the best team in the ECAC for almost a decade before.  I'm not sure how you can argue against this.  Yes, things change from year to year, but if you asked anyone who the best ECAC team was 8-12 years ago, 100% would say Cornell.  Now, no one would.  

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)

I wasn't drawing any conclusions; I was only refuting the conclusion that the non-development of the Class of 2015 was an aberration.  And if it's not an aberration, if it's been a reoccurring theme throughout Schafer's tenure, it makes more sense to (tentatively) conclude it is the coaching staff's fault rather than this class of players'.

[Tom Lento]

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.

If you mean the Sean Collins who graduated a few years back, he steadily increased his production over four years:

Sean Collins

More generally. . . wat. This is a terrible analysis. For one thing, over half of the guys on that list showed substantial improvement from first to second year. But the real issue is it doesn't tell you anything about coaching quality. If I were to trust that kind of statistical analysis I'd be forced to conclude that Keith Allain at Yale was incapable of improving offensive output from a given group of players. Just take a look at the career point totals for some of his best:

Sean Backman
Brian O'Neill
Andrew Miller
Broc Little
Kenny Agostino (4-5 extra games as a junior account for the increase there)

Man, that guy sucks at developing offensive talent. No wonder Yale has so much trouble scoring. To his credit, he did a nice job with Marc Arcobello.

Along those lines, here is equally definitive proof that Schafer-led teams have been brilliant at offensive player development. In addition to the Sean Collins example, take a look at the jumps in offensive production here from two guys who were good but not great as freshmen, and one guy who wasn't even good enough to get a regular shift his freshman year:

Evan Barlow
Stephen Baby
Sam Paolini

If I were a college hockey coach and I had a couple of kids come in who could light the world on fire offensively, and a bunch of guys who needed a lot of work to be able to produce points consistently at the NCAA level, I know *exactly* which set I'd focus my efforts on when it came to offensive zone improvement.

[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.

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.

I meant I'd not have believed a contemporary Ivy could depend on a high octane offense and admit the talent level to win it all.

[BearLover]

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.

If you mean the Sean Collins who graduated a few years back, he steadily increased his production over four years:

Sean Collins

More generally. . . wat. This is a terrible analysis. For one thing, over half of the guys on that list showed substantial improvement from first to second year. But the real issue is it doesn't tell you anything about coaching quality. If I were to trust that kind of statistical analysis I'd be forced to conclude that Keith Allain at Yale was incapable of improving offensive output from a given group of players. Just take a look at the career point totals for some of his best:

Sean Backman
Brian O'Neill
Andrew Miller
Broc Little
Kenny Agostino (4-5 extra games as a junior account for the increase there)

Man, that guy sucks at developing offensive talent. No wonder Yale has so much trouble scoring. To his credit, he did a nice job with Marc Arcobello.

Along those lines, here is equally definitive proof that Schafer-led teams have been brilliant at offensive player development. In addition to the Sean Collins example, take a look at the jumps in offensive production here from two guys who were good but not great as freshmen, and one guy who wasn't even good enough to get a regular shift his freshman year:

Evan Barlow
Stephen Baby
Sam Paolini

If I were a college hockey coach and I had a couple of kids come in who could light the world on fire offensively, and a bunch of guys who needed a lot of work to be able to produce points consistently at the NCAA level, I know *exactly* which set I'd focus my efforts on when it came to offensive zone improvement.

There was no "analysis" other than a quick demonstration that there was no "aberration" in the non-progress of a group of very skilled freshmen.  I'm not sure what you think I was trying to accomplish--it certainly was not some meticulous statistical analysis for the purpose of concluding Schafer Must Go.  Literally the only thing I concluded is that most players who light it up their freshman year never significantly improve offensively under this coaching staff.

[upprdeck]

is union just having a down year or starting to trend back down? we are one over turned goal of being in 3rd place in a down year. i wish we scored more goals too, but im not convinced a new coach brings us any closer to winning an NCAA championship.

[Dafatone]

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

Except it is demonstrably weak this year, and the time period from which we're drawing data includes many years during which it was far weaker.  

This year, Cornell's strength of schedule is ranked a hearty 16th: Link

The many years you're referring to, back when the ECAC was weaker, was the time we were doing well, from 2003 to 2010 or so.  Since then, the ECAC has gotten stronger and we've alternated between pretty good and .500 years.

But this year, we're at .500 with a tough strength of schedule.

[RichH]

My thinking may be old and outdated, but the point was regarding teams that are traditionally good almost every year and how Cornell's worst years compare to theirs--which does not require them to be in the top 5 at the moment.

Ooooh, I like a data challenge. Let's do this exercise then.

Worst years since 2000:

Code Select Expand


        W L T  %
BC 18 18 2 0.500
MICH 18 19 3 0.488
[color=#FF0000]CU 15 16 3 0.485[/color]
NODAK 16 19 2 0.459
MINN 17 22 0 0.436
DU 16 23 2 0.415
UNH 12 18 4 0.412
SCSU 14 23 3 0.388
MAINE 13 22 4 0.385
WISC 13 23 4 0.375
MIA 12 22 2 0.361
BU 10 21 4 0.343
MSU 10 23 5 0.329
CC 7 24 6 0.270
ND 5 27 6 0.211
UVM 6 27 1 0.191



So Schafer teams have limited the damage of the down years that EVERY. TEAM. HAS. Red and Jerry are the most successful coaches of this era. Red still hasn't pocketed The Big One since 1997.

MY point: every team goes through cycles of success and failure. How high are the highs and how low are the lows? You're perfectly welcome to say "not high enough." But be careful what you wish for. *ker-plunk*

Union, Yale and Quinnipiac have been better than us over the past few years, while Cornell was clearly the best team in the ECAC for almost a decade before.  I'm not sure how you can argue against this.  Yes, things change from year to year, but if you asked anyone who the best ECAC team was 8-12 years ago, 100% would say Cornell.  Now, no one would.

And that's a fuzzy magnifying glass you're looking through. Late '90s, it was Princeton. Early '00s, Harvard, Clarkson where right with us. Mid '00s, Dartmouth and Colgate. Late '00s, Clarkson & Princeton. Early '10s, Yale & Union. Now we're seeing another transition as Quinnipiac & Colgate (and surprisingly SLU) are the teams we're looking to tangle with.  Every team goes through cycles of success and failure. We've been at or near the top pretty much for the duration.

Fact is that we finished lower than 5th once in 15 seasons. Sure, that's in jeopardy again, but we aren't seeing any 6-19-1 seasons.

[Trotsky]

My thinking may be old and outdated, but the point was regarding teams that are traditionally good almost every year and how Cornell's worst years compare to theirs--which does not require them to be in the top 5 at the moment.

Ooooh, I like a data challenge. Let's do this exercise then.

Worst years since 2000:

Code Select Expand


        W L T  %
BC 18 18 2 0.500
MICH 18 19 3 0.488
[color=#FF0000]CU 15 16 3 0.485[/color]
NODAK 16 19 2 0.459
MINN 17 22 0 0.436
DU 16 23 2 0.415
UNH 12 18 4 0.412
SCSU 14 23 3 0.388
MAINE 13 22 4 0.385
WISC 13 23 4 0.375
MIA 12 22 2 0.361
BU 10 21 4 0.343
MSU 10 23 5 0.329
CC 7 24 6 0.270
ND 5 27 6 0.211
UVM 6 27 1 0.191



So Schafer teams have limited the damage of the down years that EVERY. TEAM. HAS. Red and Jerry are the most successful coaches of this era. Red still hasn't pocketed The Big One since 1997.

MY point: every team goes through cycles of success and failure. How high are the highs and how low are the lows? You're perfectly welcome to say "not high enough." But be careful what you wish for. *ker-plunk*

Union, Yale and Quinnipiac have been better than us over the past few years, while Cornell was clearly the best team in the ECAC for almost a decade before.  I'm not sure how you can argue against this.  Yes, things change from year to year, but if you asked anyone who the best ECAC team was 8-12 years ago, 100% would say Cornell.  Now, no one would.

And that's a fuzzy magnifying glass you're looking through. Late '90s, it was Princeton. Early '00s, Harvard, Clarkson where right with us. Mid '00s, Dartmouth and Colgate. Late '00s, Clarkson & Princeton. Early '10s, Yale & Union. Now we're seeing another transition as Quinnipiac & Colgate (and surprisingly SLU) are the teams we're looking to tangle with.  Every team goes through cycles of success and failure. We've been at or near the top pretty much for the duration.

Fact is that we finished lower than 5th once in 15 seasons. Sure, that's in jeopardy again, but we aren't seeing any 6-19-1 seasons.

Awesome work.  Very nice.

[BearLover]

This year, Cornell's strength of schedule is ranked a hearty 16th: Link

That includes Cornell's out-of-conference play, which has probably been about the most difficult in the country.  Yale has the 42nd hardest SOS.

So Schafer teams have limited the damage of the down years that EVERY. TEAM. HAS. Red and Jerry are the most successful coaches of this era. Red still hasn't pocketed The Big One since 1997.

MY point: every team goes through cycles of success and failure. How high are the highs and how low are the lows? You're perfectly welcome to say "not high enough." But be careful what you wish for. *ker-plunk*

Why do you think each team's worst year is a good metric?  Why not win %?  Why not take into account difficulty of schedule?  Moreover, those teams had coach turnover and other issues that Cornell hasn't had.  I misspoke when I alluded to "worst years" as a metric of any real importance.  What I clearly meant was that Cornell's recent struggles are likely not a flash in the pan.  They've not had one mediocre year--they've nearly had five straight.  

And I never suggested that Cornell would necessarily be better if they made a coaching change--none of my posts here have suggested any change at all until very recently, and even in those I said Schafer should get at least another year.  I am perfectly aware the team could take a turn for the worse--but nearly missing the tournament five times in five years is not going to cut it, and at if this continues I'd think of making a change.

 

And that's a fuzzy magnifying glass you're looking through. Late '90s, it was Princeton. Early '00s, Harvard, Clarkson where right with us. Mid '00s, Dartmouth and Colgate. Late '00s, Clarkson & Princeton. Early '10s, Yale & Union. Now we're seeing another transition as Quinnipiac & Colgate (and surprisingly SLU) are the teams we're looking to tangle with. Every team goes through cycles of success and failure. We've been at or near the top pretty much for the duration.

Sure, there were teams who were right there with us--but they would only last a few years, and we were always right with them.  Cornell was clearly, without any doubt, the best ECAC team of last decade.  It wasn't even close.  In the past five years Cornell hasn't even been the third best ECAC team.  Five years is a long time.  

A .500 season is not much better than a .250 season, if at the end of the year Cornell is going home early.

[BearLover]

And lastly, we can debate the subjective success of every team until the cows come home.  But there is an objective measure by which two teams have definitively passed us by: national championships won.  All the .500 seasons in the world aren't going to bring Cornell a championship, and to argue that we are better off than Yale or Union or Quinnipiac because our worst seasons haven't been as bad as theirs (which recently isn't even true), it is undeniable that their best seasons have been better than ours.

[RichH]

Why do you think each team's worst year is a good metric?  

I didn't say it was. I just researched your exact argument that it was, which I bolded and underlined above. And now you look like you're talking in circles at this point, so don't attack me.

[BearLover]

Why do you think each team's worst year is a good metric?  

I didn't say it was. I just researched your exact argument that it was, which I bolded and underlined above. And now you look like you're talking in circles at this point, so don't attack me.

I was responding to posts like these:

Again, I feel it needs to be pointed out that our "bad" years are years where we go .500. Plenty of teams would take .500 as a bad year.

You found a sentence (that we should not count a .500 season by Cornell the same as one by BC, etc.) tangentially related to my argument and then ran with it.

[Robb]

There was a guy on LaxPower who tried to make this same argument about JHU lacrosse - just X more goals, Y more groundballs, and Z more faceoffs and they'd be national champs!  It was nonsense then, and it's nonsense now.  He forgot that while he was asking for small improvements in raw numbers, he was asking for nearly 25% improvements overall.  That's not just a little better - that's MILES better.

When margolism asks for "just" one more goal per game, let's not forget that he/she is asking us to increase our offensive output by 53%.  That's not just going to happen with one little tweak of recruiting, training, or game planning.  That's a huge mountain to climb that will require improvements in *all* of those areas.  This is not a case of "we're so close except for this one little thing."

[steveb]

There was a guy on LaxPower who tried to make this same argument about JHU lacrosse - just X more goals, Y more groundballs, and Z more faceoffs and they'd be national champs!  It was nonsense then, and it's nonsense now.  He forgot that while he was asking for small improvements in raw numbers, he was asking for nearly 25% improvements overall.  That's not just a little better - that's MILES better.

When margolism asks for "just" one more goal per game, let's not forget that he/she is asking us to increase our offensive output by 53%.  That's not just going to happen with one little tweak of recruiting, training, or game planning.  That's a huge mountain to climb that will require improvements in *all* of those areas.  This is not a case of "we're so close except for this one little thing."

This. "One more goal per game" is HUGE. And the difference between a decent goalie (2.75 gaa) and a lights-out goalie (1.75 gaa) is, literally, one more save per game (also huge). Reminds me of this scene from Bull Durham:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBgGaGUnvA0

[KGR11]

And lastly, we can debate the subjective success of every team until the cows come home.  But there is an objective measure by which two teams have definitively passed us by: national championships won.  All the .500 seasons in the world aren't going to bring Cornell a championship, and to argue that we are better off than Yale or Union or Quinnipiac because our worst seasons haven't been as bad as theirs (which recently isn't even true), it is undeniable that their best seasons have been better than ours.

Cornell still has two banners, which is tied for the most among teams currently in the ECAC. Yale and Union only have one, Quinnipiac has zero. I think the objective measure you're really going for is how many NCAA titles Schafer has won.  That removes Harkness from the conversation.

The idea that we were close to having a 5-year NCAA drought is a little off because both 2014 and 2012 could've gone either way.  2012, we got in.  2014, we didn't.

That being said, I think my realistic hope for this team in the regular season is that they average being on the verge of getting into the NCAAs every year with an at-large bid.  Right now, that's not happening.  2014 & 2012 hit that objective.  2013 & 2011 have not.