Cornell-BU

[French Rage]

IMO biggest room for improvement is Strength of Schedule.

I'd have said so too but our shit SOS got us to #1 in the country this year.  Now, did it hurt our preparation for the playoffs?  Maybe.

Cupcakes are tasty but won't help you get to full potential.

But they're so hot right now.

[BigRedHockeyFan]

My understanding is he didn't do senior night because he's going to give it another shot.  

Thanks.  I didn't know that.

[BearLover]

I also believe Bliss didn't take classes last year to retain a year of eligibility.

[upprdeck]

the MAX AHL  salary is roughly 70K for first year guys, so its all about the signing bonus .

he probably isnt going right to the NHL where the ELC is capped at 900K and the bonus is capped at 10% of the salary..

So unless he is getting a huge contract like Donato just how much do you think he will get thrown at him?

[underskill]

IMO biggest room for improvement is Strength of Schedule.

I'd have said so too but our shit SOS got us to #1 in the country this year.  Now, did it hurt our preparation for the playoffs?  Maybe.

it seems like the ECAC is now generally strong enough to prepare a team for the tournament - I'd rather play a mediocre schedule and take our chances in the tournament, instead of overscheduling and risking a lower seed or too many bad losses.

[Dafatone]

I think generally, RPI evens everything out. That is, if we have a tougher schedule, then we'll get in with a lower win%. If our schedule is weaker, we need a higher win%. This isn't perfect, and we've had some years where we barely missed getting in and maybe a win over a cupcake would have done more than a loss to a good team, but I don't think it's that significant a factor.

I'd rather see us get tested a little throughout the year, but that's easier said than done. Miami's usually a strong team, and they had a down year. And we lost to them once anyway, so it's not like weaker teams are automatic wins.

[Trotsky]

I'm starting to believe seeding doesn't matter.  Just get in.  4s beat 1s -- it happens.  Just get in.

[marty]

I'm starting to believe seeding doesn't matter.  Just get in.  4s beat 1s -- it happens.  Just get in.

I agree.  I'd rather see us as a 1-3 and not barely make the tournament as a 4.

[underskill]

get in, take your shot and try not to get seeded on some other team's home ice seems the best bet, b/c it's a total crapshoot in single game elimination.

[Swampy]

I'm starting to believe seeding doesn't matter.  Just get in.  4s beat 1s -- it happens.  Just get in.

I agree.  I'd rather see us as a 1-3 and not barely make the tournament as a 4.

The ideal thing is to win the league championship in a tough league. This way the team enters the Regionals in peak form.

This year several 4-seeds had to win their leagues just to get in. Yet they did real well because they had this momentum.

Besides RPI evening out tough schedules with more losses versus weaker ones with fewer, the bigger issue is team preparation for the big dance.

We played BU early on, when it was a struggling team. So I don't even think we can count the MSG game as adequate preparation for the dance. The ECAC had at least 4 teams that could have qualified for the NC$$'s, but none are playing next weekend.

I'd really like to see us start a 4-game home-and-home two-year series with a B1G school, and play a NCHC team in MSG in years we don't play BU. Or vice-versa. Or go to a tournament where the big boys are playing. If we go 0-4, it just means we have to win the ECAC tournament. If we can't do that, maybe we're not ready for the NC$$'s yet.

None of this implies we should drop the occasional UAH or AS game. Schafer is a really decent guy, and he always schedules weaker teams in order to give them a chance to play up. Christ, it's hockey! If Sunbelt schools from Alabama and Arizona can't schedule games with storied programs from the north, how will the sport ever spread?

[Trotsky]

If Sunbelt schools from Alabama and Arizona can't schedule games with storied programs from the north, how will the sport ever spread?

Should it?

[RichH]

I think generally, RPI evens everything out. That is, if we have a tougher schedule, then we'll get in with a lower win%. If our schedule is weaker, we need a higher win%. This isn't perfect, and we've had some years where we barely missed getting in and maybe a win over a cupcake would have done more than a loss to a good team, but I don't think it's that significant a factor.

I'd rather see us get tested a little throughout the year, but that's easier said than done. Miami's usually a strong team, and they had a down year. And we lost to them once anyway, so it's not like weaker teams are automatic wins.

I've been thinking about this a lot. I, for one, have started to come around to buying more into bearlover's argument that playing in a cupcake league is preferable based on watching Cornell's season develop. At the same time, I just had to correct someone who just made a "There goes the Big Ten...taking over as usual" comment because the Big Ten only sent one team to each of the last two NCAA tournaments (their auto-bid). This year, they came a Princeton OT goal away (or 0.0001 RPI point) from sending five of their seven teams.  That 5th team, Minnesota, had a 19-17-2 record.  Think about that...a team with seventeen losses nearly got an at-large bid, while a team like 23-12-6 Bowling Green was out of the conversation early. Maine was 18-16-4, but sat way down in 29th, barely ahead of 12-20-5 Miami.  This suggests that league strength matters a lot.

The now seven-team Big Ten reminds me of the ACC of Lacrosse, back when there were 4 teams, or whatever it was. Throw in the league playoffs, and the teams that belong to that small league get to play each other many more times than teams in larger conferences.  Minnesota got to play PWR relevant Penn State six times this season.  Now, when a small conference like that is weak, like in 2016-2018, that doesn't exactly help any of the members. But look what happened when a team of Notre Dame's current caliber is added. Suddenly their SoS all got bumpedup to some extent, and they nearly pack 5 teams into a 16-team tournament. It seems like an amplification device for all the teams in the conference.

And then, that conference backs it up by advancing 3 of their 4 bids to the FF, which merges this thought back into the "battle-tested" debate.

I have to return to Dafatone's point "generally, RPI evens everything out," (and repeat it as one of my mantras) but it sure feels like a smaller conference gets a big boost for having an insulated schedule centered around a great team.

[upprdeck]

but ND also was bout 30 secs away from not getting past game 1 either. Air Force who is not very good beat SCst.

The margin is small not matter how much better you are.. we lost to RPI at home.

[Dafatone]

I think generally, RPI evens everything out. That is, if we have a tougher schedule, then we'll get in with a lower win%. If our schedule is weaker, we need a higher win%. This isn't perfect, and we've had some years where we barely missed getting in and maybe a win over a cupcake would have done more than a loss to a good team, but I don't think it's that significant a factor.

I'd rather see us get tested a little throughout the year, but that's easier said than done. Miami's usually a strong team, and they had a down year. And we lost to them once anyway, so it's not like weaker teams are automatic wins.

I've been thinking about this a lot. I, for one, have started to come around to buying more into bearlover's argument that playing in a cupcake league is preferable based on watching Cornell's season develop. At the same time, I just had to correct someone who just made a "There goes the Big Ten...taking over as usual" comment because the Big Ten only sent one team to each of the last two NCAA tournaments (their auto-bid). This year, they came a Princeton OT goal away (or 0.0001 RPI point) from sending five of their seven teams.  That 5th team, Minnesota, had a 19-17-2 record.  Think about that...a team with seventeen losses nearly got an at-large bid, while a team like 23-12-6 Bowling Green was out of the conversation early. Maine was 18-16-4, but sat way down in 29th, barely ahead of 12-20-5 Miami.  This suggests that league strength matters a lot.

The now seven-team Big Ten reminds me of the ACC of Lacrosse, back when there were 4 teams, or whatever it was. Throw in the league playoffs, and the teams that belong to that small league get to play each other many more times than teams in larger conferences.  Minnesota got to play PWR relevant Penn State six times this season.  Now, when a small conference like that is weak, like in 2016-2018, that doesn't exactly help any of the members. But look what happened when a team of Notre Dame's current caliber is added. Suddenly their SoS all got bumpedup to some extent, and they nearly pack 5 teams into a 16-team tournament. It seems like an amplification device for all the teams in the conference.

And then, that conference backs it up by advancing 3 of their 4 bids to the FF, which merges this thought back into the "battle-tested" debate.

I have to return to Dafatone's point "generally, RPI evens everything out," (and repeat it as one of my mantras) but it sure feels like a smaller conference gets a big boost for having an insulated schedule centered around a great team.

I have no evidence to back this up, but I'd like to see our OOC opponents be pretty strong. Not that I want nothing but great teams, but 1-3 games against top competition is a good measuring stick and a good way to let our players know what they may be up against.

As to league strength, certainly we did well this year in a weak ECAC. Generally, I don't want the ECAC to suck, but I want us at the top of it, so shrug?

[jeff '84]

And how much "more prepared" would we have been? At the game, I thought it was pretty even and, like others have said, we just didn't get the bounces. When I watched on TV the next day, I thought we outplayed them on balance (and held that offense to 3 third period shots). We were very ready to play the best teams out there.