Cornell-BU

[Dutchman]

Good luck against BU. Make the ECAC proud. BU will be tough. A top seed has the best chance of making it to the F4. I think if you can get by BU you will make the F4.

[BearLover]

That's a very well-written and well-researched article, but measuring relevance begs the question: "relevant to whom?" To me, a major metric of a team's relevancy is fan interest. If people are still interested in the team, then that team is relevant to those people. I do not know what RPI's crowds have been like lately, or what the level of student interest has been, but it sounds like RPI Hockey fan support is quite a bitter better than a lot of other teams'. Brown Hockey I'd say is teetering more closely to the edge of irrelevancy, because not only do they not win but they don't have any fans (or institutional support, which is another metric of relevancy the article doesn't cover--the fact RPI fired Seth Appert and hired away a coach from another school suggests the hockey team is at least somewhat relevant to the school administration as well).

[Al DeFlorio]

it's perfectly reasonable to ask whether RPI will someday have the ability to pull itself out of this hole.

Only three seasons ago, Clarkson had a 20-loss season and we were asking the same question of them. Harvard was the #11 ECAC team that same year and nobody was asking that question about them, because THEY BELONG IN THAT HOLE. Ahem, they obviously cheated their way to two ECAC titles since then and THEY SHOULD GO BACK IN THEIR HOLE.

My point is it's very possible these days to turn into an emergent power quickly, as long as you have the right recruiting magic and/or coaching. Remember, Schafer made a decision in 2015 to recruit older...or something? Even though we only kinda/sorta did? Anyway, we have a good team now.

If you haven't read the piece you really should - it provides some pretty solid context for looking at RPI differently than Clarkson, which has been good - and advanced in tournaments - much more recently and semi-reliably than RPI has in the last thirty years. As for Harvard, their genuine down years do seem to be an aberration, nothing lasting more than a couple of seasons. Yes, of course, any team can get better. The question is how long you should expect that to take, and why - and whether such a sustained record of failure can create a vicious cycle from which it may be much, much harder to emerge.

Oh, I did. WaP produces some of the best writing this league has seen. This article details wonderfully the breakdown of lengths of failure at the different tiers as a metric, but stops short of discussing any causes or possible remedies. For me, the major difference between RPI and Clarkson appears to lie in institutional support, but I'll let someone with more knowledge than my casual observance dive into that.  It doesn't really matter the duration of a period of futility, because collegiate team performance has a very short memory. If you fix/change the underlying cause of such futility, you CAN make a turnaround happen quite quickly.

I'm under the opinion that Ted Donato is a bad coach and simply got lucky with two generational talents, one of which happens to have his genes. He's 219-200-52 and racked up six losing seasons until Vesey stepped his skates into Allston. And his early title years were a result of excellent recruiting scraps leftover from Mazzolini. I argue that Donato's successful years are the aberration.  And to tie into my earlier comment, I think Harvard gives the hockey program(s) some of the strongest institutional support in the league, even if the Harvard community can't be bothered to do the same.

RPI might want to get rid of the requirement that everyone in the school take freshman calculus and inflate their grades to an A- average. If Coach Smith can get by these two obstacles he is a near genius.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grade-inflation-colleges-with-the-easiest-and-hardest-grades/

http://www.gradeinflation.com/Harvard.html
http://www.gradeinflation.com/Cornell.html

[ursusminor]

it's perfectly reasonable to ask whether RPI will someday have the ability to pull itself out of this hole.

Only three seasons ago, Clarkson had a 20-loss season and we were asking the same question of them. Harvard was the #11 ECAC team that same year and nobody was asking that question about them, because THEY BELONG IN THAT HOLE. Ahem, they obviously cheated their way to two ECAC titles since then and THEY SHOULD GO BACK IN THEIR HOLE.

My point is it's very possible these days to turn into an emergent power quickly, as long as you have the right recruiting magic and/or coaching. Remember, Schafer made a decision in 2015 to recruit older...or something? Even though we only kinda/sorta did? Anyway, we have a good team now.

If you haven't read the piece you really should - it provides some pretty solid context for looking at RPI differently than Clarkson, which has been good - and advanced in tournaments - much more recently and semi-reliably than RPI has in the last thirty years. As for Harvard, their genuine down years do seem to be an aberration, nothing lasting more than a couple of seasons. Yes, of course, any team can get better. The question is how long you should expect that to take, and why - and whether such a sustained record of failure can create a vicious cycle from which it may be much, much harder to emerge.

Oh, I did. WaP produces some of the best writing this league has seen. This article details wonderfully the breakdown of lengths of failure at the different tiers as a metric, but stops short of discussing any causes or possible remedies. For me, the major difference between RPI and Clarkson appears to lie in institutional support, but I'll let someone with more knowledge than my casual observance dive into that.  It doesn't really matter the duration of a period of futility, because collegiate team performance has a very short memory. If you fix/change the underlying cause of such futility, you CAN make a turnaround happen quite quickly.

I'm under the opinion that Ted Donato is a bad coach and simply got lucky with two generational talents, one of which happens to have his genes. He's 219-200-52 and racked up six losing seasons until Vesey stepped his skates into Allston. And his early title years were a result of excellent recruiting scraps leftover from Mazzolini. I argue that Donato's successful years are the aberration.  And to tie into my earlier comment, I think Harvard gives the hockey program(s) some of the strongest institutional support in the league, even if the Harvard community can't be bothered to do the same.

RPI might want to get rid of the requirement that everyone in the school take freshman calculus and inflate their grades to an A- average. If Coach Smith can get by these two obstacles he is a near genius.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grade-inflation-colleges-with-the-easiest-and-hardest-grades/

Management majors, which covers most of the hockey team, take a watered down version of calc these days. Also I cannot believe that article which you linked considering the yearly reports of grade point averages which I see for the hockey team and many other sports teams at RPI. That is unless most other schools inflate grades more than RPI does.  From the source which Al gave http://www.gradeinflation.com/Rensselaer.html.

Institutional support does appear to be a problem. For whatever reason there seems to be more support for RPI's D-III teams these days than either hockey team. How can a football team win more games in a season than a hockey team? Although I certainly hope that Coach Smith has success, the search for Coach Appert's replacement did not appear to have been done well. They hired a search firm which had never done a search for a hockey coach before. They ignored the input of former players. I don't know whether or not that last item is good or bad.

I do agree that any program should be able to turn things around, but for whatever reason, RPI does not appear to have been able to do so.


Edit: It would not surprise me if Coach Donato has another generational talent entering in the fall in Oliver Wahlstrom. Do others remember him from when he was 9? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TxGVSw6Ayw

[jtwcornell91]

I still remember Cornell as the #8 winning a three-game series at #3 RPI in 1998, during the idiotic years of the 10-team ECAC playoffs (and we wouldn't have needed the third game if every single ref hadn't completely missed a puck actually going in, hitting the back of the goal, and springing right back out right in front of us visiting fans).

Also known as Jeff Oates's career weekend.  Good times.  (Even if I was in a computer lab in Utah for most of them.)

[Beeeej]

I still remember Cornell as the #8 winning a three-game series at #3 RPI in 1998, during the idiotic years of the 10-team ECAC playoffs (and we wouldn't have needed the third game if every single ref hadn't completely missed a puck actually going in, hitting the back of the goal, and springing right back out right in front of us visiting fans).

Also known as Jeff Oates's career weekend.  Good times.  (Even if I was in a computer lab in Utah for most of them.)

Yep. IIRC (and I haven't checked TBRW?), he either scored 5 of Cornell's 10 goals that weekend, or scored 5 of his 10 career points that weekend. Maybe even both.

[Trotsky]

I still remember Cornell as the #8 winning a three-game series at #3 RPI in 1998, during the idiotic years of the 10-team ECAC playoffs (and we wouldn't have needed the third game if every single ref hadn't completely missed a puck actually going in, hitting the back of the goal, and springing right back out right in front of us visiting fans).

Also known as Jeff Oates's career weekend.  Good times.  (Even if I was in a computer lab in Utah for most of them.)

Yep. IIRC (and I haven't checked TBRW?), he either scored 5 of Cornell's 10 goals that weekend, or scored 5 of his 10 career points that weekend. Maybe even both.

4 of his 19 career goals.

[Beeeej]

I still remember Cornell as the #8 winning a three-game series at #3 RPI in 1998, during the idiotic years of the 10-team ECAC playoffs (and we wouldn't have needed the third game if every single ref hadn't completely missed a puck actually going in, hitting the back of the goal, and springing right back out right in front of us visiting fans).

Also known as Jeff Oates's career weekend.  Good times.  (Even if I was in a computer lab in Utah for most of them.)

Yep. IIRC (and I haven't checked TBRW?), he either scored 5 of Cornell's 10 goals that weekend, or scored 5 of his 10 career points that weekend. Maybe even both.

4 of his 19 career goals.

Thanks. And 4 of Cornell's 10 goals.

[adamw]

I'm under the opinion that Ted Donato is a bad coach and simply got lucky with two generational talents, one of which happens to have his genes. He's 219-200-52 and racked up six losing seasons until Vesey stepped his skates into Allston. And his early title years were a result of excellent recruiting scraps leftover from Mazzolini. I argue that Donato's successful years are the aberration.  And to tie into my earlier comment, I think Harvard gives the hockey program(s) some of the strongest institutional support in the league, even if the Harvard community can't be bothered to do the same.

If you want to look for reasons why Harvard improved in recent years, it has less to do with Vesey/Donato (because they always got good recruits) and more to do with Paul Pearl becoming an assistant coach there after leaving Holy Cross.

[Jim Hyla]

More than just CU-BU, but here's USCHO's take on the regional.

[jeff '84]

More than just CU-BU, but here's USCHO's take on the regional.

And USCHO Live! Discussion. North East region discussion starts at 59:10. Although Jaffe picks BU and Northeastern, he is very torn.
http://www.uscho.com/uscho-live/2018/03/19/march-20-uscho-live-previews-the-ncaa-regionals-with-espns-buccigross-cohen-jaffe-and-ritchlin/

[French Rage]

On ESPN none of the predictions had us winning the regional.  Of course it's ESPN so I wouldn't assume they studied college hockey in depth.

[ugarte]

eating shit in the conference semis against princeton is not going to endear us to the prognosticators.

[Al DeFlorio]

eating shit in the conference semis against princeton is not going to endear us to the prognosticators.

You have a way with words.;-)

[And I completely agree with these.]

[scoop85]

eating shit in the conference semis against princeton is not going to endear us to the prognosticators.

You have a way with words.;-)

[And I completely agree with these.]

I'm hanging my hat on the fact that when Yale and Providence won their recent NC's they both flamed-out in their conference playoffs. Hopefully we got our "bad" game out of the way (in which we didn't play terribly truth be told).