Cornell - Providence

[BigRedHockeyFan]

2nd goal part 3.

[BigRedHockeyFan]

As far as the overall game went, it's true that Cornell looked fatigued.  The breakouts were slow, they had trouble with PC's center ice defensive play and they were slow to the puck on the dump and chase.  

But, a big part of the game is emotion.  That second goal was a turning point.  Change the score from 2-0 back to 1-0 and the outcome may have been different.

Thank you Brendan Smith, Matt Nuttle, Beau Starrett, Mitch Vanderlaan, Alec McCrea and the rest of the team for a great season.

[upprdeck]

we were outplayed..  still the iron shot and the play by the D to stop the puck on the line and its a game in doubt late..   need a bit of good luck to over come being outplayed..

seemed like every save was an adventure though. first game all year where we never really came thru center with any speed

[jtwcornell91]

So if there was no kicking motion, how did a puck traveling away from the net have enough momentum to travel back toward the net from the top of the crease?

Old, but here: https://nypost.com/2013/10/29/nhl-clarifies-kick-rule-that-keeps-costing-rangers/.  The guy's skate provided the inertia that propelled the puck into the net.

My understanding is that you can provide the inertia. You just can't make a kicking motion, as in move your skate / swing your lower leg so that it looks like you're kicking. If you keep your ankle locked, you can more or less slide into the puck with your skate and push it in.

That being said, I think this one was close to a kicking motion (you can see the skate tip backwards as he hits it) but it's very close.

I think I understand the rule, and it was probably consistently applied here.  But I think the rule is crap.  You are apparently allowed to deliberately direct the puck into the net with your skate, even turning your skate to aim it that way, as long as that one leg doesn't flail out by itself.  It's a traveshamockery.

[Swampy]

Quint Kessenich'S comments on yesterday's ESPN broadcast makes an extremely convincing case for not allowing teams, other than perhaps host teams, to play NCAA tournament games in their home cities.

On one hand, although PC had to stay at a hotel, before going there Saturday evening the team went back to campus and used a newly installed athletic "rest-and-recuperation" facility with vaious sports-medicine devices designed to help accelerate an athlete's recuperation between games. I would assume that, while there, they and the coaches also used their facilities to treat minor injuries, to review film, to correct mistakes and bad habits, etc.

Meanwhile, Cornell stayed at a hotel that suffered a fluke accident and was without electricity for three hours.

Whether or not this gave PC an unfair advantage is besides the point. The point is that such unilateral access to specialized sports facilities very possibly can provide unfair advantages.

At the very least, from two days before the event a local school should be prohibited from using any local facilities that other teams in the event either (a) do not also have access to or (b) would not benefit from equally because of unfamiliarity, effectiveness that increases with repetition, etc.

But given the separate issue of unfair fan support, I'd like to see non-host schools be required to play somewhere other than their home city and prohibited from returning there for the duration of the event.

Attendance be damned.

[billhoward]

Game drew 5,231, leaving 9,100 empty seats. If we lost 3-2 in overtime we'd have a case to complain about home-town advantage. If the NCAA adjusts seedings or regional placements slightly to help attendance, Cornell is going to benefit more than many teams by being placed somewhere driveable. There were a LOT of yellow high school buses helping PC students get to and from the game.

[Greenberg '97]

Game drew 5,231, leaving 9,100 empty seats. If we lost 3-2 in overtime we'd have a case to complain about home-town advantage. If the NCAA adjusts seedings or regional placements slightly to help attendance, Cornell is going to benefit more than many teams by being placed somewhere driveable. There were a LOT of yellow high school buses helping PC students get to and from the game.

A student on one such bus apparently yelled "Cornell is for nerds!" after the game.  My (non-CU) wife heard it, not me, or I would have thanked him for the compliment.

[billhoward]

Game drew 5,231, leaving 9,100 empty seats. If we lost 3-2 in overtime we'd have a case to complain about home-town advantage. If the NCAA adjusts seedings or regional placements slightly to help attendance, Cornell is going to benefit more than many teams by being placed somewhere driveable. There were a LOT of yellow high school buses helping PC students get to and from the game.

A student on one such bus apparently yelled "Cornell is for nerds!" after the game.  My (non-CU) wife heard it, not me, or I would have thanked him for the compliment.

If Providence was any good, like a junior-grade BC, it would have an active Hillel foundation. As in, "You went to BC Law? I didn't know you were Jewish."

[Jim Hyla]

Game drew 5,231, leaving 9,100 empty seats. If we lost 3-2 in overtime we'd have a case to complain about home-town advantage. If the NCAA adjusts seedings or regional placements slightly to help attendance, Cornell is going to benefit more than many teams by being placed somewhere driveable. There were a LOT of yellow high school buses helping PC students get to and from the game.

Bill, I can't quite understand what you are trying to say here. It seems like you have multiple points, but they are all in the same paragraph.

I'll try and respond, as I see it.

It's not that we would have won if this game was somewhere else. It's that it's inherently unfair to give a team whatever advantage they could get. That's especially true when it's the lower seeded team. There's a reason the B-Ball games are all on neutral sites. That makes it fair. I understand that hockey can't draw the same crowds and so I can give the host school the advantage. They put up the guarantee and did the leg work. PU did nothing.

I don't see how Cornell is going to have an advantage more than any of the other dozens of eastern teams that are in easy driving distance of the common regional sites. If some Minnesota team feels it's unfair, they have a couple of choices. Move their campus to a more densely populated area, or put up and host a regional.

The hs buses only reinforce the point that PC should not have been there.

[nshapiro]

Did McGrath have these issues with rebounds earlier in the year? Just about every shot has resulted in a juicy rebound for the Friars.

At Princeton we were joking that he screwed up and was wearing two blockers.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Although I only saw 7 games this year, one thing I saw in several of them was that we had a lot of trouble with a really strong forecheck.  And that was pretty freakin' obvious yesterday.

[osorojo]

I did not see the game - a mixed blessing. What, if any, observable changes in strategy did Cornell use to capitalize on the width of the ice?

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

I did not see the game - a mixed blessing. What, if any, observable changes in strategy did Cornell use to capitalize on the width of the ice?

In Providence the ice size is NHL standard.  It's the home of the Providence Bruins.

[Swampy]

Game drew 5,231, leaving 9,100 empty seats. If we lost 3-2 in overtime we'd have a case to complain about home-town advantage. If the NCAA adjusts seedings or regional placements slightly to help attendance, Cornell is going to benefit more than many teams by being placed somewhere driveable. There were a LOT of yellow high school buses helping PC students get to and from the game.

A student on one such bus apparently yelled "Cornell is for nerds!" after the game.  My (non-CU) wife heard it, not me, or I would have thanked him for the compliment.

If Providence was any good, like a junior-grade BC, it would have an active Hillel foundation. As in, "You went to BC Law? I didn't know you were Jewish."

PC doesn't have a law school. Or much else at the graduate level. In terms of academics, it's not in the same league as BC or ND. Maybe a safety school to them, tho that's a bit of a stretch too.

[abmarks]

Game drew 5,231, leaving 9,100 empty seats. If we lost 3-2 in overtime we'd have a case to complain about home-town advantage. If the NCAA adjusts seedings or regional placements slightly to help attendance, Cornell is going to benefit more than many teams by being placed somewhere driveable. There were a LOT of yellow high school buses helping PC students get to and from the game.

A student on one such bus apparently yelled "Cornell is for nerds!" after the game.  My (non-CU) wife heard it, not me, or I would have thanked him for the compliment.

If Providence was any good, like a junior-grade BC, it would have an active Hillel foundation. As in, "You went to BC Law? I didn't know you were Jewish."

WTF?  Do explain that please @billhoward