An early look at 2019-2020

[scoop85]

One chapter closes another begins.  

Sorry to see the departure of a terrific senior class, and we'll be especially hit on the back line. But we seem to have another nice group of recruits, and of course our goaltending corps will be back.

At this point I'm assuming Barron will be back.  If so at forward we'll have the following:

Barron-Locke-Donaldson
Mullin-Betts-Bauld
Motley-Murphy-Malott
Andreev-Bramwell-Regush

The forward recruits are Ben Berard, the Tukper twins, and Jack Malone. They've all put up good numbers in Juniors, but my guess is Berard and Malone are bigger offensive threats.  This looks like the deepest and best forward corps we've had in some time.

The returnees on defense:

Kaldis-Haiskenan
Leahy-Green
Cairns-Song

No surprise Schafer has a big defensive class coming in:  Travis Mitchell and Sebastian Dirven from the USHL, Jack Lagerstrom and Peter Muzyka from the BCHL, and Sam Malinski from the NAHL. It's possible one of them might defer, with Lagerstrom being the most likely candidate.  Malinski and Dirven seem to be the most offensive minded of the group.  

Mitchell and Jack Malone both played on the goal medal winning USA team at the World Junior A Challenge and are probably the best pro prospects of the incoming group.

I don't foresee Song contributing anytime soon, so I would think we'll have 9 guys likely filling what should be 7 spots on a nightly basis, assuming Schafer goes with 7 defensemen as he usually has this year. It will be interesting to see if Cairns is able to secure a regular spot in the top 6, or if he is supplanted by the freshmen.

I do hope Barron comes back, as I think he can continue to grow as a player at the college level.

Looking at the potential roster, their's reason for plenty of optimism looking ahead to next season. In the ECAC's it looks like QU and Clarkson should be pretty strong, although they both will have some big losses (looks like Nico Sturm is leaving Clarkson for the pros).  If Adam Fox stays Harvard will be dangerous, as they have a lot of young talent, athough their goaltending looks iffy. Union loses a lot and doesn't seem to have a great recruiting class, so they may take a step back. Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth look to be middle-of-the-pack teams, although we'll have to see if Brown can build on their momentum or if they pull a Princeton.  Colgate, Princeton, RPI and SLU look likely to be the bottom feeders. But every year one team seems to be a big surprise; maybe Yale overcomes losing Snively and moves back into the upper echelon, or Dartmouth surpasses their typical mediocrity.

No reason we shouldn't be favored again next year, although as we know we'll have to prove it on the ice.

[Scersk '97]

Great summary.

In the ECAC's it looks like QU and Clarkson should be pretty strong, although they both will have some big losses (looks like Nico Sturm is leaving Clarkson for the pros).

QU, like us, loses three big-minute senior D.

[arugula]

Barron would be crazy to leave. IMHO if you don't dominate at this level you're not close to nhl ready. Morgan is good but hardly dominant.  Yesterday was invisible. If he want to spend two years in the AHL that's another matter.

[cth95]

After watching the East Regional, I started thinking about Cornell's results over the last 20 years.  It seems that we have a very consistent team over the long term, usually finishing the season within a fairly tight range ranked between maybe 8 and 24 just to guess.  In a typical year, we can expect to have a bye and a good chance at making the ECAC title game along with one game in the NCAA's.  In a slightly off year, we just miss the ECAC final four and end up being a few spots out of the NCAA's.  In a slightly good year, we are playing in the ECAC title game and win one NCAA game, like this year.  In a very rare year, we are way out of the running in everything or we win the league and are in the Frozen Four like 2003.  

I am not the statistician that many of you are.  I would be curious to see how this perception lines up with a bell curve and what would be our mean and median season.

[upprdeck]

I think we are out playing out talent.. we dont have the top end talent guy but we have loads of solid players.  if we could get that big time player thru admissions one of these years it would help.. being solid means maybe not the highest high, but we seldom fall back too far.

Hockey is a game where 1-2 plays makes a game if you are staying close.. sometime you make the play sometimes the other teams missed the play.  prov was the better team yesterday but 2 goals scored on just good puck bounces and our 2 best chances went the other way.. it was still a game of inches

A hot goalie helps too.. ask RPI

[Trotsky]

Barron would be crazy to leave. IMHO if you don't dominate at this level you're not close to nhl ready. Morgan is good but hardly dominant.  Yesterday was invisible. If he want to spend two years in the AHL that's another matter.

Barron was one of the best players on the ice yesterday.  I have no idea what game you were watching.  At times he and Beau were our only effective forwards.

[arugula]

"Barron was one of the best players on the ice yesterday,"  that's a mighty low bar for him being ready for the NHL.  To be honest, the only forward who made a positive impression on me yesterday was Andreev.  While Barron was (sort of) involved, he showed no hands and had little impact--but that was essentially the whole team.  Maybe if I hadn't sat so close and either watched from a higher angle or on TV, I would've been impressed, but from 8th row, blue line I wasn't.  

Again, note where my bar is:  to play in the NHL, you need to dominate at this level, not be one of the best players in a terrible performance.

For context, lucky me, I attended likely the two worst performances of the year-this and at Yale.  At Yale, I thought Barron was actually very good--using his size to control the boards and get to the front.  Not yesterday, or perhaps minimally.

[upprdeck]

I think  Barron is fine in tight spaces at the college level.. but does he have NHL talent or just AHL talent? You dont see him dominant every shift. he has his moments though.  I think andreev and Reggish might have more top end.

[Trotsky]

"Barron was one of the best players on the ice yesterday,"  that's a mighty low bar for him being ready for the NHL.  To be honest, the only forward who made a positive impression on me yesterday was Andreev.  While Barron was (sort of) involved, he showed no hands and had little impact--but that was essentially the whole team.  Maybe if I hadn't sat so close and either watched from a higher angle or on TV, I would've been impressed, but from 8th row, blue line I wasn't.  

I was 7 rows in front of you and you are either blind or a very silly person.

[Dafatone]

I have a very hard time telling any player not to go pro as soon as they can. I'm not convinced that staying in college longer is a better route for development than jumping to the AHL. Even if a player never makes the NHL, a career in the AHL and/or European leagues still pays. Players can always finish up their degrees down the road.

That being said, of course I want ever Cornell player to stay 4 years (and every opposing player to leave right away).

[Trotsky]

I think  Barron is fine in tight spaces at the college level.. but does he have NHL talent or just AHL talent? You dont see him dominant every shift. he has his moments though.  I think andreev and Reggish might have more top end.

Barron is Vanderlaan+.  He has Mitch's ability to see the play develop but he also has the stick skills to finish plays.  He was also displaying leadership during the more difficult times last night and that was good to see.

The guys who were in fact invisible against Providence were Mitch and Cam, because Providence played them beautifully with that relentless "Cornell circa 2008" defense.  It was funny to hear the boobs in the crowd booing as we set up behind the net, when every lane was covered by the PC trap.  Leaman had an ideal game plan against us, quite reminiscent of his UC teams.

Max did look good, although he still hasn't gotten all the way back to Pre-Injury Max (which is not surprising).  The guy we could have really used against all that bruising Friar hitting was Malott.  As it was, Mullin did yeoman's work, but for a variety of reasons we just never got in front of the play except for those 5 sweet up-tempo minutes as we were changing the momentum right up until the lethal 3rd goal.

[Trotsky]

I have a very hard time telling any player not to go pro as soon as they can. I'm not convinced that staying in college longer is a better route for development than jumping to the AHL. Even if a player never makes the NHL, a career in the AHL and/or European leagues still pays. Players can always finish up their degrees down the road.

That being said, of course I want ever Cornell player to stay 4 years (and every opposing player to leave right away).

This and this.

BTW, note the Opponents thread.  You just got your way with Clarkson.  Twice.

[arugula]

"Barron was one of the best players on the ice yesterday,"  that's a mighty low bar for him being ready for the NHL.  To be honest, the only forward who made a positive impression on me yesterday was Andreev.  While Barron was (sort of) involved, he showed no hands and had little impact--but that was essentially the whole team.  Maybe if I hadn't sat so close and either watched from a higher angle or on TV, I would've been impressed, but from 8th row, blue line I wasn't.  

I was 7 rows in front of you and you are either blind or a very silly person.

My wife would agree that I am a very silly person and my opthamologist would agree that my vision ain't great.  That said, sitting in the first row as I guess you were is hardly an ideal view of anything, so not sure how you reached that your conclusions.  Also, I noted that I liked Andreev's play, an opinion which you liked when written by Upprdeck, so I guess I'm not always silly.  In any event, I just wasn't impressed by Morgan's play yesterday, shoot me.  

I strongly disagree with your take on PC's trap.  The way to beat a trap is with speed and short passes not by setting up and slowing things down the way the Red did.  Not sure what that was about, but it felt like capitulation.  The PC fans booing the Red slowdown there were boobs because they should've been happy.

[Trotsky]

"Barron was one of the best players on the ice yesterday,"  that's a mighty low bar for him being ready for the NHL.  To be honest, the only forward who made a positive impression on me yesterday was Andreev.  While Barron was (sort of) involved, he showed no hands and had little impact--but that was essentially the whole team.  Maybe if I hadn't sat so close and either watched from a higher angle or on TV, I would've been impressed, but from 8th row, blue line I wasn't.  

I was 7 rows in front of you and you are either blind or a very silly person.

My wife would agree that I am a very silly person and my opthamologist would agree that my vision ain't great.  That said, sitting in the first row as I guess you were is hardly an ideal view of anything, so not sure how you reached that your conclusions.  Also, I noted that I liked Andreev's play, an opinion which you liked when written by Upprdeck, so I guess I'm not always silly.  In any event, I just wasn't impressed by Morgan's play yesterday, shoot me.  

I strongly disagree with your take on PC's trap.  The way to beat a trap is with speed and short passes not by setting up and slowing things down the way the Red did.  Not sure what that was about, but it felt like capitulation.  The PC fans booing the Red slowdown there were boobs because they should've been happy.

Silly in this context is not a pejorative.  This is eLF, after all.

We tried every way possible to break the trap and PC managed to stop us at every turn.  The homerun passes certainly didn't pull it apart the way we hoped.  We weren't able to get up ice quickly enough for short passing because we had forecheckers in our sweaters all night.  It truly was like playing us ten years ago.

Q played that weird ass pressure forecheck against us and it worked well, but it was far more fluid.  PC's was jerky and of course it had ferocious hitting.  I guess the way to break it would have been to score on those early powerplays and make them afraid to go to the box.

I was SO close to Barron (we became very good friends when he nearly went through the boards into my lap against NU) that I got to watch him play "inside the phone booth" from closer in than most of the guys on the ice.  He is a magician.  It's not just his hands, it's also footwork and mostly it's his initial positioning.  If Mitch, who was also strong with it, had a flaw it was that he typically had to enter those situations late and at a disadvantage.  Barron had the whole thing scoped out 3 seconds before contact even started.  He already knew what he was gonna do.  In that he was like Riley Nash but then he was also able to execute it, like Nash often couldn't (unaccountably, to me).

The other guy who stood out to me against PC was Murphy for this reason, which is going to sound like a dig but isn't: Connor has no idea that he isn't as good as he thinks he is.  But because of this he has so much confidence and initiative that half the time he manages to just dog it through and create something.  It's bizarre.  And apparently it's also contagious because damned if Joe Leahy isn't doing exactly the same thing at the blueline (note: this is also scary as shit, because the consequences for a blown play are so much more lethal).

Anyway, I saw a bunch of players who showed me something Sunday.  Yes, yes, losing sucks and losing like that is deflating.  But it was NOT a merit-less performance.  The two rout loses in the ECAC finals to Yale -- those were merit-less performances.  But despite the score and the shitty way the game felt, there were still more than a handful of good individual performances.  The genius of Leaman's plan was it turned every one of our guys into a little isolated atomic unit.  Those performances never linked up and we were not a team.  And that's why they advanced -- the fuckers earned it.

[Dafatone]

"Barron was one of the best players on the ice yesterday,"  that's a mighty low bar for him being ready for the NHL.  To be honest, the only forward who made a positive impression on me yesterday was Andreev.  While Barron was (sort of) involved, he showed no hands and had little impact--but that was essentially the whole team.  Maybe if I hadn't sat so close and either watched from a higher angle or on TV, I would've been impressed, but from 8th row, blue line I wasn't.  

I was 7 rows in front of you and you are either blind or a very silly person.

My wife would agree that I am a very silly person and my opthamologist would agree that my vision ain't great.  That said, sitting in the first row as I guess you were is hardly an ideal view of anything, so not sure how you reached that your conclusions.  Also, I noted that I liked Andreev's play, an opinion which you liked when written by Upprdeck, so I guess I'm not always silly.  In any event, I just wasn't impressed by Morgan's play yesterday, shoot me.  

I strongly disagree with your take on PC's trap.  The way to beat a trap is with speed and short passes not by setting up and slowing things down the way the Red did.  Not sure what that was about, but it felt like capitulation.  The PC fans booing the Red slowdown there were boobs because they should've been happy.

Silly in this context is not a pejorative.  This is eLF, after all.

We tried every way possible to break the trap and PC managed to stop us at every turn.  The homerun passes certainly didn't pull it apart the way we hoped.  We weren't able to get up ice quickly enough for short passing because we had forecheckers in our sweaters all night.  It truly was like playing us ten years ago.

Q played that weird ass pressure forecheck against us and it worked well, but it was far more fluid.  PC's was jerky and of course it had ferocious hitting.  I guess the way to break it would have been to score on those early powerplays and make them afraid to go to the box.

I was SO close to Barron (we became very good friends when he nearly went through the boards into my lap against NU) that I got to watch him play "inside the phone booth" from closer in than most of the guys on the ice.  He is a magician.  It's not just his hands, it's also footwork and mostly it's his initial positioning.  If Mitch, who was also strong with it, had a flaw it was that he typically had to enter those situations late and at a disadvantage.  Barron had the whole thing scoped out 3 seconds before contact even started.  He already knew what he was gonna do.  In that he was like Riley Nash but then he was also able to execute it, like Nash often couldn't (unaccountably, to me).

The other guy who stood out to me against PC was Murphy for this reason, which is going to sound like a dig but isn't: Connor has no idea that he isn't as good as he thinks he is.  But because of this he has so much confidence and initiative that half the time he manages to just dog it through and create something.  It's bizarre.  And apparently it's also contagious because damned if Joe Leahy isn't doing exactly the same thing at the blueline (note: this is also scary as shit, because the consequences for a blown play are so much more lethal).

Anyway, I saw a bunch of players who showed me something Sunday.  Yes, yes, losing sucks and losing like that is deflating.  But it was NOT a merit-less performance.  The two rout loses in the ECAC finals to Yale -- those were merit-less performances.  But despite the score and the shitty way the game felt, there were still more than a handful of good individual performances.  The genius of Leaman's plan was it turned every one of our guys into a little isolated atomic unit.  Those performances never linked up and we were not a team.  And that's why they advanced -- the fuckers earned it.

The best answer I could come up with was to dump and chase a whole lot more. But they defended that well, and it is by far the least sexy way to play hockey