MSG: Red Hot Hockey NEWS

[David Harding]

Wisconsin used the sieve cheer to great effect in the 3rd period of the 1973 NCAA semifinal in the Boston Garden. I recall being a bit intimidated...

Agreed.  It was an eerie sound.  Each "sieve" was drawn out in a long, haunting wail, like an accusing ghost, not the the staccato "Sieve, sieve, sieve" that Cornell students adopted.

[marty]

Wisconsin used the sieve cheer to great effect in the 3rd period of the 1973 NCAA semifinal in the Boston Garden. I recall being a bit intimidated...

We should take a pole of how many eLynahites were at that game.  And it might bring a psychological question into the mix:

"Would I be an obsessed half-crazed fan if Cornell had won that championship or has my thirst for that crown fostered the 47 (or 50+) year fandom and which also brings me great pleasure? "

[billhoward]

Wisconsin used the sieve cheer to great effect in the 3rd period of the 1973 NCAA semifinal in the Boston Garden. I recall being a bit intimidated...

Like Cornell-Syracuse lacrosse 2009, it was a game that never happened. How can you be up 5-2 early in the third of the stronger NCAA semifinal bracket ... and lose in OT? As with lax in 2009, you wonder how Cornell's fortunes would have been better winning the hockey title. That would have been three titles in seven years. Instead, it's two titles in 53 years.

I was there. I was in the press box, which was at the front of the balcony, and the press box shook when the fans got excited. When they stomped their feet, you hoped the construction contractor was not the lowest bidder. OTOH, I love playing in Lake Placid. If we can't have Boston Garden - TD Whatever today - then for the ECAC to be in a winter wonderland (plus mud in March) setting is fabulous. (It's also good that Cornell this year is playing in two 15,000-20,000 seat arenas to prep them for the possibility of Little Caesars in the FF this April.)

If you're out 25-plus years, you have the feeling that all this was yesterday. If you're a student or out less than 5 years, you believe anything that happened before your Cornell years is not worth remembering, knowing, or hearing old farts reminisce about. I barely cared about the heroics of QB Gary Wood 10 years earlier, let alone beating Michigan (in football, not hockey) 25 years before my time, let alone the national championship teams 50 years earlier.

[Jim Hyla]

That would have been three titles in seven years. Instead, it's two titles in 53 years.

Mathematically not correct. If we had won, and I was there as well, it likely would have been 3 titles in 53 years.

Now maybe winning a third title would have changed everything, but I doubt it.

Since the glory years of CU hockey, aka Harkness time, our current coach has gotten us the closest to our goal.

Unlike some of our former teams that he's coached, this year's team needs a great goalie, but is much more than a team with a great goalie.

We can hope he brings us to 4/54, and that he then stays around.

[Trotsky]

Was Cornell under Bertrand perceived as less of an attractive option for a blue chippah than Cornell under Harkness?  A title under Bertrand might have changed that.

For that matter, did some of Dick's legendary ill humor come from having to constantly live in The Shadow of God?  A title all his own would have taken that pressure off and perhaps allowed him to lighten up Francis.  Look at how much better a coach Mike is now that he has seasoned.

[redice]

.....For that matter, did some of Dick's legendary ill humor come from having to constantly live in The Shadow of God?

I don't think Dick ever got over his "Ned complex"    When Ned was coaching Union, I once asked Dick when Cornell was going to play Union, he almost growled his answer at me:  "when they go division one!"....   It was clear that I had hit a nerve....

Look at how much better a coach Mike is now that he has seasoned.

With his seamless conversion from the rough & tumble teams of a few years ago, to the marvelous teams we're seeing today, Shafer is looking more like a genius each year.  Simply amazing!!

[Jim Hyla]

Was Cornell under Bertrand perceived as less of an attractive option for a blue chippah than Cornell under Harkness?  A title under Bertrand might have changed that.

For that matter, did some of Dick's legendary ill humor come from having to constantly live in The Shadow of God?  A title all his own would have taken that pressure off and perhaps allowed him to lighten up Francis.  Look at how much better a coach Mike is now that he has seasoned.

If you talk to any of Harkness's players, I think you'll hear that anyone else would have been less attractive. The feeling that I've always gotten from them is that they would do anything for him.

I have no idea whether Coach Bertrand would have softened if he had won in '73. I'd assume it would have helped and that maybe losing like we did had the opposite effect.

Yes living in "The Shadow of God" must have been difficult, however he wasn't overly successful after leaving CU either.

Simply, we'll never know what might have been, but I'll stick with my original opinion.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Was Cornell under Bertrand perceived as less of an attractive option for a blue chippah than Cornell under Harkness?  A title under Bertrand might have changed that.

For that matter, did some of Dick's legendary ill humor come from having to constantly live in The Shadow of God?  A title all his own would have taken that pressure off and perhaps allowed him to lighten up Francis.  Look at how much better a coach Mike is now that he has seasoned.

If you talk to any of Harkness's players, I think you'll hear that anyone else would have been less attractive. The feeling that I've always gotten from them is that they would do anything for him.

I have no idea whether Coach Bertrand would have softened if he had won in '73. I'd assume it would have helped and that maybe losing like we did had the opposite effect.

Yes living in "The Shadow of God" must have been difficult, however he wasn't overly successful after leaving CU either.

Simply, we'll never know what might have been, but I'll stick with my original opinion.

The story I heard was that Ned had some amazing pipelines for recruiting in Canada.  Bertrand very quickly earned a reputation among the players that hampered recruiting and kind of ended that pipeline.  Specifically, the expression I heard was "Dick Bertrand...before he dicks you."  not original, of course, but still captures the sentiment.

[marty]

Was Cornell under Bertrand perceived as less of an attractive option for a blue chippah than Cornell under Harkness?  A title under Bertrand might have changed that.

For that matter, did some of Dick's legendary ill humor come from having to constantly live in The Shadow of God?  A title all his own would have taken that pressure off and perhaps allowed him to lighten up Francis.  Look at how much better a coach Mike is now that he has seasoned.

If you talk to any of Harkness's players, I think you'll hear that anyone else would have been less attractive. The feeling that I've always gotten from them is that they would do anything for him.

I have no idea whether Coach Bertrand would have softened if he had won in '73. I'd assume it would have helped and that maybe losing like we did had the opposite effect.

Yes living in "The Shadow of God" must have been difficult, however he wasn't overly successful after leaving CU either.

Simply, we'll never know what might have been, but I'll stick with my original opinion.

The story I heard was that Ned had some amazing pipelines for recruiting in Canada.  Bertrand very quickly earned a reputation among the players that hampered recruiting and kind of ended that pipeline.  Specifically, the expression I heard was "Dick Bertrand...before he dicks you."  not original, of course, but still captures the sentiment.

Of course recruiting on average 3x the number of players you need as sophomores to fill out a freshman team might lead a decent number of recruits to deduce they've been hosed.  Eh?

[billhoward]

I wrote a couple stories for the Sun on friction between Bertrand and the players.

Bertrand was not well liked by the players. But then that was the whole point of Miracle the movie: the players rallied around their dislike of Herb Brooks and came home with Olympic gold. The 1972 team rallied against Bertrand to get clobbered in the ECAC finals and NCAA finals by BU, then next year pulled one of the all-time frozen four collapses in that 6-5 OT loss to Wisconsin after Bill Murray (I think it was, sort of Douglas Murray a generation darlier, put us up 5-2 start of the third.)

There are a LOT of coaches not liked by players, perhaps less now than 1-2 generations ago.

Whether or not he was disliked for good reason, Bertrand had things stacked against him. He was a 29-year-old senior and captain. Ex Toronto cop. No coaching experience. Harkness thought Bertrand was the idea successor with zero coaching experience. That Bob Kane '34 let Harkness name Bertrand head coach, or that Kane did it himself, suggests you can be too long in one position: 1944-1971 as director of athletics, then kicked upstairs for 5 years 1971-1976 as dean of athletics, suggested lack of oversight from Day Hall. (Kane also spent a lot of time on US Olympic Committee business his last years.) Instead of Bertrand, Cornell probably could have intercepted the 1970 FF losing coach Len Ceglarski of Clarkson before he went to BC (his alma mater, true) two years later, or Jerry York, who replaced Ceglarski. In the sixties, Ceglarski's Clarkson was NCAA runnerup 3 times and made the FF a fourth time. Bertrand could have been an assistant for a couple years at Cornell, maybe then gone someplace else, then come back in 1980 as HC and done a decent job. Maybe even recruit Mike Schafer.

The years after Bertrand was installed, a) Harkness protege Richie Moran kicked ass and won the first ever NCAA lax playoff (as opposed to poll) and b) a series of 3 basketball coaches sunk Cornell lower and lower in Cayuga's waters. So maybe Kane and director of athletics Jon Anderson (a Dartmouth / Psi U jock turned Cornell financial aid officer then director of athletics and a generally nice guy) had other things to be proud of, and worried about. We (Daily Sun) ran a story in 1974 on how Cornell athletics was cheating on basketball admissions. Why the hell do you cheat if all you're going to do is end up 4 and 22, and get a story about you in Sports Illustrated? PS not to speak ill of the departed, but early 1970s coach Tony Coma's Wiki entry says he quit Cornell over a dispute about team discipline. It was the bad relations with the players, and the coach's personal shortcomings that affected his ability to perform his job that made Cornell move him out.

[marty]

I wrote a couple stories for the Sun on friction between Bertrand and the players.

Bertrand was not well liked by the players. But then that was the whole point of Miracle the movie: the players rallied around their dislike of and came home with Olympic gold. The 1972 team rallied against Bertrand to get clobbered in the ECAC finals and NCAA finals by BU, then next year pulled one of the all-time frozen four collapses in that 6-5 OT loss to Wisconsin after Bill Murray (I think it was, sort of Douglas Murray a generation darlier, put us up 5-2 start of the third.)

If you call a collapse losing an entire offensive line to injuries before the tournament, thereby necessitating playing the fourth line on a team that mostly relied on three.
And, if you call a collapse the over use of that fourth line by a coach who was afraid of the better rested Denver team that the winner had to face on Saturday (due to the Thursday- Friday semifinal schedule) then yes.

But I don't call it a collapse. I blame Bertrand's reliance on the fourth line to keep the lead.  I'm not a Bertrand hater but HE lost that game.

[jkahn]

I wrote a couple stories for the Sun on friction between Bertrand and the players.

Bertrand was not well liked by the players. But then that was the whole point of Miracle the movie: the players rallied around their dislike of and came home with Olympic gold. The 1972 team rallied against Bertrand to get clobbered in the ECAC finals and NCAA finals by BU, then next year pulled one of the all-time frozen four collapses in that 6-5 OT loss to Wisconsin after Bill Murray (I think it was, sort of Douglas Murray a generation darlier, put us up 5-2 start of the third.)

If you call a collapse losing an entire offensive line to injuries before the tournament, thereby necessitating playing the fourth line on a team that mostly relied on three.
And, if you call a collapse the over use of that fourth line by a coach who was afraid of the better rested Denver team that the winner had to face on Saturday (due to the Thursday- Friday semifinal schedule) then yes.

But I don't call it a collapse. I blame Bertrand's reliance on the fourth line to keep the lead.  I'm not a Bertrand hater but HE lost that game.

Here's a different spin.  I think that team clearly outplayed their talent level, played very hard in the games I saw ( winning the ECAC championship.  the Wisconsin game and a couple of others). After a couple of really bad losses early in the year, they really turned it around.  Wisconsin seemed to win all the face-offs toward the end of the game, and if we could have just gotten the puck out of the zone on one of the final third period face-offs (or even neutralize that last faceoff), we win the game.  We also failed to convert on a 2 on 0 breakaway in the first overtime.  Ironically, especially for me, freshman Dennis Olmstead was the player winning all the final minute face-offs for Wisconsin.  Two seasons before, I had heard an interview with his dad, retired NHLer Bert Olmstead, and he mentioned that his son was interested in playing college hockey in the U.S.  I then went into Dick's office and gave him that info and he said he'd follow up.  I suspect Dick did, but if Olmstead didn't end up at Wisconsin, we win that game.

[Al DeFlorio]

I agree with Marty but feel there are extenuating circumstances that mitigate the conclusion in his last sentence.  I rode the team bus to and from the Denver-BC semifinal with Bertrand and the team and sat next to Dick at the game.  Cornell had beaten BC by a goal for the ECAC championship the week before and we together watched Denver steamroll the Eagles 10-4 in a game that looked for all the world like men crushing boys.

Dick was already spooked by having to play the Friday night semifinal and not getting an extra day's rest before a potential championship game, so watching the Denver rout against a team that recently played Cornell close just exacerbated his angst.  He took a calculated risk to best position his team for the final and came within five seconds...and a few lost faceoffs...of pulling it off.  Unfortunate, for sure, but, having gotten a bit inside his head the night before, I understand why he did what he did.

[billhoward]

You're up 4-0 in the second period. You're up 5-2 a minute into the third. Call the ensuing 19 minutes what you want, it was not pretty.

It wasn't just Cornell with a bad 1973 outcome. Denver, the Thursday night winner over BC and with an extra day to rest, got screwed after the tournament. Its record of tournament participation was "vacated" by the NCAA. In the 1960s and 1970s the NCAA was not happy what what it considered to be semi-professional Canadian juniors coming to the US to play. There was a rule that you lost eligibility for the NCAA tournament if you were much older than the normal 17-23 age cohort of the student body (exceptions for US military vets, Mormons doing missionary work as teens) and Bertrand was not allowed to play in the 1970 tournament. The NCAA in the 1970s essentially wanted every school to declare its Canadian juniors ineligible, then the NCAA would issue a papal dispensation restoring eligibility; Denver refused to go along with the charade and its official record of participation was blotted out.

The year before, Denver came into the tournament as the top seed in the West - the tournament effectively took two from the East and two from the West - and Cornell blew them out 7-2 in the semis (and then got chewed up by BU); the Cornell seniors had been freshmen the year Denver beat Cornell for the 1969 title. Those years were the last hurrah for Denver coach Murray Death Armstrong, who'd won five titles late 1950s through 1969.

[Al DeFlorio]

Those years were the last hurrah for Denver coach Murray Death, who'd won five titles late 1950s through 1969.

Murray Armstrong.  Murray Death played for Ned.

Armstrong's 1960-61 team went 30-1-1, averaged 7.5 goals per game, and won the NCAAs.  Five of the "west" first-team All-Americans were from Denver, joined by Michigan's Red Berenson.

While poking around, saw that Cornell hosted an Invitational tournament in December 1960 over three days and lost games to Norwich, Bowdoin and Williams.  Even before my time.  Woolly mammoths pulled the ice-resurfacing sled.