joe nieuwendyk

[littleredfan]

just watching canada v finland and wondering about joe... for anyone that saw him play at cornell, was he a really highly touted recruit? did he completely dominate during his years at cornell and expected to be a great player? how did he compare to his teammates in terms of scoring, work ethic, etc. that didn't make it to his level in the NHL? and any other tidbits you might share

[ericho_4511]

I was at Cornell during his two (three?) years on the team.

1) It was clear that he was one of the best players in the ECAC and that he had more talent than 98% of the players on the ice.  Back then there was A LOT more talent in the league. He had a number of excellent one on one moves that confounded MANY a defenseman. He had really great hands and could fly on his skates. Unfortunately, he didn't have a great supporting cast around him and therefore we didn't win multiple championships.

2) At the time, I wasn't sure about his chances in the NHL. Very few players to that point had come out of American college hockey and been dominant in the NHL. All Joey did was prove me WRONG. He won the Calder trophy, scored more than 50 goals (or was it 50 on the button?) in his first full NHL season and has since been a member of 2 Stanley Cup winning teams (one against my beloved Sabres arghhh).

GO Joey! One of the best Cornell hockey players ever.

[CowbellGuy]

The Ithaca Journal did a feature on Joe yesterday:
http://ithacajournal.com/news/stories/20020220/localsports/1678361.html

[Beeeej]

As usual, with stellar editing.

Beeeej

[Give My Regards]

Easily the best Cornell forward I have ever seen, dating back to my first game in December of '82.

Joe actually did have some talent around him during his first two years.  I believe his linemates both years were Duanne Moeser and Peter Natyshak, and along with Joe they were in the 40-50 point range each year.  (Duanne went on to play hockey in Europe for years -- he may still be playing)  We really got to see what Joe was made of during the 1986-87 season, after most of the talent from the ECAC championship team had left.  I don't remember who his linemates were that year, and I don't think it particularly mattered, as he proceeded to put up 52 points and became pretty much the only reason to watch an otherwise not very talented and wildly undisciplined team that failed to make the playoffs.

There's a reason why, to this day, he is the only Cornell player to have been a Hobey Baker finalist.

[Josh '99]

Eric Hoffman wrote:

He won the Calder trophy, scored more than 50 goals (or was it 50 on the button?) in his first full NHL season and has since been a member of 2 Stanley Cup winning teams (one against my beloved Sabres arghhh).

51, actually, including an astounding 31 of them on the power play.  (In case you're now wondering, the NHL record for power play goals in a season is 34, by Tim Kerr in 1985-86.)  He followed up with another 51 goals in his second year.

[jeh25]

Would joe have left early if he had had a shot at an NCAA title?

Bill's message makes it sound if there was absolutely no non-academic reason for Joe to stay for his senior year.

Thoughts?

[Greg Berge]

> There's a reason why, to this day, he is the only Cornell player to have been a Hobey Baker finalist.

And that reason is the award was started too late to reflect the great players in the 1960's.  ;-)

I wasn't "in the know" enough to judge how highly sought after he was as a prospect, but he did go very high in the draft.

Joe was obviously special from the first time we saw him play.  I saw him play in 40 games, and he was a treat to watch.  He also fit well with the team -- something unusual for a college phenom.  He started as a very talented player and just kept on improving.  He was scary by the end of his freshman year, and by midway through sophomore year he was simply well above the college level.

I completely agree with his decision to leave after three seasons (how many guys can go right from college to centering the second line on a Cup-contending team?), but we can only imagine what he might have done along side Andison and Derraugh on that surprise 1988 team.

[nshapiro]

Joe was definitely the best Cornell player I have seen (since 1980). I just missed Nethery, so someone else has to do that comparison.  Tredway was a great scorer, but not well rounded enough to make it in the NHL.

I remember watching Joe as a Freshman... at the beginning of the season he was getting so many chances, but rarely capitalizing.  Everyone was waiting for the puck to start going in, and it did at about Christmas break, and never stopped for the rest of his Cornell Career.

I also recall  stories that he jumped to the Flames because he got a guarantee that they would fund the remainder of his education for as long as he wanted, even if he didnt make it in the NHL.

The only other ECAC players I saw who were possibly better than Joe were RPI's Adam Oates, who has proven his worth in the NHL, and Vermont's Kirk McCaskill, who gave up on hockey and pitched in the Majors instead.

[Josh '99]

Neil Shapiro '83 wrote:

The only other ECAC players I saw who were possibly better than Joe were RPI's Adam Oates, who has proven his worth in the NHL, and Vermont's Kirk McCaskill, who gave up on hockey and pitched in the Majors instead.

That got me wondering...  Does anyone have any particular recollections of seeing John LeClair when he played at Vermont?

[CUlater \'89]

Neil:  What about the Fusco brothers at Harvard?  While they obviously didn't make it in the pros (due to size), they were both dominant college players, although they were helped by the tremendous supporting casts on those Harvard teams.

[CUlater \'89]

LeClair was a touted center for UVM, part of a great class of '91 for the ECAC (including our own Trent Andison, Doug Derraugh and Corrie D'Alessio, among others, plus Peter Ciavaglia and Ted Donato of Harvard and Joe Juneau of RPI).  But his college career suffered due to injuries.  When healthy, he was a dangerous player, but he just seemed to have this knack for getting hurt.  Interestingly, as a pro, he seems to have kicked that habit.  The only year that I think he was relatively healthy was his senior season and even then I think he was only second-team all-ECAC.

I think his injuries, the other stars from the class of '91, and following UVM greats like Kyle McDonough and Ian Boyce caused him to be somewhat underappreciated.

[CUlater \'89]

1986-87 was a tough year for Joe.  He was the Cornell offense the entire season, to the point that Reycroft changed the power play system for part of the season so that Joe ran it from the middle of the blue line.  

If I remember correctly, after being a Hobey Baker finalist on such a lousy team, he was told his stock couldn't get much higher and that he could get a good deal from the Flames for signing then.

I don't think there was any way he would have stayed; if anything, he would have left school for his senior season in order to play on the '88 Olympic team.

[zg88]

But, man, ya gotta wonder... what if he HAD stayed?!?!  The team went 11-16 during his final year, but the following year (with a new coach and an infusion of talent) they went 19-9.  Add a returning Joey, and... well, ya never know...

But, at least he went out with a bang:  He had back-to-back hat tricks on the final weekend of the '87 season (including a goal on a penalty shot).  That was sweet!

I remember sitting there, wondering why the hell we had to miss the post-season, as Joe worked his magic to propel the team to a pair of season-ending victories (6-1 and 5-2).

It really was the "Joe Show":  He just skated circles around everyone and, once he had the opponents in a trance, he'd swoop in and deposit the puck in the net.  Great fun to watch.  :-)

[Greg Berge]

The only college players I have seen that I would rate higher than Joe based on their college performance were Lane MacDonald of Harvard and Paul Kariya of Maine.  MacDonald never made it in the pros due in part to an injury that left him with a plate in his head, and Kariya... well, he remembers Joe, that's for sure. ;-)

The Fuscos were excellent players (damn them to hell for it), but they didn't have the "jump out of your socks" spark of guys like John Carter and Adam Oates (RPI), Allen Bourbeau (Harvard), or the dwarves (Martin St. Louis and Eric Perrin, Vermont).  They were more like Todd White (Clarkson) or Brandon Dietrich (the SLU guy who knocked Cornell out of the 2000 SF in overtime) -- very steady and strong, with a few flashes, but not really "flashy."

One other great player who everybody forgets: Mark Kaufman (who toiled on an utterly forgettable Yale squad and basically pulled a Joe '87 every year of his career).  He could dominate an opponent with no help from anybody.  I wonder how good he could have been on a great team.

So who was the second-best Cornell player you've ever seen?  I saw just one year of Roy Kerling and didn't really get a feel for him, so I think I would go with Dan Ratushny.