2023 ECAC Post Season

[CAS]

Just wrote in the incoming recruit thread that Cornell's recent recruiting seems outstanding. Next year brings 2 drafted players & the 2nd highest scoring F & 4th highest scoring D in the USHL.  Plus Cornell has 4 other ranked prospects in the NHL's Central Scouring midterm draft rankings.

[Dafatone]

So now that the stress is over, here's what I was gonna day about the math.

If all the games going into this weekend were coin flips, our odds of getting in were 29/32. That's over 90%. And we wanted favorites to win in each case.

What were the actual odds Colgate beat Q? Well, if Q was 30-3-3 and Colgate right around .500, that suggests Q beats an average team (like Colgate) something like 31.5 out of 36 games. That's a little under 8 out of 9 times.

Now it doesn't actually work this way. Teams get hot and cold. When you get towards the end of the conference tournaments, the only teams left are teams playing well. Colorado College was outright bad this year, but they beat some very good teams.

Still, the odds favored the favorites, as they do. Vegas odds last night had Harvard at something like -210 to win, which I think translates to just over 66%. I'm not saying Vegas odds are perfect, but if they were systematically off in a given direction, someone out there would be getting rich off of it.

All in all, I bet our odds were actually quite high. 99.7%? Probably not. But the 97 or 98 percent thrown out as a suggestion sounds right to me.

A lot more went wrong than right and we still got in with an extra spot to spare.

[billhoward]

Putting an off-day in the regionals was the worst possible idea anyone could have come up with.

... for the fans.

Giving the players an extra day to recuperate, that's not so bad.

Making two day trips to Allentown or Bridgeport is cheaper than hotel rooms for metro NY fans. To Manchester, it's either get a hotel room or watch the broadcast.

[upprdeck]

and not for nothing..

Scheduling the finals to go against the Masters and on Easter weekend is also not gonna play well with people traveling or watching on TV for ratings.  They would have been better served to add a week to the season and start playoffs a week later.

[Chris '03]

The off day seems overwhelmingly likely to diminish attendance. Especially when the games on a Thursday start at 2pm for whatever reason.

I understand the motivation behind the off day. Teams playing long overtimes and then again on short rest probably diminish the quality of the product. But if we're moving to off days, can we go back to two regionals? Run them Thursday through Sunday with 8 teams at each site. Make it more worth the while of a college hockey fan to go.

At each of the east and west sites:
Thursday: bracket a semis
Friday: bracket b semis
Sat: bracket a final
Sun: bracket b final

(If the Fri games were early starts, may even make the bracket b final the back end of two on Saturday and run the whole thing in three days.)

I don't like the idea of campus sites but that feels inevitable if four regionals with off days lead to mostly empty buildings.

[upprdeck]

but they play all yr with back 2 back games.. and not every game goes to OT so they occasional one might cause an issue but thats the way it goes.

[RichH]

Well I'm certainly honored to hear that my forum posts carry enough weight to occupy so large a space in your mind that you'll think about a single post multiple times over a span of days.

Hey, don't sell yourself short. You usually come here with a sledgehammer pounding away at the same takes over and over and over and over, and tend to refuse to just say your peace and let things go. You've proven to be a dominant and persistent personality here, so you're pretty hard to ignore. You're clearly knowledgeable and strongly opinionated, and while you participate here in good faith, to me you're often a little over the top in the "LISTEN TO ME, I'M RIGHT" sense. No biggie, but when I do think about the positioning of this program we love, yes, your takes are going to come up in my thoughts. No need to be snarkily modest.

I'll only say that you misunderstood the point of my hazy late-night post. The point I was trying to make wasn't "we've won a lot in the past so therefore we're just as successful." It was "people have been saying exactly what you're saying now for literally decades, and the pendulum always seems to swing back." Can I guarantee we won't fall off or tread water as Harvard zooms off to become the BC of the 2020s? Nope, but I can't guarantee the opposite, either. It's easy outside this fanbase to forget that Cornell was one of the 2-3 favorites to win the National Championship exactly 3 years ago just when the world shuttered on our dreams. (Men *and* Women). I'd argue that this isn't even Harvard's best team in the past 5 years seasons, despite your precious draft-pick boner metric.

People were saying this about Allan and Yale just 10 years ago. They are the future of the league, and the Schafer is stuck in his past ways unable to adapt to a new style, etc etc etc. Well, Yale got their NC, yes, but the Yale program is back to the punching bag division. Coach Mike has adapted his recruiting and style subtly, and still is grabbing at-large bids on the regular.

If Harvard is so far ahead of the league, I ask again, where are those results? Yes, they're in the top tier of our league. But they haven't been as dominant as you're selling them. Their top line can dismantle most patsies, but they are taken to OT by lesser teams an awful lot, and the OT rules simply favor having a top line built like that.

This is one of those eras where both Cornell and Harvard happen to be in an "up" period. The pendulum always seems to swing to and fro, and I don't expect that to change. It's always been a great rivalry for that reason.

[BearLover]

OK, fair enough. I agree by the way that Harvard's 2017 team was better.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Putting an off-day in the regionals was the worst possible idea anyone could have come up with.

... for the fans.

Giving the players an extra day to recuperate, that's not so bad.

Making two day trips to Allentown or Bridgeport is cheaper than hotel rooms for metro NY fans. To Manchester, it's either get a hotel room or watch the broadcast.

Or crash at your sister's place in Mass.  Which is my plan.

[billhoward]

and not for nothing..

Scheduling the finals to go against the Masters and on Easter weekend is also not gonna play well with people traveling or watching on TV for ratings.  They would have been better served to add a week to the season and start playoffs a week later.

NCAA basketball is designed to end around April 1. NCAA hockey is assigned its finals weekend for the next weekend. I don't think the NCAA worries a lot about the Masters draining away hockey viewers and the hockey title game tips off a couple hours after the third round of the Masters has ended. Easter? Well, you catch it next year.

[marty]

and not for nothing..

Scheduling the finals to go against the Masters and on Easter weekend is also not gonna play well with people traveling or watching on TV for ratings.  They would have been better served to add a week to the season and start playoffs a week later.

NCAA basketball is designed to end around April 1. NCAA hockey is assigned its finals weekend for the next weekend. I don't think the NCAA worries a lot about the Masters draining away hockey viewers and the hockey title game tips off a couple hours after the third round of the Masters has ended. Easter? Well, you catch it next year on Sunday morning.

FYP

[abmarks]

I said it before and I'll say it again, there is a ridiculous talent disparity between Harvard and the rest of the league. Cornell had better hope that a large number of Harvard's 15 draft picks leave for the pros, and that something happens in the coming years to close the talent gap. This isn't tenable.

I've thought about this and laughed to myself multiple times over the past couple days.

"This isn't tenable."  Please spare me this.

It's always been this way, going back to the 50s where Harvard had a huge head start until 1963, when Ned started fighting back with recruiting strategies that had an internationally renowned university such as Harvard relying on jingoistic nationalism to call foul on our "foreigners."

Harvard players won 3 Hobeys in the 80s and were absolutely loaded with talent the entire decade. Clearly got his NC in OT in '89 and cranked out a teams who loaded the US national/Olympic rosters of that era and had lots of players go to the nhl. Yet they only won 2 league championships from the Divorce to the end of the Cleary / beginning of the Schafer eras. We had our lowest points during that time period.

Yet who still is winning the race in head-to-head record, in ECACs championships, and in Ivy titles? Cornell has somehow overcome the recruiting and geographic advantages Harvard has now, has always had, and always will have in this rivalry. The players they get are of a different type than the ones we get. They have always had more "blue chippahs" than us. Yet, we still have the record book to point to.

But hey draft picks... wait, sorry, you said "ridiculous talent disparity" had us taking them to OT, in 2 of 3 games. Both teams are top 10 in offensive output. Both are top 10 in defense. There is simply not a "ridiculous disparity" there. The ridiculous talent disparity between them and the rest of the league sure was on display against Colgate, wasn't it?

It's tenable. And I don't expect either team to fade anytime soon.

Well I'm certainly honored to hear that my forum posts carry enough weight to occupy so large a space in your mind that you'll think about a single post multiple times over a span of days.

Your argument essentially boils down to: Harvard has always had these same recruiting advantages, but we've been more successful than them anyway. Maybe, but that's not responding to the crux of my post. By "not tenable," I'm talking about current  trends, not history from 50 years ago. Current trends clearly suggest that Harvard is going to pass us in ECAC titles and NCAA success soon and Cornell's route to an ECAC championship is going to remain as narrow as it has been for over a decade now.

The fact we're still ahead in the metrics you cited (head-to-head, Ivy titles, ECAC championships) just isn't persuasive. That's like saying Georgetown basketball shouldn't worry about Villanova because they win the historical head-to-head, have more league titles, etc. If Harvard wins the Ivy and ECAC next year and ties us in both categories, will you change your tune?

I could just as easily cherry-pick historical stats to show Harvard has surpassed us. Their most recent national championship is 19 years more recent than our last one. Their most recent frozen four is 14 years more recent than our last one. They've won three ECAC titles since we last won one. I don't find these arguments which rely on one-off events persuasive either, but at least they speak to recent trends rather than old history.

The biggest problem with your point that Harvard has always had these advantages is that you speak only to the direction of the advantage, but not to the degree. Yes, Harvard has for many decades held a recruiting advantage. But in the Schafer era that advantage has never been as large as it is now. 15 draft picks for them to 3 for us. 9 Harvard players on NHL opening night rosters as compared to 1 Cornell player (with Farrell and Coronato soon to follow). This isn't a point about direction of the talent disparity, it's a point about degree.

Cornell will continue to compete for NCAA bids and ECAC titles into the future. But Harvard has lapped us in recruiting and is frankly just a more successful program overall right now (with no signs of slowing down whatsoever).

Harvard hasn't had 15 picks on their team every year.  More picks than us? Yes.  But not this many. That begs a few questions:

Is 15 a blip or a trend?  It's more likely a high blip than anything permanent.

What is Harvard doing to get such big classes with draftees? Is it business as usual or has something changed?  



Let's not forget that Ted Donato spent 12 years in the nhl.  That's a big selling point we can't remotely match.  If you're a high end talent and you want to get to the show, a coach who's been there and knows all the ins and outs etc should be a big help to your development.

Playing that long, and being ~55yo, gives donato
an interesting demographic edge as well.  He will have played with a slew of guys who's kids are recruiting age. So that network effect might grab Harvard a few more kids of NHLers.

Let's also not forget that geography wise we're screwed.  If you look at the hockey hotbeds around the country, we get very few of those kids. Michigan, Minnesota, Boston schools as a group, etc...they all get their pick of the locals. (Not to mention that there's a lot less effort involved when you are scouting and recruiting kids within a couple hour drive of campus as opposed to going after guys in nainamo.).  Can we find some pockets or under recruited areas? Possibly.  But we will always be at a disadvantage because there's no local base.

[upprdeck]

half the places we are trying to recruit you cant even fly too

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

half the places we are trying to recruit you cant even fly to

To be fair, you can barely fly to Ithaca.

[jtwcornell91]

half the places we are trying to recruit you cant even fly too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanaimo_Airport