2023-2024 Predictions

[Trotsky]

CHN "ECAC Watch List."

Is Cornell Cornell Again?
Speaking of recovering Ivies, Cornell making it to the NCAA Regional final last season was some nice retribution for long-time coach Mike Schafer, as the COVID pause abrupted what was Cornell's best chance at a Frozen Four in some time. Like everyone else among the Ivies, Cornell lost some players because of COVID who went elsewhere, but the ones that stayed and stuck it out gave Cornell a big foundation last year, and Schafer was emotional following the last loss to BU in recounting their loyalty, especially given the health struggles he also went through recently.

"It was huge," said Schafer of the regional final experience. "The year before, when we came off of COVID, we had like four guys that had any type of playoff experience. So we didn't have a lot of experience, it was nice to see the growth. We learned from the many experiences because we can build upon it."

This year, the experience gained should be huge as a strong sophomore class will get a boost from a very strong group of freshmen. Scorers like Dalton Bancroft and Nick Desantis had breakout freshmen years last season. One has to like the mix of experience and talent that Cornell has this season. They also, arguably, return the best goalie in the ECAC in Ian Shane, who was inconsistent at times early in his career, but was lights out down the stretch and into the postseason.

Cornell hasn't won an ECAC Tournament title since 2009, which is a thorn in the side for the program, which has the most championships in conference history.

[Trotsky]

Grand Forks Herald

ECAC
Herald predicted finish
1. Quinnipiac
2. Clarkson
3. Cornell
4. Harvard
5. St. Lawrence
6. Colgate
7. Union
8. RPI
9. Brown
10. Yale
11. Princeton
12. Dartmouth

Top forward
Collin Graf, Quinnipiac: Graf is the nation's top-returning scorer with 59 points in 41 games last season.

Top defenseman
Nick Anderson, Colgate: The 5-foot-10 blue liner from Independence, Minn., was among the top-scoring defensemen in the country last season with 29 points.

Top goaltender
Carter Gylander, Colgate: The 6-foot-5 Detroit Red Wings pick was a big reason the Raiders reached the NCAA tournament last season.

Top recruit
Ryan Walsh, F, Cornell: Walsh finished second in the USHL in scoring last season with 79 points in 61 games.

Top transfer
Eric Ciccolini, F, Clarkson (Michigan): The New York Rangers draft pick sat behind first-rounders at Michigan, but will have a more central role in Potsdam.

[arugula]

Wonder how Tupker ended up at Q if the coaches so hate each other

Perhaps because Schafer and Pecknold have taught camps together over the years, don't hate each other at all, and fans are silly billies.

Precisely

[billhoward]

Coaches Poll:
 

Code Select Expand


 1 Qpc (10)
 [color=#b31313]2 Cor[/color]
 3 Hvd (1)
 4 Clk (1)
 5 SLU
 6 Cgt
 7 RPI
 8 Uni
 9 Prn
10 Yal
11 Drt
12 Brn


Deciphering how the coaches think about Cornell: Other than Q and H, we're most likely to lose to Brown, Dartmouth, Yale.

[adamw]

—Cornell has only 2 seniors, one of whom is the third string goalie. They do not have enough experience to compete for a national title this year. My best guess is the finish in the 20s in the Pairwise.

This isn't just a reaction to last night - because I said it on our CHN podcast 2 weeks ago ... and if you want to hear it, go listen to the podcast

But all I'll say is - that prediction above will be seriously, seriously wrong

[BearLover]

—Cornell has only 2 seniors, one of whom is the third string goalie. They do not have enough experience to compete for a national title this year. My best guess is the finish in the 20s in the Pairwise.

This isn't just a reaction to last night - because I said it on our CHN podcast 2 weeks ago ... and if you want to hear it, go listen to the podcast

But all I'll say is - that prediction above will be seriously, seriously wrong

I hope you are right. But I don't think it's a stretch to predict a team which finished 13 in the pairwise last year, and which lost most of its best players, and which has only one senior, to finish in the 20s in the pairwise.

[Trotsky]

"You're never as good as you look when you win or as bad as you look when you lose."

There is really nothing we will be able to say about this team's overall chances until after New Year's, so let's just enjoying dating before making a commitment.

[adamw]

—Cornell has only 2 seniors, one of whom is the third string goalie. They do not have enough experience to compete for a national title this year. My best guess is the finish in the 20s in the Pairwise.

This isn't just a reaction to last night - because I said it on our CHN podcast 2 weeks ago ... and if you want to hear it, go listen to the podcast

But all I'll say is - that prediction above will be seriously, seriously wrong

I hope you are right. But I don't think it's a stretch to predict a team which finished 13 in the pairwise last year, and which lost most of its best players, and which has only one senior, to finish in the 20s in the pairwise.

You realize almost every other good team goes through the same exact thing, right? But you are exactly the type of person that enables my prediction to sound bolder than it is.

[BearLover]

—Cornell has only 2 seniors, one of whom is the third string goalie. They do not have enough experience to compete for a national title this year. My best guess is the finish in the 20s in the Pairwise.

This isn't just a reaction to last night - because I said it on our CHN podcast 2 weeks ago ... and if you want to hear it, go listen to the podcast

But all I'll say is - that prediction above will be seriously, seriously wrong

I hope you are right. But I don't think it's a stretch to predict a team which finished 13 in the pairwise last year, and which lost most of its best players, and which has only one senior, to finish in the 20s in the pairwise.

You realize almost every other good team goes through the same exact thing, right? But you are exactly the type of person that enables my prediction to sound bolder than it is.

One reason Cornell's success in 2022-23 was foreseeable was that the 2021-22 team (which finished in the low 20s in the PWR) lost only a few key players. Betts, Locke, and Haiskanen graduated, and while each was an important player, all of the top six scorers on the team returned for 2022-23. Andreev came back for a 5th year, Stienburg turned down a pro deal, Malinski was already a star, etc. And one of Union's leading scorers, Seger, transferred in. Last year's team had 9 seniors, all of whom played huge roles.

Contrast with this year: six of the top ten scorers (on a PPG basis) gone, one senior on the team. The only way to predict Cornell to be an elite team this year would be to predict the ten freshmen would heavily contribute in both playing time and scoring. This was/is difficult to predict despite the class being talented on paper (five draft picks, good production in junior hockey). Obviously, the opening weekend bodes well for both Cornell being an elite team and the freshmen contributing heavily. But there is still way too much hockey to be played for me to confidently revise my predictions. I'll check out your podcast in any event.

[Trotsky]

The only way to predict Cornell to be an elite team this year would be to predict the ten freshmen would heavily contribute in both playing time and scoring. This was/is difficult to predict despite the class being talented on paper (five draft picks, good production in junior hockey). Obviously, the opening weekend bodes well for both Cornell being an elite team and the freshmen contributing heavily. But there is still way too much hockey to be played for me to confidently revise my predictions.

This seems perfectly reasonable to me.  Then freshmen are critical to the team's success and while their performance before arriving in D1 is hopeful, "hope is not a strategy."

Sandolin was unhappy with UMD's performance, at least after Friday, and Grady and Tim pointed out many situations where the Bulldogs were not playing good hockey.  So it is possible we took advantage of them on a bad weekend and what we saw won't translate to future games.  We simply don't know and won't until the sample size grows.

I was particularly heartened by the 2-man kill to close out the shutout Saturday.  At that point UMD had been playing well, and they were certainly focused on "now or never," and yet we still played beautiful defense and saved Shane's clean sheet.  That tells me something about this team's intensity and conditioning )although on the latter I thought we looked very tired -- the Bulldogs just did, too.

[upprdeck]

UMD has some serious injury stuff to deal with. it would be great for us if they got better

[BearLover]

—Cornell has only 2 seniors, one of whom is the third string goalie. They do not have enough experience to compete for a national title this year. My best guess is the finish in the 20s in the Pairwise.

This isn't just a reaction to last night - because I said it on our CHN podcast 2 weeks ago ... and if you want to hear it, go listen to the podcast

But all I'll say is - that prediction above will be seriously, seriously wrong

The prediction is looking wrong, alright—but not in the direction you're suggesting.

[BearLover]

An RPI fan and his computer program's ECAC predictions. https://thefieldhouse.substack.com/p/ecac-2023-24-preview?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

Cornell is #2, and Harvard is #7 below #4 Princeton.

I appreciate that someone is trying to quantify these things rather than making prediction based on feel, but the fact this model ranks Harvard's returning offense as 12th in the league evidences a clear flaw in its methodology, in my opinion. I would guess the issue is that Harvard's top players last year were SO good that they got all the PP time and played a crazy amount of minutes, especially when Harvard needed a goal. So yeah, nearly all the offensive production came from those players, who are gone now. But that doesn't mean the players who played behind them, and will now take on a larger role, are not good players—it just means they didn't add much offensively last year, because they didn't need to.

And though I wish it were true, I just don't see Cornell as an elite team this season. We could compete for an NCAA spot, but if that happens it is most likely as one of the final at-large bids. We have a ton of freshmen, no one who has played more than two years for Cornell (and no one aside from Seger who has played more than two years of college hockey at all). We are still going up against much older and more experienced teams whenever we play a non-Ivy. I like our trajectory but don't expect us to be elite until the fifth-year eligibility rule finally goes away in a couple seasons.

ursusminor told me he posted this here, and I saw this and wanted to reply.

Harvard's 12th ranked returning offense isn't an opinion; it's a fact. They return 122 points and played 34 games, so they return 3.59 points per game, which is last in the league. It's an entirely objective metric. I disagree that it's a flaw in the methodology and think it's much more of a symptom of the lack of college hockey data available to the public (mainly time on ice).

However, I do agree with your points about PP time and general time on ice. Harvard does have good talent that played lower in the lineup that will likely step up. It's entirely possible they beat the projection, and I'd say they are the likeliest team to do that of the 12. Anyone expecting them to maintain their level of last season is mistaken though. Looking at the roster, the only player I see surpassing 30 points is Joe Miller. None of the players that remain are at the level of Coronato, Farrell, or Laferriere. None of the defensemen are at the level of Thrun even though Ian Moore is very good. Those are the players they have to replace, and Harvard isn't equipped to do it regardless of ice time. The players they have are not that caliber, where they put up big numbers and get an NHL deal following the season (with the exception of Miller and Moore).

sezenack called it (Cornell being good and Harvard being bad)!

[adamw]

—Cornell has only 2 seniors, one of whom is the third string goalie. They do not have enough experience to compete for a national title this year. My best guess is the finish in the 20s in the Pairwise.

This isn't just a reaction to last night - because I said it on our CHN podcast 2 weeks ago ... and if you want to hear it, go listen to the podcast

But all I'll say is - that prediction above will be seriously, seriously wrong

The prediction is looking wrong, alright—but not in the direction you're suggesting.

I notice you haven't corrected this one yet.

[marty]

—Cornell has only 2 seniors, one of whom is the third string goalie. They do not have enough experience to compete for a national title this year. My best guess is the finish in the 20s in the Pairwise.

This isn't just a reaction to last night - because I said it on our CHN podcast 2 weeks ago ... and if you want to hear it, go listen to the podcast

But all I'll say is - that prediction above will be seriously, seriously wrong

The prediction is looking wrong, alright—but not in the direction you're suggesting.

I notice you haven't corrected this one yet.

BL's BS on this topic is that a lot of folks thought the way he did.  Just who those folks are,  I'm not sure.  I think he sees one when he shaves but that's just a wild guess.