CU-BU 2023

[ugarte]

I will never argue against this:

ok but here BL is the one speaking in tangibles - a combination of stats and eye test - and you are responding with ineffable characteristics that even by your own standards wouldn't explain the last two weekends. if this team relied on grit, we don't honk away games we are dominating against mediocrities.

I thought there was a lot to like about last night (Shane and Robertson; Pseniczka finally having a puck stay flat for him; snipe from Walsh) but a lot of tense moments followed by genuflecting at our goalie, who stood on his head.

Last night showed both the potential of the team and a lot they have to work on. I am still annoyed at their terror at any forecheck and we have ONE player on the team who likes - actually likes - to shoot the puck (Bancroft) and every time he's on the wing with space, whoever is passing it to him handcuffs him so he can't one-time it. Morgan Barron would have killed someone by now.

[marty]

I'm very happy Cornell won last night and I had a great time at the game. But the performance did not inspire confidence for the rest of the year. Looking at the chances Cornell gave up, BU easily could have had four or five goals. Even though Cornell did finally score on the PP, it came when a puck popped out to Walsh from the half-wall, rather than set up by a passing play. The PP did look somewhat better but it still needs to vastly improve. I think the game would have been very ugly if not for Shane.

I think this is the difference between teams that should win and teams that do win.

Ideally, you'd like to be both (2003, 2020).  But we have seen editions of each in our time: teams that were stacked and clearly superior in personnel that repeatedly fell short (1991, 2018), and teams that were fine but not exceptional yet had some sort of extra gear or killer instinct that made them as tough as cockroaches (1986, 1996).

Yes!  Of course BU is more talented but the takeaway here is the fortitude and the commitment to the process.  Of course Shane kept us in position but the team kept coming. I think it augurs very well because we are unlikely to see any team like BU until hopefully the NCAA. This should give us a boost and I'd like to see us take care of Colgate next week. Schaf's job is to get the team refocused.

Had to preserve the homer calling the GWG a weird bounce.

[billhoward]

Eruzione looked sleepy or a little bit out of it when the camera initially turned to him. Dave Silk, of the 1980 US Olympic team and BU the three years before that, was next to him.

[billhoward]

It was a great crowd and atmosphere at MSG. 15,289 was an excellent turnout.  St. John's basketball drew 14,188 when they played Michigan at MSG two weeks ago. Great comments by Mike in the postgame on alumni support.

15,289/18,006 MSG hockey seating = 85% full Saturday night. I thought it felt much fuller than that, but I cannot fathom an arena ever undercounting. Might be it includes tickets sold but game not attended.

[arugula]

It was a great crowd and atmosphere at MSG. 15,289 was an excellent turnout.  St. John's basketball drew 14,188 when they played Michigan at MSG two weeks ago. Great comments by Mike in the postgame on alumni support.

15,289/18,006 MSG hockey seating = 85% full Saturday night. I thought it felt much fuller than that, but I cannot fathom an arena ever undercounting. Might be it includes tickets sold but game not attended.

They closed the blue balcony which is like 2500 seats. Also the bridge which is another couple hundred so that's it. What was available was almost entirely sold.

[CAS]

Schafer said Cornell sold out its allotment of 11K seats.

[Swampy]

I'm very happy Cornell won last night and I had a great time at the game. But the performance did not inspire confidence for the rest of the year. Looking at the chances Cornell gave up, BU easily could have had four or five goals. Even though Cornell did finally score on the PP, it came when a puck popped out to Walsh from the half-wall, rather than set up by a passing play. The PP did look somewhat better but it still needs to vastly improve. I think the game would have been very ugly if not for Shane.

I think this is the difference between teams that should win and teams that do win.

Ideally, you'd like to be both (2003, 2020).  But we have seen editions of each in our time: teams that were stacked and clearly superior in personnel that repeatedly fell short (1991, 2018), and teams that were fine but not exceptional yet had some sort of extra gear or killer instinct that made them as tough as cockroaches (1986, 1996).

I think I disagree both with the specific example (the 2018 team got a 1-seed in the NCAA tournament and lost six games the entire season including playoffs) as well as the general point. Cornell was badly outplayed last night, except in goal. Cornell could point to the Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton games this season where the reverse was true. I don't think that's due to some quality of any team having a killer instinct or being touch as cockroaches. Rather, that's just hockey. Hockey games have a lot of puck luck. You try to possess the puck and get shots on net and be positionally sound on defense and play well in goal, and let the chips fall where they may. BU has better talent than Cornell and has a lot of seniors and graduate students. They are faster and more skilled and Pandolfo gets them to actually play defense. But BU scored on one of their 10-15 grade-A chances, while Cornell scored on two of their five or so grade-A chances. On multiple occasions the puck was literally behind Shane, but didn't go into the net. Cornell was fortunate to win last night just as they were unfortunate to lose/tie vs Dartmouth/Harvard/Princeton.  I think a lot of euphemisms about "finding a way to win" are just attempts to explain away puck luck.

Yes, BU has a lot of seniors (5) and graduate students (3), but one must also consider that Cornell has only 2 seniors (one of which transferred to Cornell last year) and 10 freshmen (BU has 9). I suspect if one weighted such numbers by skating time, BU's age & experience would come out even more disproportionate.

As Schafer said in the postgame interview, it takes time to learn how to play at this level and how to win against the elite kind of talent teams like BU have; it also takes time to learn how to play and win while overcoming adversity, such as injuries. I therefore expect to see Cornell improve during the rest of this season and come into its own next year and the two years after that. Hopefully this year's improvement will be sufficient to earn a spot in the 2024 NC$$ tournament. To underline my point, look again at our two goals.

On Goal #1, Rego passed off to Robinson, who took the puck into the zone and was quickly double-teamed. From a BU standpoint, double-teaming while playing a man-down was probably a bad idea, but Robinson has already made a name for himself as someone who assists on goals. So it does not surprise me that he drew a double-team. He takes the puck against the wall and fights for the puck with BU's #7 (Case McCarthy, a graduate student, USNTDP alumnus, and NJ Devils fourth-round draft pick). The BU PBP guy describes this: "Robinson gets tangled up with McCarthy, ... but it comes free. Daylight,  and a goal (by Walsh)." If you look carefully, you'll see Walsh takes possession of the puck about a yard from the wall, quickly turns and skates to create "daylight" (about 12 feet from the wall), and quickly shoots from around the top of the circle and before BU's #9 (Ryan Greene, sophomore, 2022-3 Hockey East All Rookie Team, Chicago Black Hawk second-round pick) can close to block the shot. The puck did not just "pop out" to Walsh; instead, Robinson fought for the puck, it came free, Walsh collected it, skated into position, and made a great shot.

It's significant that both Robinson & Walsh are Freshman skating on our power play at such a crucial moment.  Walsh is a sixth-round, Boston Bruins draft pick, and Robinson was ranked the 193rd in NHL rankings (6 behind Walsh's 188), but AFAICT, Robinson has not been drafted.

Similarly, study our second goal. DeSantis beats his man (BU's #8, graduate student Cade Webber) to the puck, skates towards behind the goal, and centers the puck to Jon Castagna, who quickly (and, I presume, instinctively) passes the puck towards the the back door, where Psenicka was stationed and immediately scored. Castagna's pass was key, and, because it was blind, presumed Psenicka would be in position. AFAIK, this comes from three possible sources: (1) they've been line mates for some time and have learned each other's tendencies, (2) they've practiced this play during team practice or on their own, or (3) it is part of as offensive scheme (system) Mike Schafer put in place, so that any center on the team will know to expect the off-side wing to station themself by the back door. (If you look carefully at the play, you'll see that initially Psenicka is racing to get to the puck in the offensive zone, but when he sees DeSantis is beating his man along the left-side boards, Psenicka peels off and positions himself at the right goal post.)

DeSantis is a sophomore, Castagna is a Freshman, and Psenicka is a junior. Two BU players might have disrupted Castagna's pass: #7 (graduate student Case McCarthy) or #25 (graduate student Sam Stevens), but he was too quick.

In short, puck luck played a role. For example, Walsh's shot may have missed the goal, as did O'Leary's shot on his breakaway. But in large measure, these players made their own puck luck. Admittedly, on the first goal it was not pretty passing; instead, it was Robinson's grit fighting for the puck combined with Walsh's skating and shooting ability. But on the second goal, Castagna's pass was superb. And we have several years to look forward to seeing them playing in Big Red uniforms.

[Swampy]

It was a great crowd and atmosphere at MSG. 15,289 was an excellent turnout.  St. John's basketball drew 14,188 when they played Michigan at MSG two weeks ago. Great comments by Mike in the postgame on alumni support.

15,289/18,006 MSG hockey seating = 85% full Saturday night. I thought it felt much fuller than that, but I cannot fathom an arena ever undercounting. Might be it includes tickets sold but game not attended.

During the first intermission, on ESPN+, I recall BU's athletic director saying the attendance was the actual number of persons present at the game.

[BearLover]

Swampy, great write-up. I don't really disagree with any of it. Cornell certainly earned their goals and I don't mean to call them flukey in any way. (My point on the PP goal was that it wasn't the result of any PP sets or plays, but rather a couple of nice individual efforts and perhaps a breakdown by BU, i.e. it doesn't indicate to me that Cornell has solved its PP woes.) The second Cornell goal was an extremely high-skill play, DeSantis muscling the puck to Castagna and the no-look pass from Castagna to Psenicka, who one-time roofed it.

On some level you can't call anything in a hockey game "luck" because every play is the outcome of a series of causal events over which the players exert a degree of control. When I say last night's win was "lucky," the implication is that it is "lucky" to beat a team that dominated possession and scoring opportunities. Because most of the time, under those conditions, you will lose. And the bounces—pucks getting behind Shane but not into the net, breakaways and point-blank opportunities barely missing—almost all seemed to go in Cornell's direction.

There are now stats meant to measure this. For example, the NHL now tracks "expected goals (xG)," which is meant to isolate scoring chances (eg. breakaway, one-timer from the slot, slapshot from the blue line), subtract things outside of the shooter's control (eg. bounces and goalie quality), and calculate the likelihood of the puck going in. While we do not have these stats for college hockey, I would guess that BU's xG from last night was ~5, while Cornell's was ~2. And that's purely based on the quality of these scoring chances in the abstract, without taking into account that BU has some of the best goal scorers in the entire country. That would mean Cornell was very "lucky" (under most hockey fans' sense of the word, at least).

[ugarte]

... To underline my point, look again at our two goals.

On Goal #1, Rego passed off to Robinson, who took the puck into the zone and was quickly double-teamed. From a BU standpoint, double-teaming while playing a man-down was probably a bad idea, but Robinson has already made a name for himself as someone who assists on goals. So it does not surprise me that he drew a double-team. He takes the puck against the wall and fights for the puck with BU's #7 (Case McCarthy, a graduate student, USNTDP alumnus, and NJ Devils fourth-round draft pick). The BU PBP guy describes this: "Robinson gets tangled up with McCarthy, ... but it comes free. Daylight,  and a goal (by Walsh)." If you look carefully, you'll see Walsh takes possession of the puck about a yard from the wall, quickly turns and skates to create "daylight" (about 12 feet from the wall), and quickly shoots from around the top of the circle and before BU's #9 (Ryan Greene, sophomore, 2022-3 Hockey East All Rookie Team, Chicago Black Hawk second-round pick) can close to block the shot. The puck did not just "pop out" to Walsh; instead, Robinson fought for the puck, it came free, Walsh collected it, skated into position, and made a great shot. ...

Similarly, study our second goal. DeSantis beats his man (BU's #8, graduate student Cade Webber) to the puck, skates towards behind the goal, and centers the puck to Jon Castagna, who quickly (and, I presume, instinctively) passes the puck towards the the back door, where Psenicka was stationed and immediately scored. Castagna's pass was key, and, because it was blind, presumed Psenicka would be in position. ...

I think these recaps are a little Carnelian-colored. Robertson did draw the double-team, and earned that attention.  I also don't want to downplay what Walsh did with the puck - he used the space he had with patience and purpose and the shot was perfect. You are right about both things. At the same time, Robertson didn't get the puck to Walsh and he wasn't even trying to play it into space. The scrum, and possibly the player closer to the BU goal, popped the puck free to a waiting Walsh. Those are the opportunities you have to take advantage of but it was a weird bounce. A guy sitting next to me at MSG, who talked like a guy with decades of watching hockey, was constantly shocked by how infrequently we position anyone in front of the crease, whether for screens or deflections, and by the absolute unwillingness of the team to shoot unless they had a Walsh-level opportunity (which isn't going to happen without creative passing/skating or a fortuitous bounce off the wall.)

As for the second goal, Castagna's pass was great but ... and I have to stress this ... Psenicka is usually not* there (nor is anyone else). It is not a set play in the sense of it being a Cornell set play. I see only two options: (a) Castagna saw him setting up and (b) Castagna knows that a great place to have someone would sure be on the back door and he took a shot. I wish Psenicka (or anyone else) did more of this! I was complaining about the lack of back door positioning just last week.

I left MSG floating on air, and like I said on my last post, you really do see a ton of potential, especially on defense, and even with Shane standing on his head. That BU team is fast and dangerous as hell and we did get the puck away from them a lot. Of course, we are slow and terrible clearing the puck and that's what gave BU their only goal, and I hope they work on that a lot.

* "not" got lost in editing and I had to stick it back in after posting, along with a couple of other clean-up changes

[dbilmes]

Seger didn't score a goal for us at MSG, but he won two crucial faceoffs while we were killing off the 38-second 5-on-3. The first time he won the faceoff to start the penalty, but we failed to clear the zone and BU got off a shot which deflected out of play. Seger won the ensuing faceoff, and this time we were able to clear the zone, making it much easier for us to kill the remainder of the two-man advantage. During the game, I remarked to my son that we were doing a good job on faceoffs. Sure enough, we ended the game with a 37-21 edge.

[Trotsky]

There was a point at which Seger was 7-1 in faceoffs, and he kept winning vital faceoffs throughout the game.  He was like a great punter who completely changed the way possession worked, and protected Shane from set plays in our end.

I know you guys feel we were lucky because BU had a bunch of great chances they did not convert, but I think that often happens in games.  Ultimately, the final score is the sole dispositive measure of quality.

[ugarte]

I know you guys feel we were lucky because BU had a bunch of great chances they did not convert, but I think that often happens in games.  Ultimately, the final score is the sole dispositive measure of quality.

Easy now, Bill Parcells.

In any event, I should have noted Seger's work on faceoffs. He was incredible and it was probably the most effective defense we had outside of Shane.

[Trotsky]

Parcells' quote has not been true since we went to the stupid 3-point system.

[Trotsky]

I know you guys feel we were lucky because BU had a bunch of great chances they did not convert, but I think that often happens in games.  Ultimately, the final score is the sole dispositive measure of quality.

Easy now, Bill Parcells.

I was aiming for Schopenhauer.  

What is the nature of reality? The entire world is just an idea. That's it. Kant was so close, but Berkeley fucking nailed it - the entire world is one bigass idea. There are two parts to this idea: object and subject, which sound more complicated than they are. The 'object' is just all the things that anyone perceives; it's the entire world as we know it. Except that you can't have a perception without someone perceiving it, and that is the subject, the 'haver' of the idea. It's like when a bro sees something; his perception of seeing is the object, and the bro himself is the subject, except these are inseparable. You can't have one without the other - there's no thought without a thinker, and you're not thinking if you don't have thoughts. It really is all just one big fucking Idea. Any attempt to separate 'object' and 'subject' into truly different things, rather than parts of the same Idea, is doomed to failure, just like any attempt to separate 'sight' from 'the bro who sees' makes no sense.

But that's not enough. Kant said we want to know ultimate reality behind the Idea, and he was fucking right - we aren't happy being told that it lies beyond our grasp. Fuck that noise - I want to know what my ideas mean, what they say, whether there is any substance behind them, and if that yearning is wrong then I don't want to be right. Of course, Kant was right that we can never grasp ultimate reality from the outside looking in, which is exactly what everyone before me has tried. But where they all fucked up, and what makes me awesome, is that they all imagined themselves as winged cherubs, looking down on the world without being a part of it. But we are in the world as much as anything else; our bodies are objects just like the chair I'm sitting in. What sets my hand apart from the pen it holds? What if my body were just the object I'm closest to, and I had no more control over it than your body, which is also an object to me?

Answer: Pure. Motherfucking. Will. My willpower is the only thing that sets my body apart from any other object; the will manifests itself in the movement of my body. Emotions? Just violent movements of the will, as these too cause my body to react, whether my heart races or my breathing slows or, uh, you know... boners. Only the will allows us to take the body beyond an object of perception. The Will manifests itself into individuals, and these perceive and react, but they all have the same ability to perceive, and that ability is the subject itself.

What sets man apart is his ability to reason, to replace perception with abstract ideas - not only do we perceive individual things, we can categorize them and reason about them. Picture a triangle - got it? Good. No lower animal could complete such an exercise, but we can understand the idea of all triangles, or all numbers, or all cats; behind every perception is an abstract idea. And the idea behind every abstract idea, the highest idea, is pure unadulterated Idea - the Idea of being object for the subject, the Idea of being an Idea. This highest Idea is the ultimate reality - Idea itself. When we strip away even the notions of object and subject, only one thing remains that is neither - the goddamn Will, which is the thing-in-itself that Kant thought we couldn't know. Well there it is, bitches.

The Will is conscious, and is consciousness itself. Individual wills live and die, but they always maintain the Will itself. The Will exists now, in every moment, never in the past or the future. We have free Will indeed, for no reason or necessity or determination can constrain the Will. If we would participate in the thing-in-itself fully, we ought to live only in the present, with no regard for tomorrow or yesterday! By embracing the will, we need not fear death, for death is an illusion for individuals, and the Will we embrace is eternal.

Excerpt from Die Welt als Punktzahl und Gewinnprozentsatz.