USA Today Poll

[arghhhhh]

arrrgh i am so sick of this!! just because lenny decides to leave us, we are looked upon as a lower team? lower than before? lower than HARVARD?!!! wtf!!! we are still the great team we were before, even if we lost our prize goaltender... screw the polls!! :-( :-(

[Section A]

riiiiiiiiiight  ::screwy::

[DeltaOne81]

I know! This was almost like the time that the Oilers lost Gretzky, and people just assumed that they were worse!! Ridiculous!!

::twak::

[jy3]

other problem with that hahvahd game is that it is a friday. why is that game always friday? i cant make it on a friday damnit! ::nut::

[nyc94]

True.  But one game does not a season make.  I'm not saying that they suck - only that it is essentially the same team as last year.  Maybe with one more year of experience they will break through and actually win a non-conference game of significance.  I would put them at like #10, right where they were last year.  But then again, I don't know too much about Ferris State, Colorado College, Michigan State or Denver so maybe Harvard might be better than them.  Still, I'm putting my money on BU next month.  I mean really, the Harvard boys have all of that studying to do. . .

[Section A]

Right, all that studying to do. Something tells me they'll get an A no matter what ;-)

[Robb \'94]

But, Bill '94 - every team loses people every year (with very rare exceptions).  The vast majority of teams lose at least one key leadership type player, who by definition has to be replaced by an unknown quantity.  By this reasoning, you'd have to expect every team to get worse every year - a downward spiral toward Princeton.  Yes, Harvard lost a few key people.  But the right questions are: a) did they lose less than those around them, and b) how do their fresh faces look compared to those around them?  I think it is quite reasonable for a team that took a few losses to move up in the hierarchy.

[nyc94]

I know it's just a poll so I don't want to argue this to death but I don't think I suggested every team would spiral to mediocrity.  Some will do better than the preseason poll suggests and some will do worse.  I think the other teams got knocked down because their player losses make them a bigger question mark.  I think Harvard benefits in the polls from this.  They return much of last year's good team so they are less of an unknown (I don't understand where you got that I think Harvard lost important players from last year).  But I don't think they are that much better than last year.  That's my major point and of course,  that's just an opinion.  For them to stay at #6 or better they will have to win out of conference.  And some of those teams below them in the polls, like Cornell and BU, are on their schedule.

[Keith K \'93]

Preseason polls are all about expectations.  Given their talent, Harvard should have done better out of conference last season.  If they hadn't tanked their non-conf slate they would have been ranked solidly within the top 10 come tournament time instead of tied for #12 in the PWR.  If the pollsters assume that the Crimson will finally live up to expectations then #6 is not far-fetched.  IMNSHO, of course.

[nyc94]

Keith, I agree with your point about expectations and about where Harvard may have been in the polls last year had they won out of conference.  I guess the short version is that I don't share those expectations for this year with the pollsters and I base that on my belief that they are essentially the same team.

I think I have a problem with them being #6 and us starting last year at #8 or #9 because I think at the beginning of last season we were better than they are now.

[cbuckser]

In college hockey, when essentially the same team, that team should be significantly better in the new season than in the previous season.  Players improve their skills and gain experience.

Harvard is not a team that recruits 21-year-old freshman who have relatively little capacity for improvement.  Sophomores like Charlie Johnson and Peter Hafner should be substantially better hockey players this year than last.   Junior Tom Cavanaugh seems poised for a breakout season.  Also, I doubt Tyler Kolarik and Noah Welch will regress.

Harvard's goaltending should be solid; Cornell and Dartmouth have much bigger question marks between the pipes.  Harvard has a much more experienced defense than Cornell and Dartmouth; remember that Harvard had one of the best team defenses in college hockey last season. In the ECAC, only Dartmouth should be able to light the lamp as prolifically as Harvard.  I think Harvard should clearly be the team ranked #1 in the preseason ECAC polls and the highest-ranked ECAC team in national polls.  And, unlike his predecessor, Mark Mazzoleni does not have a history of underachieving.

Last year, Harvard came up a bit short in a lot of key games.  Whether you believe that those losses were a product of bad luck, an inate inability to win close games, or both, this year's more experienced Harvard team should fare better.

[gtsully]

Craig Buckser '94 wrote:
And, unlike his predecessor, Mark Mazzoleni does not have a history of underachieving.

I don't quite agree with that.  I think he's a very good recruiter that (as of yet, anyway) hasn't been able to get his team to the level they should be at.  This could be the year that changes all of that, but I'll believe it when I see it.

I think we tend to think that, since the team has played Cornell tough the past few seasons, he doesn't underachieve, but if you look at his non-conference record, the team's brutal slump in the second half of 01-02, and blips like losing at home to Princeton last year, their team has been pretty inconsistent.  They made a nice run in the '02 tournaments (partially at our expense, unfortunately), but with the talent that they have, they could have achieved more, IMO.

Or maybe I'm just unfairly contrasting him with Schafer...  ::laugh::

[rhovorka]

Sully '00 wrote:

I don't quite agree with that.  I think he's a very good recruiter that (as of yet, anyway) hasn't been able to get his team to the level they should be at.  This could be the year that changes all of that, but I'll believe it when I see it.

A good point.  If memory serves me correctly, Harvard finished last season with an 0-8-1 record vs. top 15 PWR opponents.

The last few years of the Tom-ass-oni regime, they were annually expected to finish near the top, using the (faulty) logic that they always had the most NHL draft picks on their roster.  They kept finishing lower than 5th.  In the late '90s, I'd argue that there wasn't a more disappointing team relative to their expectations.

[Keith K \'93]

The Princeton loss last year can't be held against Maz to much.  Things like that happen in a long season (at least if you're not the '70 Red) and it's not like he has a history of losing to Princeton or bottom feeders down the stretch.  But the team's poor record against top non-conf competition still can be held against him to some extent.

[ugarte]

Keith K '93 wrote:

The Princeton loss last year can't be held against Maz to much.  Things like that happen in a long season (at least if you're not the '70 Red) and it's not like he has a history of losing to Princeton or bottom feeders down the stretch.  But the team's poor record against top non-conf competition still can be held against him to some extent.

And it isn't as if we weren't a hair's breadth from losing to Princeton last year also.  I was very relieved to get out of Hobey Baker with that win. (Thanks, Lenny.)