2025-26 Incoming Freshman and Transfers

[adamw]

WHO CARES

It's illegal to post about Cornell hockey on a Cornell hockey forum now

I always love the "hey, I'm just asking" defense.

[BearLover]

WHO CARES

It's illegal to post about Cornell hockey on a Cornell hockey forum now

I always love the "hey, I'm just asking" defense.

It's illegal to bring up a shift in recruiting philosophy by a new Cornell head coach on a Cornell hockey forum now

[adamw]

WHO CARES

It's illegal to post about Cornell hockey on a Cornell hockey forum now

I always love the "hey, I'm just asking" defense.

It's illegal to bring up a shift in recruiting philosophy by a new Cornell head coach on a Cornell hockey forum now

no one said that - certainly not me ... but if you don't get it, you don't get it.

[Trotsky]

[abmarks]

I was surprised CJ deviated from the goalie platoon and Cournoyer got both games last weekend. Cournoyer and Keopple were evidently close enough for a platoon the first weekend, and Keopple wasn't bad in his start the first weekend, so I'm not sure how the coaching staff received enough new information to give the nod to Cournoyer both nights. Cournoyer looks really good, and the coaching staff may well think he is slightly ahead of Keopple, but this saga is surprising to me more from a fairness/team camaraderie perspective. This plus the fact Cournoyer was added so late in the recruiting cycle with three goalies already on the roster makes it feel like a win-at-all-costs type of move.

Really?  You responded to ugarte that you were just matter of fact commenting about this and not being critical. 

You've written before about how you've learned that your attempts at humor seem to fall completely flat because people don't realize you were kidding around. If we take your later comments sincerely, and you were just commenting on the facts here, then it's not just the joke tone that falls flat.  It's like you're on the spectrum vis-a-vis forum posts.

Look at your closing sentence saying "...makes it feel like a win-at-all-costs type of move".

Based on your history, everyone reads that as a critical shot at the staff.  But I'll give you this, I can picture that when you were writing it, you imagined yourself saying it out loud in more of a questioning, skeptical tone, where you are wondering "damn, that feels cold. did we really just hit the cutthroat button?".   And if that was your intent, no one would realize it, because you didn't add anything that might be a clue as to your intended tone.  Even a confused face emoji might've been a clue. 🤔.

And on the keopple front...oy.
Just because they split the first weekend between keopple and Cournoyer doesn't mean it was a platoon.   Pretty sure you'd need to to be doing that for a while before it qualified.  There are a bazillion possibilities as to why they did that.   Maybe they decided to see how each of them performed in a meaningful game to better determine.   Maybe Cournoyer was supposed to go both nights but had a little knock so the ran keopple out, but didn't feel the need to announce to the world. Etc etc.

If anyone has been watching, Cournoyer would have to go into a big slump to lose the job.  He's simply better.  Just look at that amazing economy of movement the kid has. And then recall those hideous pads koepple wore freshman year. Yikes. 🤪


The whole fairness and camaraderie comment is ridiculous. Had they cut keopple from the team, that'd be unfair.  But this isn't a union shop where all that matters is seniority.  CJ had the chance to bring in a #1 not just for this year, but hopefully 3 or 4. It seems fair to assume that CJ evaluated Cournoyer as a significant upgrade vs the other three guys, because bringing in a 4th goalie who was only backup material would seem way more likely to mess with the locker room.

And I'll close with a personal experience that basically had me in koepples shoes.  Tennis was my sport in high school. The top couple guys on the team graduated at the end of my sophomore year so going into Junior year, I was going to play the #1 singles slot, which at the time felt like a big deal.   As luck would have it, some kids family moved from arkansas to my school district in Vermont, and that kid turned out to be an almost dead heat with me ability-wise.   

Come tennis season in the spring, coach decides me and the other guy will play best of 9 sets (across a week, not 1 day!) to decide who plays 1 and who plays 2.   We ended up needing all 9 sets and I lost the last one 7-5.   

So I played #2.   Not happy.

Senior year, we did it all over again, same result. 9 sets and we got to 4-4 in the 9th set as even as you could be.  I lost 6-4 that time.  If we played 29 sets it would have been 15-14 for someone, the point being that there was only the tiniest difference.

What reminded me of this story was the conversation I had with the coach right after just missing again like that the 2d time.  There was a brief bit of him asking how the match had played out on that day because he only saw the end.  But right after that I will never forget saying to him "but what about loyalty?"

I don't recall his answer other than it was clear that loyalty, or being the guy in waiting, didn't matter.  And this is high school sports where the coach has no risk of getting fired for a bad record (we were something like 49-2 over 4 years) unlike CJ, who's living is at stake and who also owes it to his players to put out the best lineup possible.

Having been essentially koeppled, I feel for the guy, but that's how that stuff goes.

[Beeeej]

Come tennis season in the spring, coach decides me and the other guy will play best of 9 sets (across a week, not 1 day!) to decide who plays 1 and who plays 2.  We ended up needing all 9 sets and I lost the last one 7-5.   

So I played #2.  Not happy.

Speaking also from experience - contemporaneous with abmarks's, more or less - I was kind of on the other end of this equation. I came to tennis pretty late, and senior year of high school I was finally good enough to go out for the team (my best friend a year behind me was first singles all four years of high school, got scholarship offers to SUNYs and Div. III schools up the wazoo, then thumbed his nose at it all and went on to play Ultimate at Harvard).

Before the season started the coach put us on the ladder at appropriate spots, and toward the end of the last week I had managed to climb my way to 11th on a ladder with ten playing spots, four singles and three doubles teams. Coach insisted that my right to play for the 10th spot, the difference between playing for the team and not, superseded #10's right to play #8 to move up to second doubles, and man was #10 pissed. But he took a deep breath, shook my hand and was a great sportsman about it. Took me down in straight sets, but I was thrilled not to have made it too easy for him, 6-4 6-3. We all ended up exactly where we should've been, I sat back-up the entire season and everybody stayed healthy.

I guess I'm Roest in this scenario? 

[stereax]

Can we get "Keoppled" into the eLynah dictionary? Lol.

[Trotsky]

I guess I'm Roest in this scenario? 

Katz.  Duh.

[BearLover]

I was surprised CJ deviated from the goalie platoon and Cournoyer got both games last weekend. Cournoyer and Keopple were evidently close enough for a platoon the first weekend, and Keopple wasn't bad in his start the first weekend, so I'm not sure how the coaching staff received enough new information to give the nod to Cournoyer both nights. Cournoyer looks really good, and the coaching staff may well think he is slightly ahead of Keopple, but this saga is surprising to me more from a fairness/team camaraderie perspective. This plus the fact Cournoyer was added so late in the recruiting cycle with three goalies already on the roster makes it feel like a win-at-all-costs type of move.

Really?  You responded to ugarte that you were just matter of fact commenting about this and not being critical. 

You've written before about how you've learned that your attempts at humor seem to fall completely flat because people don't realize you were kidding around. If we take your later comments sincerely, and you were just commenting on the facts here, then it's not just the joke tone that falls flat.  It's like you're on the spectrum vis-a-vis forum posts.

Look at your closing sentence saying "...makes it feel like a win-at-all-costs type of move".

Based on your history, everyone reads that as a critical shot at the staff.  But I'll give you this, I can picture that when you were writing it, you imagined yourself saying it out loud in more of a questioning, skeptical tone, where you are wondering "damn, that feels cold. did we really just hit the cutthroat button?".   And if that was your intent, no one would realize it, because you didn't add anything that might be a clue as to your intended tone.  Even a confused face emoji might've been a clue. 🤔.

Not everything is a hot take, and it's important to recognize nuance. I try to acknowledge in all my beautiful posts that there are multiple sides to every story. For example, there are many angles to this one:
1. Schafer didn't have a history of bringing in recruits this late in the cycle. Perhaps a new Casey way of doing things?
2. But it might also be a CHL thing. Influx of strong eligible players, gotta take advantage before they're gone.
3. This happened to be a fantastic recruit on paper. First drafted goalie in many seasons. When was the last time we had an incoming drafted goalie? (Leneveu was drafted after his freshman season.)
4. It also answered the most obvious question mark of this year's team.
5. But there are costs to team morale—-however small you think they might be—-when you take this type of action. Particularly in the age of the transfer portal where it's critical to keep players happy. 
6. You could therefore argue that in the long-term, bringing in a hotshot goalie at the last second could impair team culture and success. To be clear, that's not my argument, but it's an obvious downside that needs to be considered.
7. There are many unknowns here. Nobody knows how the goalies look in practice, how they feel about being the backup, what the team thinks of these types of developments. There could be injuries too.
8. It's not illegal to point any of these things out.

Lol@saying I have a history of criticizing the coaching staff. My critiques are the most milquetoast criticisms that wouldn't even register on a real sports forum. Compared to most of you who refuse to ever question the coaches' judgment, sure, but not compared to 95% of sports fans.

[adamw]

8. It's not illegal to point any of these things out.

Lol@saying I have a history of criticizing the coaching staff. My critiques are the most milquetoast criticisms that wouldn't even register on a real sports forum. Compared to most of you who refuse to ever question the coaches' judgment, sure, but not compared to 95% of sports fans.

You know what else is not "illegal?" Pointing out that some people make misguided, overly critical, overly declarative comments, based on flimsy nonsense, and are much too confident about their opinions, without having the foggiest clue what they're talking about, who then have a persecution complex about it.

[ugarte]

my advice is to make arguments that you believe in instead of floating ideas that some hypothetical person might believe in and then defending that hypothetical person you invented and then getting mad that people keep accusing you of believing the thing you only floated because someone might believe it.

was that annoying and hard to read? then you get it.

[BearLover]

8. It's not illegal to point any of these things out.

Lol@saying I have a history of criticizing the coaching staff. My critiques are the most milquetoast criticisms that wouldn't even register on a real sports forum. Compared to most of you who refuse to ever question the coaches' judgment, sure, but not compared to 95% of sports fans.

You know what else is not "illegal?" Pointing out that some people make misguided, overly critical, overly declarative comments, based on flimsy nonsense, and are much too confident about their opinions, without having the foggiest clue what they're talking about, who then have a persecution complex about it.

Doesn't sound like me at all tbh, sounds like you a little bit though

[Al DeFlorio]

Someone would have to be very dense to read all these postings about his postings and not at some point say to himself "maybe they're right."

[BearLover]

Someone would have to be very dense to read all these postings about his postings and not at some point say to himself "maybe they're right."

Rather than refer to this someone in the third person, you could just quote him directly. He runs one of the premier websites covering a niche college sport, so I think he can take the criticism.

[Al DeFlorio]

Someone would have to be very dense to read all these postings about his postings and not at some point say to himself "maybe they're right."

Rather than refer to this someone in the third person, you could just quote him directly. He runs one of the premier websites covering a niche college sport, so I think he can take the criticism.

Sigh.  Hopeless.