Future Predictions

[arugula]

Another question.  Will Fegaras live up to his reputation?

[fastforward]

With the hope of sparking some conversation, here are my three biggest questions for our returning players next year.

1. Can Castagna put up points?
You don't have to watch too much of his game to see how he went in the third round but Castagna had not put up points for us like I would expect. If he can make the jump to challenge Walsh to be our top scorer that would be a massive help to the offense.

2. Can Major make the jump?
During the first half of last season I was infuriated with how weak Major was on the puck and how little he was getting on the stat sheet. The second half I thought he was excellent for a freshman and was an important piece down the stretch. If he can continue to develop and become a top line and powerplay mainstay, that takes a lot of pressure off the incoming freshman to put up big points.

3. What the hell is Sean Donaldson?
Donaldson has honestly had a fascinating Cornell career. The guy comes in to Cornell after dropping a ridiculous 70 points in 47 BCHL games. He puts up 10 points freshman year and looks poised to continue to develop into and important forward for the team. In his sophomore and juniors years though, he has played 26 games and put up 0 points. Not just that, but he singlehandedly lost us a game last year with his butt-ending antics in Hamilton. Can Donaldson play his way into the lineup sheet every week and be a senior presence for this team or will he have yet another disappointing year?

#1 depends on surgery recovery for both  Castagna and Walsh
#2 time will tell now that the early part of freshman nerves got put to ease
#3 we never know what goes on behind the scenes but new year, new coach hopefully brings a new outlook

[scoop85]

With the hope of sparking some conversation, here are my three biggest questions for our returning players next year.

1. Can Castagna put up points?
You don't have to watch too much of his game to see how he went in the third round but Castagna had not put up points for us like I would expect. If he can make the jump to challenge Walsh to be our top scorer that would be a massive help to the offense.

2. Can Major make the jump?
During the first half of last season I was infuriated with how weak Major was on the puck and how little he was getting on the stat sheet. The second half I thought he was excellent for a freshman and was an important piece down the stretch. If he can continue to develop and become a top line and powerplay mainstay, that takes a lot of pressure off the incoming freshman to put up big points.

3. What the hell is Sean Donaldson?
Donaldson has honestly had a fascinating Cornell career. The guy comes in to Cornell after dropping a ridiculous 70 points in 47 BCHL games. He puts up 10 points freshman year and looks poised to continue to develop into and important forward for the team. In his sophomore and juniors years though, he has played 26 games and put up 0 points. Not just that, but he singlehandedly lost us a game last year with his butt-ending antics in Hamilton. Can Donaldson play his way into the lineup sheet every week and be a senior presence for this team or will he have yet another disappointing year?

As for #3, I too have been perplexed that Donaldson has yet to take the leap towards being a solid contributor. Maybe he'll finally put it together in his senior seaons.

[BearLover]

This has been a very strange offseason.

—It began with the most crushing loss in recent Cornell hockey history and the end of our beloved coach's career, after a miracle run to get us to that point.
—But the lacrosse program exorcised its demons and finally won it all, bringing joy back to Cornell athletics.
—Our best returning forward signed pro.
—Our best returning D transferred.
—We brought in two transfer D, both of whom are drafted but unproven at the college level.
—The most shocking new addition came when we took a highly touted goalie straight from the QMJHL, shoring up our biggest weakness next season.
—The roster was announced and we have 31 athletes on it, which has to be among the largest rosters in the country. Our incoming class of 14 kids also has to be among the biggest.
—Meanwhile, Quinnipiac and Clarkson stockpiled 20-year-old CHL players, and RPI hired a new coach and revamped its roster. Brown and Dartmouth lost some of their better players to early pro signings/transfers.
—Blue blood programs added blue chip CHL prospects, including many first round NHL picks.
—Cornell ended radio coverage of hockey games and fired the TV hockey commentary team.

[Trotsky]

"May you live in interesting times."

[margolism]

Add to the list that Yale will have a new interim head coach too.

[BearLover]

https://www.rpifieldhouse.com/p/ecac-thoughts-so-far?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

More great content from sezenack. Love any piece that makes a real attempt to use underlying metrics to evaluate players or teams. I particularly liked his model of Corsi adjusted for SOS. You can find possession metrics on the internet, but they're not very meaningful  unless adjusted for the huge disparities in college teams' SOS.

Agreed on pumping the breaks on Dartmouth. I think though he is too high on Cornell and the ECAC in general. We'll see what happens, but Cornell has looked shaky so far and if they're indeed the second best team in the league (which sounds about right), then this doesn't look to me like a 3-bid league. Also don't really get the point about Union screwing itself with its schedule-the whole point of the NPI/Pairwise is to adjust for this.

[Snowball]

Good article.

Looking at the stats, Cornell is currently last in the ECAC in blocked shots, even when normalized for games played:

https://collegehockeyinc.com/conferences/ecac-hockey/oateam26.php

Since shot-blocking is usually a staple of Cornell's defensive identity, what explains this? Our shots for/against are basically even, so the low block total isn't simply due to lack of defensive zone time. Curious what others think is driving the trend.

[sezenack]

https://www.rpifieldhouse.com/p/ecac-thoughts-so-far?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

More great content from sezenack. Love any piece that makes a real attempt to use underlying metrics to evaluate players or teams. I particularly liked his model of Corsi adjusted for SOS. You can find possession metrics on the internet, but they're not very meaningful  unless adjusted for the huge disparities in college teams' SOS.

Agreed on pumping the breaks on Dartmouth. I think though he is too high on Cornell and the ECAC in general. We'll see what happens, but Cornell has looked shaky so far and if they're indeed the second best team in the league (which sounds about right), then this doesn't look to me like a 3-bid league. Also don't really get the point about Union screwing itself with its schedule-the whole point of the NPI/Pairwise is to adjust for this.

I think being too optimistic on the ECAC is a fair critique of mine. You guys definitely see more of Cornell than I do; I mostly just surf around the various games when I'm not watching RPI.

The point with Union is that they have no shot of getting an at large bid because their schedule is too weak, but I think they could be in the conversation with a more challenging schedule. They have largely dominating their weak schedule, and I think they're capable of beating some good teams that would get them higher in the NPI. But they scheduled weakly, so their margin is too slim to realistically get an at large bid. Hope that explains it a little better

[BearLover]

https://www.rpifieldhouse.com/p/ecac-thoughts-so-far?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

More great content from sezenack. Love any piece that makes a real attempt to use underlying metrics to evaluate players or teams. I particularly liked his model of Corsi adjusted for SOS. You can find possession metrics on the internet, but they're not very meaningful  unless adjusted for the huge disparities in college teams' SOS.

Agreed on pumping the breaks on Dartmouth. I think though he is too high on Cornell and the ECAC in general. We'll see what happens, but Cornell has looked shaky so far and if they're indeed the second best team in the league (which sounds about right), then this doesn't look to me like a 3-bid league. Also don't really get the point about Union screwing itself with its schedule-the whole point of the NPI/Pairwise is to adjust for this.

The point with Union is that they have no shot of getting an at large bid because their schedule is too weak, but I think they could be in the conversation with a more challenging schedule. They have largely dominating their weak schedule, and I think they're capable of beating some good teams that would get them higher in the NPI. But they scheduled weakly, so their margin is too slim to realistically get an at large bid. Hope that explains it a little better

I get the argument, but I still feel like it doesn't really work unless you think the entire NPI/Pairwise/RPI is flawed and biased against teams with a weak schedule.

If you schedule harder teams, you're more likely to lose, such that on net it cancels out. If NPI is properly calibrated then whether your schedule is weak or strong should not matter.

[Dafatone]

https://www.rpifieldhouse.com/p/ecac-thoughts-so-far?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

More great content from sezenack. Love any piece that makes a real attempt to use underlying metrics to evaluate players or teams. I particularly liked his model of Corsi adjusted for SOS. You can find possession metrics on the internet, but they're not very meaningful  unless adjusted for the huge disparities in college teams' SOS.

Agreed on pumping the breaks on Dartmouth. I think though he is too high on Cornell and the ECAC in general. We'll see what happens, but Cornell has looked shaky so far and if they're indeed the second best team in the league (which sounds about right), then this doesn't look to me like a 3-bid league. Also don't really get the point about Union screwing itself with its schedule-the whole point of the NPI/Pairwise is to adjust for this.

The point with Union is that they have no shot of getting an at large bid because their schedule is too weak, but I think they could be in the conversation with a more challenging schedule. They have largely dominating their weak schedule, and I think they're capable of beating some good teams that would get them higher in the NPI. But they scheduled weakly, so their margin is too slim to realistically get an at large bid. Hope that explains it a little better

I get the argument, but I still feel like it doesn't really work unless you think the entire NPI/Pairwise/RPI is flawed and biased against teams with a weak schedule.

If you schedule harder teams, you're more likely to lose, such that on net it cancels out. If NPI is properly calibrated then whether your schedule is weak or strong should not matter.

Right now, NPI is a mess. The strength of schedule weighting seems to be almost entirely Dartmouth-focused, either because they're #1, because they're undefeated, or both.

Last I checked, we had the hardest schedule in college hockey, and we've played Dartmouth, a very good Harvard (by NPI), two against a middle of the pack UMass, middle of the pack Yale, and bottom feeder Brown. That's an above average schedule, not a #1.

But we have played Dartmouth and few other games, so the Dartmouth game weighs more heavily.

I bet this clears up as the season goes on and NPI makes more sense. When that happens, Union will be well up there if they maintain this pace.

[BearLover]

https://www.rpifieldhouse.com/p/ecac-thoughts-so-far?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

More great content from sezenack. Love any piece that makes a real attempt to use underlying metrics to evaluate players or teams. I particularly liked his model of Corsi adjusted for SOS. You can find possession metrics on the internet, but they're not very meaningful  unless adjusted for the huge disparities in college teams' SOS.

Agreed on pumping the breaks on Dartmouth. I think though he is too high on Cornell and the ECAC in general. We'll see what happens, but Cornell has looked shaky so far and if they're indeed the second best team in the league (which sounds about right), then this doesn't look to me like a 3-bid league. Also don't really get the point about Union screwing itself with its schedule-the whole point of the NPI/Pairwise is to adjust for this.

The point with Union is that they have no shot of getting an at large bid because their schedule is too weak, but I think they could be in the conversation with a more challenging schedule. They have largely dominating their weak schedule, and I think they're capable of beating some good teams that would get them higher in the NPI. But they scheduled weakly, so their margin is too slim to realistically get an at large bid. Hope that explains it a little better

I get the argument, but I still feel like it doesn't really work unless you think the entire NPI/Pairwise/RPI is flawed and biased against teams with a weak schedule.

If you schedule harder teams, you're more likely to lose, such that on net it cancels out. If NPI is properly calibrated then whether your schedule is weak or strong should not matter.

Right now, NPI is a mess. The strength of schedule weighting seems to be almost entirely Dartmouth-focused, either because they're #1, because they're undefeated, or both.

Last I checked, we had the hardest schedule in college hockey, and we've played Dartmouth, a very good Harvard (by NPI), two against a middle of the pack UMass, middle of the pack Yale, and bottom feeder Brown. That's an above average schedule, not a #1.

But we have played Dartmouth and few other games, so the Dartmouth game weighs more heavily.

I bet this clears up as the season goes on and NPI makes more sense. When that happens, Union will be well up there if they maintain this pace.

Oh yes. NPI is basically meaningless right now for the Ivies. My general point still stands though—-I don't think Union is being hurt by its schedule. It should be a wash.

[Trotsky]

I assume it isn't so much Dartmouth at #1 but Dartmouth at 1.000.  However, I thought modern metrics built in a circuit breaker for the perfection / divide by zero issue.  Like a universal tie against the median.

[BearLover]

I'm not gonna complain too much about 7-4 and 16 in the NPI with a young team but  we are a missed offsides call against Dartmouth, a crossbar against BU,  a few other bad breaks from being in a much better position. Still, we've played a lot of weak teams and haven't looked dominant.

I'm pretty happy with Casey overall, for the most part this team is playing like a Schafer team, defensively very responsible, extremely risk averse, offensively limited. Defensively stats-wise we give up very few chances but we also struggle with a lot of teams' (even weak teams') forechecks. We are quite bad at clearing the zone, repeatedly serving up an attempted clear straight to the opposition on the half-wall or blue line. Offensively we look confused how to create space and with the exception of a late SHG vs Harvard and late 5x3 vs UMass we haven't scored more than 2 goals against a non-bottom-dweller (Yale, Brown, StL, RPI). Cournoyer has been good overall, seems like the clear frontrunner for the reason of the season.  Happy enough with the newcomers though seems like a lot of defensive defensemen and power forwards and not a lot of skill (other than Veilleux).

Notably we have lost Major 2.5 games but otherwise have lost no players to injury. (Knock on wood.) That's one area where we've been very lucky.

As usual, the goals for the regular season are (1) win enough to be on track for an at-large bid and (2) get a first round ECAC bye. (1) looks iffy but at least we're very much in it and (2) should hopefully not be difficult, we are 6-2 in the league are definitely one of the top 4 teams talent-wise.