Quinnipiac 4 Cornell 1, 1/17/26

[VIEWfromK]

Credit to those who share in the agony of defeat. Particularly against the Deerticks. Rarely does a consolation goal offer this much consolation.

Devlin has a lot of relatives here in the Statler including his lovely grandfather whom I chatted with this morning. A little more consolation that they got to see him get the goal.

On Friday I watched the grandfather tell as many people as he could that he was their grandpa and how proud he was to be that.  He was also wearing an Iowa logo because that's where the older brother went to school so he was representing all of them.  There are some interviews and some articles about the family that my wife came across that are very interesting

[VIEWfromK]

Also didn't love Devlin getting too excited after scoring to make it 4-1 with 2 minutes to go, feel like that would've gotten him reamed out by Schafer.

I think it was a pretty emotional weekend for him.  He had a lot of family in town that I'm not sure I've seen there before.  They were sitting right in front of us and after he went through the line he gave a little shrug up to them.  He doesn't see the score sheet very often but I bet if that was any other weekend he would have reacted accordingly

[VIEWfromK]

It was pretty clear early on that that game was going to be played at a pace that Cornell isn't used to and didn't look very comfortable playing at.

Credit to everyone though because they made some adjustments after the first and pretty much controlled the entire second period. 

Where the second might have been one of their best periods of the season despite having nothing to show for it, the first twelve minutes of that third were probably their worst twelve minutes of the season.

I'm not going to pretend that I know what goes into game planning for a matchup against a team like that but to me Cornell was not interested in trying to play below the goal line at all.  Once in the second period DeSantis went there and looked to try and go to work but most of that game Cornell just looked to get the puck high at all cost and I saw a lot of passes get picked off or go into the neutral zone.  I believe that Quinnipiac's style of play has something to do with it but historically Cornell's success against teams like that had come at making THEM uncomfortable and trying to force them to play our style of game.

It's hard to pick out things that stood out in this one but I felt like Ryan showed a side of his game that I didn't necessarily know he had.  Friday night he went after the Princeton guy after he swiped at someone and Ryan didn't let up until he was pulled off the guy.  Last night he delivered four nice hits.  That play he made where he knocked down the clearing pass right in front of the net is more what I thought he was coming into the weekend.  It's a nice well rounded skill set to continue to refine.  I am very impressed.

Long and Hiscock had some of the finer scoring opportunities.  These two burgeoning power forwards are a nice compliment to our skill guys.


It's a really good lesson for a young team to have learned.  It will be fun to look back on this one later on if moving forward they have figured out how to play a sixty minute game against a team of this caliber.

[Big Dingus]

Haven't watched much this year as college hockey is just sad to watch now.

Why does anyone want to watch ECHL veterans on Quinnipiac in front of a half empty Lynah?

[The Rancor]

VIEWfromK always with good analysis. Outside of the third period collapse, Cornell played a good, but not good enough game... I thought it was going to be a 1-0 finish for a while. They just couldn't get enough quality shots off, or through. Quinny is a very good team, but they aren't unbeatable, and I hope, if there's a rematch we get some satisfaction. Moving on to revenge game against Dartmouth...

[stereax]

Water off a duck's back. Take the lessons and move forward - no need to dwell too much. Learn from the game tape, but don't get in your heads. Good to get this "lesson" out of the way now.

It was a great game overall - I wish it were like, a Michigan/MSU game or someone else where I wouldn't care about the outcome. Third period the wheels fell off, but again, learning moments. Q matches up well against this team - just gotta find a way around that.

Also, Caton Ryan is good at hockey.

[Snowball]

It's hard to pick out things that stood out in this one but I felt like Ryan showed a side of his game that I didn't necessarily know he had.  Friday night he went after the Princeton guy after he swiped at someone and Ryan didn't let up until he was pulled off the guy.  Last night he delivered four nice hits.  That play he made where he knocked down the clearing pass right in front of the net is more what I thought he was coming into the weekend.  It's a nice well rounded skill set to continue to refine.  I am very impressed.

I thought he and Kraft really stood out all weekend.

[Snowball]

Where the second might have been one of their best periods of the season despite having nothing to show for it, the first twelve minutes of that third were probably their worst twelve minutes of the season.

It's a really good lesson for a young team to have learned.  It will be fun to look back on this one later on if moving forward they have figured out how to play a sixty minute game against a team of this caliber.

Agree, agree.

And better to get this lesson now and take it forward.

[stereax]

It's hard to pick out things that stood out in this one but I felt like Ryan showed a side of his game that I didn't necessarily know he had.  Friday night he went after the Princeton guy after he swiped at someone and Ryan didn't let up until he was pulled off the guy.  Last night he delivered four nice hits.  That play he made where he knocked down the clearing pass right in front of the net is more what I thought he was coming into the weekend.  It's a nice well rounded skill set to continue to refine.  I am very impressed.

I thought he and Kraft really stood out all weekend.

Kraft has been playing like someone set fire to his ass recently.

[Trotsky]

I thought Kraft, Catalano and Devlin all had good weekends.

[stereax]

Here's a fun fact for the doomers before I go to sleep.

Cornell is 12-5; they have 12 wins in 17 games. (Interestingly, Fegaras also has 12 penalties in 17 games.) We have not gone to overtime yet this season. Our points percentage is at .706 (well, .70588, but rounding).

If Cornell was an NHL team, we'd be second in the NHL with that percentage, only behind the monster Avalanche.

If Cornell was an NHL team, we would narrowly lose the President's Trophy to Winnipeg last year with that P%, and win it outright against the Rangers the year before that.

I think this team may be good.

[pjd8]

Here's a fun fact for the doomers before I go to sleep.

Cornell is 12-5; they have 12 wins in 17 games. (Interestingly, Fegaras also has 12 penalties in 17 games.) We have not gone to overtime yet this season. Our points percentage is at .706 (well, .70588, but rounding).

If Cornell was an NHL team, we'd be second in the NHL with that percentage, only behind the monster Avalanche.

If Cornell was an NHL team, we would narrowly lose the President's Trophy to Winnipeg last year with that P%, and win it outright against the Rangers the year before that.

I think this team may be good.

Although, with more games, NHL teams have more opportunity to regress to the mean. And there should be more talent parity at the pro level than in college.

That said, Cornell is having an excellent season so far, especially being so freshman heavy. And the cool thing about that is that freshmen are the most likely to improve their play between November and March.

[stereax]

Here's a fun fact for the doomers before I go to sleep.

Cornell is 12-5; they have 12 wins in 17 games. (Interestingly, Fegaras also has 12 penalties in 17 games.) We have not gone to overtime yet this season. Our points percentage is at .706 (well, .70588, but rounding).

If Cornell was an NHL team, we'd be second in the NHL with that percentage, only behind the monster Avalanche.

If Cornell was an NHL team, we would narrowly lose the President's Trophy to Winnipeg last year with that P%, and win it outright against the Rangers the year before that.

I think this team may be good.

Although, with more games, NHL teams have more opportunity to regress to the mean. And there should be more talent parity at the pro level than in college.

That said, Cornell is having an excellent season so far, especially being so freshman heavy. And the cool thing about that is that freshmen are the most likely to improve their play between November and March.

For sure, there are asterisks at the college level that don't exist at the NHL level. Fewer games, more talent gap. All I'm saying, really, is I am so fucking tired of the New Jersey Devils being the way they are (utterly incompetent and downright boring besides) and watching Hockey That Doesn't Make Me Want To Gouge My Eyes Out is nice too sometimes. And for reference, I watched the 23-24 Sharks for fun. I am, for whatever reason, a fan of miserable, miserable hockey.

Anyways, the five losses:

1-2 v UMass
1-2 v Dartmouth
1-2 v BU (RHH)
1-4 v Clarkson (3rd period collapse with 3 GA)
1-4 v Q (3rd period collapse with 3 GA)

So like... score more than one goal, avoid the occasional 3rd period collapse, and we are fine.

We can win 2-1. We can win 6-4. I kinda prefer the high scoring games. More fun. But, like - fundamentally, this team is pretty good at hockey. Which is mildly surprising, because we thought coming into the season it'd be more of a rebuild year with a huge freshman class and losing a lot of important pieces, but the freshmen have had an excellent season so far and the non-freshmen have been playing incredibly as well.

I dunno. I just get sick of reading "reeeee this team is garbage" after every loss. Team's good. We lose sometimes. It do be like that. It's sports. I follow sports teams (the Indianapolis Colts) that are deeply pathetic (the Indianapolis Colts) and downright miserable (this post is about the Indianapolis Colts). I follow teams (the New Jersey Devils) that don't know how to play hockey (the New Jersey Devils) or tend the goal (Jacob Markstrom) and can't even be competent enough not to piss off key players into being almost certainly traded after the season (Dougie Hamilton) while protecting other players for no goddamn reason (Ondrej Palat).

Anyways, like. We have it good. We've been historically great. We are pretty damn good right now. It's fuckin' copacetic out here.

And a sweep of this weekend would make it cloud nine.

[Trotsky]

I just get sick of reading "reeeee this team is garbage" after every loss.

Every sports forum has a few guys who are on perpetual Suicide Watch.  It's not the team.  It's them.  They are using the team to distract themselves from the failure they have made of their lives, and when the team loses it's too on the nose.

If you have a strong stomach, come to a Mets gamethread on Amazin Avenue sometime.

[pjd8]

Totally agree with where Cornell is at. If you look at the losses, only Clarkson is disappointing. Every other one is against a comparable team. All the first three needed was one more bounce that went our way. As for the last one, Q has the offensive talent and speed to wear down teams. They've also been pushed to OT by Brown and Holy Cross. They have their weak moments, and I think as Cornell matures over the season, they'll be better prepared to exploit those moments.

It's pretty cool to be sitting at 11 in NPI and have real optimism for the second half of the season being even better.