Cornell vs Denver, NC$$ First Round, 3/27/26

[stereax]

So the Jane CHN article has me in tears.

And if you thought that was bad:

When he sat down for the postgame press conferences, a forlorn Walsh had not yet taken off his jersey or pads — just his skates. He and his alternate captain, junior forward Jonathan Castagna, were the last two players on the ice.

[BearLover]

Never root for Quinnipiac
Never root for players who bail on our team
Never root for Big 10/NIL
Root against teams who beat us

That leaves UMD and Western

[Dafatone]

Never root for Quinnipiac
Never root for players who bail on our team
Never root for Big 10/NIL
Root against teams who beat us

That leaves UMD and Western

See, I don't mind rooting against a team that beat us if they weren't dirty, but I get the impulse.

[BearLover]

Tonight was pretty demoralizing. While the last few seasons we were a bounce from the Frozen Four, tonight it felt very far away. Those last seasons we peaked around this time; this year, we went 2-3 in the postseason and never found our game.

I'm happy we made the tournament and that's always a great accomplishment but there was never a point in the last couple months when it felt like we could really make noise. The freshmen started strong but many of them faded down the stretch. More and more it became a team dominated by the junior class, especially Castagna and Walsh. Tonight once again Castagna was the best Cornell player on the ice. If there's any bright side to tonight it's that maybe Castagna and Walsh won't want to leave on this note.

Still, for my sanity I'd prefer losing 5-0 to Denver to losing 3-2 in OT to BU. The outcome was never much in doubt so the nerves faded fast. Once Denver took a 2-0 lead it was all but over.

Going forward it will be critical for at least one of Walsh and Castagna to stay. We need them down the middle.

Casey overall did a good job but it's very disappointing that the team never found its game and maybe even regressed towards the end of the year. It seemed we lacked poise. It's been awhile since we looked this bad in the NCAA tournament.

[Trotsky]

You want rand to win?

I want the ECAC to win. 

Once Q bolts to their natural habitat, HE, they drop into the abyss. 

[Trotsky]

From McNally:

If nothing else, playing a team like Denver solidifies in Cornell's mind what it seeks to become.

Mike's template was the Lake Superior State teams of the 90's.  We won.  And we watched 30 years of low event hockey.

If Casey's template is the Denver teams of the 20's, we are going to have fun the next decade.

[Bluelightning]

    I think we did peak too early. Too many nights we didn't play well from February 7 until last night. Loss to Clarkson, tie RPI, ugly loss to Union, bad loss at Princeton, got suckered into a bar fight vs Clarkson, game 1 vs Harvard wasn't a good look, Princeton, culminating in Denver. I was starting to think that maybe we don't like playing on Fridays.
     Every year when the last game is over, I think "how are we ever going to win again without x senior?". Obviously that is changing with the addition of transfer portal and players going pro earlier so I have to worry about underclassmen. But every year we seem to figure it out. We need suffocating defensemen that play consistent and limit the mistakes.

[Trotsky]

I think we did peak too early. Too many nights we didn't play well from February 7 until last night. Loss to Clarkson, tie RPI, ugly loss to Union, bad loss at Princeton, got suckered into a bar fight vs Clarkson, game 1 vs Harvard wasn't a good look, Princeton, culminating in Denver. I was starting to think that maybe we don't like playing on Fridays.
    Every year when the last game is over, I think "how are we ever going to win again without x senior?". Obviously that is changing with the addition of transfer portal and players going pro earlier so I have to worry about underclassmen. But every year we seem to figure it out. We need suffocating defensemen that play consistent and limit the mistakes.

Great first post and WELCOME!

Ironically, this is the one year I am not thinking "how are we ever going to win again without x senior?"  The critical loss, if it happens, will be Castagna.  And even should we lose both him and Walsh, we are stacked with underclassmen forwards.

[Chris '03]

Post game observations:

The sound system was F#^$(@ING OBNOXIOUS. EVERY time there was a stop in play, they immediately started playing music etc. Maybe it was just as well that our band didn't make it - they would have been drowned out.  This is an AHL arena - are NHL games that bad?

Welcome to the resistance.

[Pghas]

From McNally:

If nothing else, playing a team like Denver solidifies in Cornell's mind what it seeks to become.

Mike's template was the Lake Superior State teams of the 90's.  We won.  And we watched 30 years of low event hockey.

If Casey's template is the Denver teams of the 20's, we are going to have fun the next decade.

I always thought it was the Jersey Devils of the 90s but probably same thing.

[Pghas]

"They're an extremely talented team. Their goalie played well. They got Pohlkamp back there. They're a really deep team, right? They're going four lines all night."

There was a time when we were the really deep team, but I feel like it's been while since we had three dangerous, wear-em-down lines and a checking line, if that's a thing anymore. I'd like to see us get back there.

As far as I'm concerned, the weakest part of our play this year was puck possession by forwards in the offensive zone. Sure, when we win a lot of face-offs our possession numbers are good. But we lose the puck a lot on rushes, and we haven't seemed to have a lot of cycling time; hence, we don't have the dwell time necessary to force in "greasy" goals when we need them. It's the difference between 22-11-1 and 31-5-1.

I always feel like Cornell's entire plan is to get greasy goals.  Those are bread and butter and yes you need enough of them and honestly that can win you the ECAC especially when Quinnipiac can be outworked. But beyond that it's speed and elite skill. The 2020 team oozes talent and had guys who were headed to the NHL. In games like last night's you need a guy or 3 who can step up and just flat-out make an elite skill play and get us back in it.  It may seem counterintuitive but - for example on Denver's 3rd goal - bad turnover but the kid just sniped it.  Our guys throw that into the goalie every time. One example of a kid with wheels and skill is DiGiulian.  He's not a big hitter at all and isn't going to win the Selke.  But in January they were down to Omaha at home, and he buries an absolute snipe to tie it, then forces a turnover and makes a quick back and assist to set up the winner.  After the game I remember being surprised that there was no acknowledgment of that - probably because he doesn't do a ton otherwise - but Gio won us that game. You do actually need guys who can make plays.  He'll, Wyttenbach is pretty one dimensional but that dimension made a huge difference for q.

[Pghas]

I think we did peak too early. Too many nights we didn't play well from February 7 until last night. Loss to Clarkson, tie RPI, ugly loss to Union, bad loss at Princeton, got suckered into a bar fight vs Clarkson, game 1 vs Harvard wasn't a good look, Princeton, culminating in Denver. I was starting to think that maybe we don't like playing on Fridays.
     Every year when the last game is over, I think "how are we ever going to win again without x senior?". Obviously that is changing with the addition of transfer portal and players going pro earlier so I have to worry about underclassmen. But every year we seem to figure it out. We need suffocating defensemen that play consistent and limit the mistakes.

Agree about them peaking early - Harvard/Dartmouth weekend was a huge peak for sure, never felt they were as good after that.
Tough to say if from their perspectives Castagna and Walsh should stay.  As good as they were this year I'd love to see them be able to really step up in a game like last nights .  But maybe developmentally the ECAC doesn't provide enough of a challenge to get to the next level.  Most guys coming out of Cornell have trouble sticking at the AHL level never mind NHL.

[Trotsky]

Post game observations:

The sound system was F#^$(@ING OBNOXIOUS. EVERY time there was a stop in play, they immediately started playing music etc. Maybe it was just as well that our band didn't make it - they would have been drowned out.  This is an AHL arena - are NHL games that bad?

Welcome to the resistance.

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.

"Huh" said George.

"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.

"Yup," said George.

[BearLover]

I think we did peak too early. Too many nights we didn't play well from February 7 until last night. Loss to Clarkson, tie RPI, ugly loss to Union, bad loss at Princeton, got suckered into a bar fight vs Clarkson, game 1 vs Harvard wasn't a good look, Princeton, culminating in Denver. I was starting to think that maybe we don't like playing on Fridays.
     Every year when the last game is over, I think "how are we ever going to win again without x senior?". Obviously that is changing with the addition of transfer portal and players going pro earlier so I have to worry about underclassmen. But every year we seem to figure it out. We need suffocating defensemen that play consistent and limit the mistakes.

Agree about them peaking early - Harvard/Dartmouth weekend was a huge peak for sure, never felt they were as good after that.
Tough to say if from their perspectives Castagna and Walsh should stay.  As good as they were this year I'd love to see them be able to really step up in a game like last nights .  But maybe developmentally the ECAC doesn't provide enough of a challenge to get to the next level.  Most guys coming out of Cornell have trouble sticking at the AHL level never mind NHL.

Harvard/Dartmouth was their best weekend for sure, but it was also their only great weekend the entire season. This never felt like a top 10 team. That's how the computer rankings shook out, though. KRACH has us down at 12 but that's still really good. I don't believe our underlying metrics were that great even if our results (wins and losses, accounting for SOS) were very good.

The painful part is that even though the last few years we weren't as consistently good throughout the season, in those years we did clearly peak towards the end of the season, going into the ECACs and the NCAA tournament playing our best, whereas this season we kind of just lingered around the top 12 or so and didn't look particularly good towards the end of the year. Hockey is a zero-sum game and the other teams improved down the stretch more than we did.

I wonder if Casey is able to motivate and push players like Schafer could. Casey seems like a strong Xs and Os coach and he recruited most of our best freshmen this season so he deserves a lot of the credit for a good year. But he also deserves some of the blame for the fact we did not improve down the stretch. At the end of the day, we went 2-3 in the most important games of the season and didn't play very well in them.

[Snowball]

[ But he also deserves some of the blame for the fact we did not improve down the stretch. At the end of the day, we went 2-3 in the most important games of the season and didn't play very well in them.

And Casey is accountable to that, right?  He almost there literally said that:

"I thought we might have peaked maybe a month too early," Jones said. "I'm not sure if we hit a wall a little bit with our youth. I'm not sure. ... But we were trying to find our A-game down the stretch. We were really trying."

To me, that quote is accountability.