Castagna and Walsh - The Worry Zone

[BearLover]

There are 2 sides to this coin.  Yers, it would be nice to keep great players for 4 years.  On the other hand, for Cornell to take the next steps towards a frozen four berth, they probably need to recruit some players who are first round or high first-round draft picks.  They need that level of speed and skill, and those guys will leave after a year or two.  But for those elite players, thats the pathway now.  Harvard had Laferriere and Coronado a few years back.  Everyone knew those guys weren't playing 4 years.  Now the money issue has reared its head so it remains to be seen how Cornell will be able to pull it off. Say you are Cornell and you are recruiting Gavin McKenna.  What do you offer him?  we will compete for ECAC and national championships, you will play in front of  the Lynah Faithful, but we cannot offer you 700K and probably, since you'll only be here a year, cannot offer you a Cornell degree, though you can always come back here and finish it in a decade or so.  Something will have to give - either schools won't want to waste energy and money recruiting guys who will only be in college for a year and dont have any sense at all of being part of the program long-term, or the schools with more cash to throw around - and the willingness to do it - will win out.  Maybe it becomes a thing where you catch lightning in a bottle and a few guys you dont expect to light it up do.  Or if it comes down to Gavin McKenna for a year, you pony up the $ for that kid and go for it that year.

It's really not college sports in many ways anymore.  Like sports at all levels it is so much about the $. 

For Cornell to make a frozen four, they'll either need to recruit better talent OR get their existing talent to stay four years. We get good talent currently. Compared to the best teams in the country, our talent this season was probably on par with the talent of our 2003 frozen four team. A key difference was that our best players on that team stayed all four years. If Castagna, Walsh, Stanley, et al came back next season, we would have had one of our best chances at a frozen four in decades.

One competitive advantage Cornell has over the other top programs is that our degree is worth much more. We should retain players at a much higher rate than other schools. This is our best chance at success.

We are not competitive for the Gavin McKennas and do not even attempt to recruit them.

I'm not naive enough to expect every Castagna to stay four years, but we should be keeping the Stanleys at least. And if a Moulson/Greening/Ryan-level star  comes along who has clear NHL potential but wants to stay through graduation, then we've got a real shot. That sort of thing is probably our best bet to getting back to the frozen four. We can't beat the top programs in talent, but we can at least try to beat them in experience and development.

If players find graduating important, they always have the option of finishing it by taking courses remotely throughout their careers or returning to campus upon retirement.

Even the Harvard degree won't keep players from leaving earlier to maximize their probability of success at pro hockey. I think you are overestimating the value of cornell degree

It's less the Cornell degree in itself and more the Cornell degree + being a former Cornell varsity hockey player, which these days basically equates to a guaranteed finance job. Which, BTW, Casey should be (and is) playing up to recruits. Hopefully there can be some kind of formal network soon where he can essentially promise recruits internships. 

You're right though that these days staying four years to graduate now versus later is less of a concern for hockey players who can go pro.

[adamw]

I looked at every draft pick of the Schafer era and noted their draft year, draft round, and whether they left early. I also indicated whether they had a strong junior season (i.e. there would have been strong desire for their drafting team to sign them after their junior year).

PLAYER, DRAFT YEAR, DRAFT ROUND, LEFT EARLY? STRONG JUNIOR YEAR?

• Jean-Marc Pelletier, 1997, 2nd round, left after 2 seasons, N/A [didn't get much playing time]
• Matt Underhill, 1999, 6th round, did not leave early, Yes (.928 sv%)
• Stephen Baby, 1999, 7th round, did not leave early, Yes (point per game)
• Douglas Murray, 1999, 8th round, did not leave early, Yes (11 goals and point per game as a defenseman)
• Brian Mcmeekin, 1999, 9th round, did not leave early, No
• Matt Mcrae, 2000, 5th round, did not leave early, No
• Mark Mcrae, 2000, 9th round, did not leave early, Yes (point per game as a defenseman)
• Mike Knoepfli, 2001, 9th round, did not leave early, Yes (24 points in 32 games as strong defensive forward)
• David LeNeveu, 2002, 2nd round, left after 2 seasons, N/A [.950 sv% year before he left]
• Dan Glover, 2002, 8th round, did not leave early, No
• Ryan O'Byrne, 2003, 3rd round, left after 3 seasons, Yes (7-6-13 as a defenseman, good at defending)
• Shane Hynes, 2003, 3rd round, left after 3 seasons, Yes (point per game)
• Byron Bitz, 2003, 4th round, did not leave early, Yes (almost a point per game and great defensive forward)
• Mark McCutcheon, 2003, 5th round, did not leave early, No
• Matt Moulson, 2003, 9th round, did not leave early, YES (dominant numbers, 22 goals)
• Ray Sawada, 2004, 2nd round, did not leave early, No (21 points in 32 games)
• John Gleed, 2004, 7th round, did not leave early, No
• Mitch Carefoot, 2005, 8th round, did not leave early, No
• Sasha Pokuluk, 2005, 1st round, left after 2 seasons, N/A [half a point per game as a big D]
• Colin Greening, 7th round, did not leave early, Yes (point per game)
• Tony Romano, 2006, 6th round, went to CHL after one season, N/A [had a good freshman year numbers-wise]
• Justin Krueger, 2006, 7th round, did not leave early, No
• Riley Nash, 2007, 1st round, left after three years, N/A [great college player][a 1st rounder staying 3 years I consider equivalent to a later round pick staying 4 years]
• Braden Birch, 2008, round 6, did not leave early, No
• Sean Collins, 2008, round 7, did not leave early, No
• Nick D'Agostino, 2008, round 7, did not leave early, Yes (8 goals, 20 points as a defenseman)
• Kirill Gotovets, 2009, round 7, did not leave early, No
• Brian Ferlin, 2011, round 4, left after 3 seasons, Yes (point per game)
• Joel Lowry, 2011, round 5, did not leave early, Yes (24 points in 32 games; also had a very good sophomore year)
• Reece Willcox, 2012, round 5, did not leave early, No
• John McCarron, 2012, round 6, did not leave early, Yes (24 points in 32 games)
• Joakim Ryan, 2012, round 7, did not leave early, Yes (8 goals, 24 points as a defenseman)
• Matt Buckles, 2013, round 4, did not leave early, No
• Beau Starrett, 2014, round 3, did not leave early, No
• Anthony Angello, 2014, round 5, left after 3 seasons, Yes (13-13-26 in 33 games)
• Jared Fiegl, 2014, round 7, did not leave early, No
• Dwyer Tschantz, 2014, round 7, did not leave early, No
• Misha Song, 2015, round 6, did not leave early, No
• Matt Cairns, 2016, round 4, did not leave early, No
• Morgan Barron, 2017, round 6, UNKNOWN, Yes (point per game) [Barron was forced to sign due to COVID.]
• Alex Green, 2018, round 4, did not leave early, Yes (7-9-16 in 29 games as a defenseman, defensive defenseman of the year) [Note: Green did sign during the canceled 2021 season, but confirmed on the Big Red Hockeycast that he would have returned for his senior year if not for COVID wiping out the season]
• Matthew Stienburg, 2019, round 3, did not leave early, Yes (point per game)
• Jack Malone, 2019, round 6, did not leave early, No
• Justin Ertel, 2021, round 3, left for CHL after one season, N/A
• Hank Kempf, 2021, round 7, did not leave early, No

I marked in bold the early departures.
I marked in red the players who had strong junior seasons.
I crossed out players who left early for another league besides the pros, or who we cannot say would have gone pro due to COVID knocking out the season.

Analysis:
Cornell had 46 draft picks under Schafer.
I have chosen to exclude Riley Nash from this analysis because I don't think it would be fair to categorize him as either an early departure or a four-year player. He obviously wasn't a four-year player, but keeping a first round pick three years is way better than a program would typically hope for.
Out of 42 draft picks excluding R. Nash and those crossed out, 7 left early. (16.67%)
Out of 18 players who had strong junior seasons, 4 left before their senior year. (22%) Adding LeNeveu to that total (given he had an incredible sophomore season), 5/19 left. (26%)

Conclusions:
Under Schafer, Cornell did an incredible job retaining drafted players through their senior seasons. 16.67% early departures among drafted players is very low. Even more impressive, Cornell retained a huge majority of players who had strong sophomore/junior seasons. In many of these cases, the drafted players ended up signing with their drafting teams anyway. See, e.g., Murray, Moulson, Ryan, Greening, Stienburg, Bitz. And in each of these cases, the player got NHL time. This indicates that in many cases, a player staying four years was not due to their team not wanting them but rather a result of that player desiring to return to Cornell.

It is no surprise that the last three Ivies to make the Frozen Four - Cornell in '03, Yale in '13, and Harvard in '17 - were loaded with seniors who could have gone pro after their junior seasons but chose to return to college.

Unfortunately, this postseason we've already seen two juniors jump to the pros. This includes Hoyt Stanley, who seems like a longshot to have any kind of NHL career. This is an unfortunate development and very atypical in Cornell Hockey history. Going forward, if Cornell wants to compete with more talented programs, it will be critical that our best players stick it out for four years, as they mostly did for the past 30 seasons.

unless you acknowledge that the world of the last 5 years is totally different than the one before (and getting moreso) - and make the analysis include the round the person was drafted in - this is completely useless. Is this going to be another case where you just insist that your humble, sober analysis is dead on, and just ignore the many other factors?  Penn State just lost 4 players today. You draft good players in this day and age, and it's a miracle if they make it past 3 years.

[adamw]

Schafer did a fantastic job retaining drafted players.  Hopefully this is an anomaly and Jones can retain more players going forward.

However, I do wonder if it is possible to match Schafer's success given the rapidly changing landscape of college sports. 

College football is full of players staying in college longer, but transferring to chase NIL.  I don't know how much that's happening in the college hockey landscape (aside from guys like McKenna) or Cornell's NIL situation, but we may have to adjust expectations going forward regardless of who our coach is.

On that subject, does anybody know what Cornell's NIL situation is (if it even exists), how it compares to other ECAC and national schools, etc.?  Its something I cant find any info on.

Read College Hockey News.

There are 2 sides to this coin.  Yers, it would be nice to keep great players for 4 years.  On the other hand, for Cornell to take the next steps towards a frozen four berth, they probably need to recruit some players who are first round or high first-round draft picks.  They need that level of speed and skill, and those guys will leave after a year or two.  But for those elite players, thats the pathway now.  Harvard had Laferriere and Coronado a few years back.  Everyone knew those guys weren't playing 4 years.  Now the money issue has reared its head so it remains to be seen how Cornell will be able to pull it off. Say you are Cornell and you are recruiting Gavin McKenna.  What do you offer him?  we will compete for ECAC and national championships, you will play in front of  the Lynah Faithful, but we cannot offer you 700K and probably, since you'll only be here a year, cannot offer you a Cornell degree, though you can always come back here and finish it in a decade or so.  Something will have to give - either schools won't want to waste energy and money recruiting guys who will only be in college for a year and dont have any sense at all of being part of the program long-term, or the schools with more cash to throw around - and the willingness to do it - will win out.  Maybe it becomes a thing where you catch lightning in a bottle and a few guys you dont expect to light it up do.  Or if it comes down to Gavin McKenna for a year, you pony up the $ for that kid and go for it that year.

It's really not college sports in many ways anymore.  Like sports at all levels it is so much about the $. 

For Cornell to make a frozen four, they'll either need to recruit better talent OR get their existing talent to stay four years. We get good talent currently. Compared to the best teams in the country, our talent this season was probably on par with the talent of our 2003 frozen four team. A key difference was that our best players on that team stayed all four years. If Castagna, Walsh, Stanley, et al came back next season, we would have had one of our best chances at a frozen four in decades.

One competitive advantage Cornell has over the other top programs is that our degree is worth much more. We should retain players at a much higher rate than other schools. This is our best chance at success.

We are not competitive for the Gavin McKennas and do not even attempt to recruit them.

I'm not naive enough to expect every Castagna to stay four years, but we should be keeping the Stanleys at least. And if a Moulson/Greening/Ryan-level star  comes along who has clear NHL potential but wants to stay through graduation, then we've got a real shot. That sort of thing is probably our best bet to getting back to the frozen four. We can't beat the top programs in talent, but we can at least try to beat them in experience and development.

Among the many issues with this analysis - you are not considering the fact that, in 2026 compared to 2003, the level of talent in college hockey as a whole is vastly superior. If Cornell 2026 talent is equal to Cornell 2003 talent - it's not enough.

It's apples and oranges. a) The players who stuck around that team four years, were drafted in low rounds. b) players didn't leave as fast in general at that time. When Boston College had its title runs in the mid-2000s, those players all stayed 3+ years. Today? BC can't get its blue chippers to stay more than 2, and many are done in 1. c) Leneveu left after that season. He was a 2nd round pick.

You are setting yourself up for a world of angst and rage if you don't accept the fact that these days are different, and players are going to come and go more quickly. Even at Cornell.

[BearLover]

I looked at every draft pick of the Schafer era and noted their draft year, draft round, and whether they left early. I also indicated whether they had a strong junior season (i.e. there would have been strong desire for their drafting team to sign them after their junior year).

PLAYER, DRAFT YEAR, DRAFT ROUND, LEFT EARLY? STRONG JUNIOR YEAR?

• Jean-Marc Pelletier, 1997, 2nd round, left after 2 seasons, N/A [didn't get much playing time]
• Matt Underhill, 1999, 6th round, did not leave early, Yes (.928 sv%)
• Stephen Baby, 1999, 7th round, did not leave early, Yes (point per game)
• Douglas Murray, 1999, 8th round, did not leave early, Yes (11 goals and point per game as a defenseman)
• Brian Mcmeekin, 1999, 9th round, did not leave early, No
• Matt Mcrae, 2000, 5th round, did not leave early, No
• Mark Mcrae, 2000, 9th round, did not leave early, Yes (point per game as a defenseman)
• Mike Knoepfli, 2001, 9th round, did not leave early, Yes (24 points in 32 games as strong defensive forward)
• David LeNeveu, 2002, 2nd round, left after 2 seasons, N/A [.950 sv% year before he left]
• Dan Glover, 2002, 8th round, did not leave early, No
• Ryan O'Byrne, 2003, 3rd round, left after 3 seasons, Yes (7-6-13 as a defenseman, good at defending)
• Shane Hynes, 2003, 3rd round, left after 3 seasons, Yes (point per game)
• Byron Bitz, 2003, 4th round, did not leave early, Yes (almost a point per game and great defensive forward)
• Mark McCutcheon, 2003, 5th round, did not leave early, No
• Matt Moulson, 2003, 9th round, did not leave early, YES (dominant numbers, 22 goals)
• Ray Sawada, 2004, 2nd round, did not leave early, No (21 points in 32 games)
• John Gleed, 2004, 7th round, did not leave early, No
• Mitch Carefoot, 2005, 8th round, did not leave early, No
• Sasha Pokuluk, 2005, 1st round, left after 2 seasons, N/A [half a point per game as a big D]
• Colin Greening, 7th round, did not leave early, Yes (point per game)
• Tony Romano, 2006, 6th round, went to CHL after one season, N/A [had a good freshman year numbers-wise]
• Justin Krueger, 2006, 7th round, did not leave early, No
• Riley Nash, 2007, 1st round, left after three years, N/A [great college player][a 1st rounder staying 3 years I consider equivalent to a later round pick staying 4 years]
• Braden Birch, 2008, round 6, did not leave early, No
• Sean Collins, 2008, round 7, did not leave early, No
• Nick D'Agostino, 2008, round 7, did not leave early, Yes (8 goals, 20 points as a defenseman)
• Kirill Gotovets, 2009, round 7, did not leave early, No
• Brian Ferlin, 2011, round 4, left after 3 seasons, Yes (point per game)
• Joel Lowry, 2011, round 5, did not leave early, Yes (24 points in 32 games; also had a very good sophomore year)
• Reece Willcox, 2012, round 5, did not leave early, No
• John McCarron, 2012, round 6, did not leave early, Yes (24 points in 32 games)
• Joakim Ryan, 2012, round 7, did not leave early, Yes (8 goals, 24 points as a defenseman)
• Matt Buckles, 2013, round 4, did not leave early, No
• Beau Starrett, 2014, round 3, did not leave early, No
• Anthony Angello, 2014, round 5, left after 3 seasons, Yes (13-13-26 in 33 games)
• Jared Fiegl, 2014, round 7, did not leave early, No
• Dwyer Tschantz, 2014, round 7, did not leave early, No
• Misha Song, 2015, round 6, did not leave early, No
• Matt Cairns, 2016, round 4, did not leave early, No
• Morgan Barron, 2017, round 6, UNKNOWN, Yes (point per game) [Barron was forced to sign due to COVID.]
• Alex Green, 2018, round 4, did not leave early, Yes (7-9-16 in 29 games as a defenseman, defensive defenseman of the year) [Note: Green did sign during the canceled 2021 season, but confirmed on the Big Red Hockeycast that he would have returned for his senior year if not for COVID wiping out the season]
• Matthew Stienburg, 2019, round 3, did not leave early, Yes (point per game)
• Jack Malone, 2019, round 6, did not leave early, No
• Justin Ertel, 2021, round 3, left for CHL after one season, N/A
• Hank Kempf, 2021, round 7, did not leave early, No

I marked in bold the early departures.
I marked in red the players who had strong junior seasons.
I crossed out players who left early for another league besides the pros, or who we cannot say would have gone pro due to COVID knocking out the season.

Analysis:
Cornell had 46 draft picks under Schafer.
I have chosen to exclude Riley Nash from this analysis because I don't think it would be fair to categorize him as either an early departure or a four-year player. He obviously wasn't a four-year player, but keeping a first round pick three years is way better than a program would typically hope for.
Out of 42 draft picks excluding R. Nash and those crossed out, 7 left early. (16.67%)
Out of 18 players who had strong junior seasons, 4 left before their senior year. (22%) Adding LeNeveu to that total (given he had an incredible sophomore season), 5/19 left. (26%)

Conclusions:
Under Schafer, Cornell did an incredible job retaining drafted players through their senior seasons. 16.67% early departures among drafted players is very low. Even more impressive, Cornell retained a huge majority of players who had strong sophomore/junior seasons. In many of these cases, the drafted players ended up signing with their drafting teams anyway. See, e.g., Murray, Moulson, Ryan, Greening, Stienburg, Bitz. And in each of these cases, the player got NHL time. This indicates that in many cases, a player staying four years was not due to their team not wanting them but rather a result of that player desiring to return to Cornell.

It is no surprise that the last three Ivies to make the Frozen Four - Cornell in '03, Yale in '13, and Harvard in '17 - were loaded with seniors who could have gone pro after their junior seasons but chose to return to college.

Unfortunately, this postseason we've already seen two juniors jump to the pros. This includes Hoyt Stanley, who seems like a longshot to have any kind of NHL career. This is an unfortunate development and very atypical in Cornell Hockey history. Going forward, if Cornell wants to compete with more talented programs, it will be critical that our best players stick it out for four years, as they mostly did for the past 30 seasons.

unless you acknowledge that the world of the last 5 years is totally different than the one before (and getting moreso) - and make the analysis include the round the person was drafted in - this is completely useless. Is this going to be another case where you just insist that your humble, sober analysis is dead on, and just ignore the many other factors?  Penn State just lost 4 players today. You draft good players in this day and age, and it's a miracle if they make it past 3 years.

What a pleasant person you are.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

unless you acknowledge that the world of the last 5 years is totally different than the one before (and getting moreso) - and make the analysis include the round the person was drafted in - this is completely useless. Is this going to be another case where you just insist that your humble, sober analysis is dead on, and just ignore the many other factors?  Penn State just lost 4 players today. You draft good players in this day and age, and it's a miracle if they make it past 3 years.

What a pleasant person you are.

Really?  Ad hominem attacks? 

Adam is one of the most knowledgable people in the whole country when it comes to college hockey.  And all you seem to want to do is argue with him. 

Grow the fuck up.