Cornell vs. SHU Game 2 10/31

[stereax]

Sacred fart has split with everyone, this is far from an NPI disaster but is certainly a set back. Absolutely need at least 3 points next weekend, ideally 4+.

Feels like the kinda game that in February, we'll be like "if we managed to win this one, we'd be fifth in NPI, but we're twelfth and on the cusp" 😭

[BearLover]

I've said this for years, but it's unfair that Cornell and Princeton are the only teams that open their season against an opponent who has already played a bunch of games. (Brown almost always plays Yale, and Harvard almost always plays Dartmouth, to start the season). Putting ourselves in a Pairwise hole to start the season is so stupid. Cornell and Princeton should talk to the ECAC about playing their conference game against each other to open the season every year.

Also, only playing one exhibition was really dumb.

[Iceberg]

I've said this for years, but it's unfair that Cornell and Princeton are the only teams that open their season against an opponent who has already played a bunch of games. (Brown almost always plays Yale, and Harvard almost always plays Dartmouth, to start the season). Putting ourselves in a Pairwise hole to start the season is so stupid. Cornell and Princeton should talk to the ECAC about playing their conference game against each other to open the season every year.

Also, only playing one exhibition was really dumb.

I don't think this has been a particularly big deal for Cornell given the opening weekend OOC records the past few years, and there's no way the league would mess with the travel partnerships to accomodate Cornell and Princeton playing each other in October.

[VIEWfromK]

I've said this for years, but it's unfair that Cornell and Princeton are the only teams that open their season against an opponent who has already played a bunch of games. (Brown almost always plays Yale, and Harvard almost always plays Dartmouth, to start the season). Putting ourselves in a Pairwise hole to start the season is so stupid. Cornell and Princeton should talk to the ECAC about playing their conference game against each other to open the season every year.

Also, only playing one exhibition was really dumb.

I'd rather be tuned up for the regular season as opposed to being tuned up for those first two out of conference games.  I do agree though that a lot of times two exhibition games are enough to get them ready for the first two games.

[arugula]

No fretting.  The analytics say we are undefeated.  I'm going with that. Not worried that we got shut down by sacred Heart's third goalie.

[VIEWfromK]

Last night was the type of game that I was worried they were going to play Friday night.  Not the type of game that I thought they would play after Friday night.

From the second period ice scrape pretty much through the end of the game they were on their heels. 

Many of the things that they did with relative ease Friday night (protect the puck, get out of their zone, get into the SHU zone, get pucks to the net on the power play) proved to be much more difficult last night.

Their goalie was the difference in the game.  He made some incredible saves.  He had one double banger in the second that was very impressive.

It was kind of nice not having those blooper type goals go in last year.  Rousseau is supposed to be our best option so I hope that he can prove next weekend that he is.  Veilleux had two chances to clear the puck on that go ahead goal.  That felt very uncharacteristic of him to need two tries and not take advantage of either. 

The Catalano goal was quite pretty.  Hiscock did an amazing job of not rushing the pass despite two defenders right on top of him.  What a finish too.  I was happy to hear COCO as the response when they announced the Armstrong assist.  Well done students.

How many of DiGiulian's goals have come from that exact spot?  One play I really liked by him was when he covered for Veilleux and SHU ended up with a two on two.  Their guy went right at the backward skating forward but Gio snuffed out the play at the blue line.  Nice going.

SHU made that game very boring.  There's no way I was expecting a split after Friday.

[stereax]

Will note that we did well in the faceoff dot both nights, led by Walsh (unsurprising) and Brad Gardiner. I feel he's probably not leaving the lineup.

As per CHN advanced stats, we won Night 1 with xG (expected goals) of 4.66 to 2.28, and Night 2 with xG of 3.97 to 2.12. Meaning, in Night 2, their goalie saved (cumulatively, xG is counted in increments) 2 goals that should have gone in, and Rousseau let in 1 goal he should have saved.

RMS Hockey has different numbers - we won Night 2 in xG around 3.7 to 1.9, and Night 1 around 3.2 to 1.8. (He does bar graphs and I need to poke at them more than reading them off Twitter.)

Of course, xG can be a faulty metric - think teams that pepper with low-danger chances - but overall it tends to be one of the better ways to value future results. For instance, the Devils (I hear your tired sighs) in the first two weeks or so of the season STRUGGLED to score, but were outgenerating other teams massively - they've just concluded a 5-1-0 road trip where the loss was all but scheduled (back half of B2B against the Avs in Colorado while the Avs were rested). If Cornell continues to play this way, they should do very well in general.

Will also mention, looking at CHN stats for 25-26, it looked like we took a lot longer to settle in last year than this year. Some of that may be the opponent, but we only crested 4 xGF 4 times last season (Omaha 1, home Dartmouth OTW, away Brown, home Colgate OTL). SHU night 1 would have been our second best for chance generation last year (away Brown being the best) and SHU night 2 would have been the fifth best.

For reference here, Denver this year has not crested a 4 xG game in their 5-2-1 record; their best is 3.48 and they tend to hover in the high 2s. Wisconsin, a perfect 6-0 record, generally has xG of a 3.8-4.3 this year. (They have, however, played Robert Morris, Minn State, and Notre Dame twice each). Offensive powerhouse BU has hit 4 xG once (almost twice) in 8 games. Michigan (7-1-0) has cranked out 3 games of xG in the 5s... against Bowling Green (x1) and Anchorage (x2). The rest of the time, they are high 2s to low 3s.

As for the xGA, 2.28 and 2.12 fit right in with what last year's Cornell teams produced and are solid numbers. As Rousseau gets more game action and familiarizes himself more with the system, he'll post better numbers. I'm not concerned there, either. I'm gonna go run Cournoyer's xGA to actual GA numbers from last year, and maybe Shane's from 2023, to give perspective there. Be back later.

Also, Adam Wodon, if you're still reading - this chart could use a line for GSAx - especially because final box score is already spread out over the left columns and a pain to find when reading on mobile 😅

[VIEWfromK]

Now to figure out what I personally did wrong that caused us to lose... 😂

it's all your fault, sieve

you gotta understand, my therapist gave up on trying to figure out what is wrong with me. it IS my fault until i figure out what i did wrong.

it might've been because i brought my own newspaper and didn't take hyla's.

or i didn't stop by empire after the game. that could definitely be it too.

or maybe it was me dunking on the smoke shop. i might have to go there to set the cosmic order back in place again.

yes i know logically there is no basis in reality for "annoying bitch from section C changes pre/postgame ritual to fix hockey team that barely knows she exists". it makes ME feel better and more in control, however.

Our kiddo mentioned after the game that he wore different shoes than Friday.  Even though he knows better you should know that you can't take full responsibility for this one.  We'll help shoulder the load.

[andyw2100]

Also, only playing one exhibition was really dumb.

We're generally not supposed to share things Casey shares at the Coach's Club lunches (and dinners), but I can't imagine he'd have an issue with me sharing the following:

At the dinner Thursday night Casey talked about the fact that the Ivy League allowed the scheduling of one more game this year. Casey and staff had been hoping to schedule that game for the weekend between the Waterloo exhibition and Sacred Heart, but given the short lead time were unable to.

Personally I think almost getting a real game is a pretty solid reason for not having a second exhibition game. I would guess most or even all here would agree.

[The Rancor]

Also, only playing one exhibition was really dumb.

We're generally not supposed to share things Casey shares at the Coach's Club lunches (and dinners), but I can't imagine he'd have an issue with me sharing the following:

At the dinner Thursday night Casey talked about the fact that the Ivy League allowed the scheduling of one more game this year. Casey and staff had been hoping to schedule that game for the weekend between the Waterloo exhibition and Sacred Heart, but given the short lead time were unable to.

Personally I think almost getting a real game is a pretty solid reason for not having a second exhibition game. I would guess most or even all here would agree.

So, that is in addition to the one more they allowed last season? Now 31 games?

[andyw2100]

Also, only playing one exhibition was really dumb.

We're generally not supposed to share things Casey shares at the Coach's Club lunches (and dinners), but I can't imagine he'd have an issue with me sharing the following:

At the dinner Thursday night Casey talked about the fact that the Ivy League allowed the scheduling of one more game this year. Casey and staff had been hoping to schedule that game for the weekend between the Waterloo exhibition and Sacred Heart, but given the short lead time were unable to.

Personally I think almost getting a real game is a pretty solid reason for not having a second exhibition game. I would guess most or even all here would agree.

So, that is in addition to the one more they allowed last season? Now 31 games?

Oh, I don't know. I thought Casey mentioned the number 30, so maybe the change is not as new as I thought. (I must have missed or forgotten about the change last year.)

He definitely said that they had hoped to schedule a regular game during the week between.

[stereax]

As for the xGA, 2.28 and 2.12 fit right in with what last year's Cornell teams produced and are solid numbers. As Rousseau gets more game action and familiarizes himself more with the system, he'll post better numbers. I'm not concerned there, either. I'm gonna go run Cournoyer's xGA to actual GA numbers from last year, and maybe Shane's from 2023, to give perspective there. Be back later.

Hi kids! Do you like numbers?



I ran the stats:
On average last year, we generated 2.94 xGF and 2.33 xGA.
Night 1 SHU, we generated 4.66 xGF to 2.28 xGA.
Night 2 SHU, we generated 3.97 xGF to 2.12 xGA.

So we did REALLY well offensively last weekend, and better defensively than our average game last year.

Four games last year are marked as "stolen" (the GSAx is larger than the margin of victory). In none of these cases is the steal more than a full GSAx over the margin. One of those steals was Keopple on senior night. Three were Cournoyer's. You can argue that the RPI tie is also a steal by Keopple, and this one by over a full expected goal against, but that was a tie and not a win, so.

Per game with Cournoyer in net, we generated 3.07 xGF and 2.38 xGA. (Keopple you can see as well, but since he only played like, 6 games, it's not enough to really conclude anything.)
Per game with Cournoyer in net, we actually scored 3.21 G and gave up 2.11 G.
That means, per my Excelling, Courns had a per-game GSAx of 0.27 - every game, on average, he would save 1/4 extra goals over expected.

As per the data here, on the season, Courns saved a total of 1.02 goals above expected. Probably the biggest reason for the difference in my data and CHN's is that mine doesn't natively filter empty-net goals, and I'm just a little too lazy right now to go and find all of the ENGF and ENGA and figure out what to do with them. Fun fact, Keopple here has a 3.17 GSAx.

I stuck Cournoyer with the loss against Union because he let in all those goals. If I accurately split the stats (and I can't really, without doing way too much work and trying to figure out who had which GSAx), this would only benefit Keopple more.

Anywho, moving to Rousseau: Night 1 he saves 2.28 xGA on 2 GA, so his GSAx is .28. Night 2 he saves 2.12 xGA on 3 GA, making his GSAx -.88. Neither night had empty net goals. Night 1 is right in line with your average Cournoyer performance, Night 2 is obviously not your best night but still not terrible.

Per game last year, we averaged a 55.42% xGF. With Courns in net, 56.13%.

Night 1 vs SHU: 67.15%
Night 2 vs SHU: 65.19%

We absolutely dominated play against them. If we can hold even a 60% xGF across the season, we're winning the natty unless the hockey gods hate us.
For reference, the first game last year where we crested 65% xGF was in January. We did that six times over the entire season - Omaha 1, Dartmouth home, Colgate home (despite being down Walsh and then Castagna), SLU home, and then Harvard 1 and 2.
While SHU may end up pretty low in the NPI, it's a very encouraging sign that we can (analytically) put belt to ass against them.

So I'm gonna hazard a guess and say:
We'll be okay.

I might run these numbers later with the 24-25 team too - the first one on the CHN site to have xGF and xGA for each game. Would there be interest in that?
Excel file available upon request.
Note: all of this uses CHN stats, and I may be wrong, and they may be wrong as well - different models show different expected goals.

[Trotsky]

It's 30 games.  It was 29 + at most 2 exhibition games and the rule change was going to 30 games + at most 1 exhibition game. 

It was not "really dumb."  It was the rules.  The blowhard knows nothing; ignore it long enough and it will ooze back to whatever Incel site it seeped from.

Perhaps if we hit a few more Russian warehouses it will cease to exist altogether.