HARVARD SUCKS

[Beeeej]

But hey, at least the video resolution is ridiculously crappy.

[BearLover]

It's night and day watching these teams on offense.

[BMac]

1- That one goal was nice. Great camera angle for it.

2- Did anyone just see that Cornell promo video? ("I would found an institution...") That was... embarassing. I expect better production value from middle schools.

[Scersk '97]

Interesting lineup changes: Buckles and Starrett out, Rauter and Anderson in (Anderson is playing forward)

I've been wondering when Anderson would be back——he's turned into one of our better forwards, as far as I'm concerned.

PS What's been up with Hilbrich? He hasn't looked 100% all year.

PPS Gillam's rebound control was crappy last night, and it's crappy tonight.

[RichH]

1- That one goal was nice. Great camera angle for it.

My home internet is down this week, so I'm struggling through a spotty public wifi hotspot. I have to reconnect & refresh every few mins and the last time I did, this screenshot popped up, which made me happy:

[billhoward]

With Harvard up 5-2 and Cornell getting a power play with 10 minutes to play, it was time to go with six attackers.

[Johnny 5]

When we fore-checked and back-checked aggressively we looked competitive. When we let let them work the puck they consistently out-maneuvered us. They were able to carry the puck into the offensive zone, we played dump and chase. Yes, their power play is potent. But, if you let a Harvard player camp out in front of your goalie, so that he needs to keep sliding side to side to see what's going on in front of him, you are asking to get scored on.
This is so depressing. If this team had begun the season like they were predicted to it would be easier to take this devolution. To see them collapse like they have is really disheartening.
Let's hope the north country trip provides a reversal of fortune.
However, given their performance against the bottom-feeders to date, I'm not optimistic.

C'mon gang....Let's Go Red!!!

::bang::

[upprdeck]

for the weekend we gave up 3 PP, 2 empty net, 2 goals on rebounds, 2 goals on multi deflections

we scored zero on the PP and zero on about 6 min of extra attacker even though we controlled the puck almost the entire time both nights

we got zero ugly goals, on tons of chances

harvard is just quicker and more talented.. cant say dartmouth is but you need to play 60 min of energy hockey and you need to get the puck in the net when the plays are there..  too many whiffs and missing the net.

[Jim Hyla]

Quote from Coach Bennett following Union's loss to RPI in the Mayor's Cup yesterday:

"If we're relying on freshmen, we're going to have serious problems these last 10 games."

It's the problem we have as well, just in a little different way. We have been relying on the freshmen to do a lot this year. As with most teams, in most sports, that doesn't usually lead to championships. They are still some of our best players, but unfortunately they still are freshmen.  

The forwards are obvious, but as the season goes on, McCrea has become an excellent defenseman. However there are many times during a game where he has trouble with the breakout. Time, and seeing the situations over and over again, will allow a good player to develop. Unfortunately 19 games are not enough time. The same for the other freshmen. I'm very optimistic for the future and will be extremely happy if we get a first round bye this year.

[css228]

Quote from Coach Bennett following Union's loss to RPI in the Mayor's Cup yesterday:

"If we're relying on freshmen, we're going to have serious problems these last 10 games."

It's the problem we have as well, just in a little different way. We have been relying on the freshmen to do a lot this year. As with most teams, in most sports, that doesn't usually lead to championships. They are still some of our best players, but unfortunately they still are freshmen.  

The forwards are obvious, but as the season goes on, McCrea has become an excellent defenseman. However there are many times during a game where he has trouble with the breakout. Time, and seeing the situations over and over again, will allow a good player to develop. Unfortunately 19 games are not enough time. The same for the other freshmen. I'm very optimistic for the future and will be extremely happy if we get a first round bye this year.

Paul Kariya led Maine to a national championship as a freshmen with one of the greatest seasons in college hockey history. Jack Eichel last year lead BU to the title game. The issue isn't relying on freshmen. The issue is the talent on this team is not good, and the system is conservative as hell, exposing the weakness of the talent. You have to take calculated risks if you want to win a hockey game without getting incredibly lucky. When is the last time you saw a great aggressive pinch from one of the d-men to keep a cycle alive. Or the last time an aggressive stick in the neutral zone broke up the opponents breakout. As I've pointed out before, our possession metrics against good teams were bad. Now, our overall possession metrics are bad with our even strength CF% at 49%, which seems to corroborate my theory that our good early metrics were a product of small sample size and bad competition. Admittedly our all of our Fenwick statistics and our CF% Close are better but at 19 games in Corsi at even strength is just going to be the best metric because it has the largest sample of data (there have been more than 500 fewer events at CF% close than just CF% at even strength, Fenwick events are even lower due to the removal of blocked shots, which is why it usually takes 30-35 games of data for FF% to stabilize). A team at 49% is just a mediocre team. As shooting percentages begin to fall back to normal levels (You have to ask yourself are Angello and Kubiak really 20%+ good? The only correct answer to this is no, not even Ovi is that good and he's arguably the greatest goalscorer ever), then the team needs to generate more shots. Shot attempts are just more sustainable over time than shooting percentage. What we're seeing over the last month is a team that's overplaying its talent crash back to a performance more in line with what the underlying metrics would dictate. Not good, not bad. Just mediocre. Mediocre talent can be covered up for with intelligent deployment of assets. A great example of this is Dave Hakstol. With both the Flyers and NoDak, Hak has for the most part utilized his talent as efficiently as possible. He has preached an aggressive pinching system with his d-men and strove to dominate the neutral zone. This is why, despite the fact that the Flyers defense could be best described as a traffic cone in a garbage fire in the defensive zone, they've improved from a negative possession team under Berube, to a positive possession team under Hakstol. And yes they could be better if he didnt do stupid things like start Umberger over Gagner and scratch Medvedev instead of Schultz, but you have to ask yourself, when is the last time Schafer's style has actually positively contributed to his team's peformance. It seem's to me as if all the success has been either small sample size luck or special teams fueled. There is not one time I would call Schafer's teams an even strength monster like the LA Kings. This is why we aren't good.

[KeithK]

Paul Kariya led Maine to a national championship as a freshmen with one of the greatest seasons in college hockey history. Jack Eichel last year lead BU to the title game. The issue isn't relying on freshmen.

Not to discount the rest of your argument, but when you start with "the issue is not relying on freshmen" and you cite Kariya nad Eichel you're setting yourself up to be ignored.

[Jim Hyla]

Quote from Coach Bennett following Union's loss to RPI in the Mayor's Cup yesterday:

"If we're relying on freshmen, we're going to have serious problems these last 10 games."

It's the problem we have as well, just in a little different way. We have been relying on the freshmen to do a lot this year. As with most teams, in most sports, that doesn't usually lead to championships. They are still some of our best players, but unfortunately they still are freshmen.  

The forwards are obvious, but as the season goes on, McCrea has become an excellent defenseman. However there are many times during a game where he has trouble with the breakout. Time, and seeing the situations over and over again, will allow a good player to develop. Unfortunately 19 games are not enough time. The same for the other freshmen. I'm very optimistic for the future and will be extremely happy if we get a first round bye this year.

Paul Kariya led Maine to a national championship as a freshmen with one of the greatest seasons in college hockey history. Jack Eichel last year lead BU to the title game. The issue isn't relying on freshmen. The issue is the talent on this team is not good, and the system is conservative as hell, exposing the weakness of the talent. You have to take calculated risks if you want to win a hockey game without getting incredibly lucky. When is the last time you saw a great aggressive pinch from one of the d-men to keep a cycle alive. Or the last time an aggressive stick in the neutral zone broke up the opponents breakout. As I've pointed out before, our possession metrics against good teams were bad. Now, our overall possession metrics are bad with our even strength CF% at 49%, which seems to corroborate my theory that our good early metrics were a product of small sample size and bad competition. Admittedly our all of our Fenwick statistics and our CF% Close are better but at 19 games in Corsi at even strength is just going to be the best metric because it has the largest sample of data (there have been more than 500 fewer events at CF% close than just CF% at even strength, Fenwick events are even lower due to the removal of blocked shots, which is why it usually takes 30-35 games of data for FF% to stabilize). A team at 49% is just a mediocre team. As shooting percentages begin to fall back to normal levels (You have to ask yourself are Angello and Kubiak really 20%+ good? The only correct answer to this is no, not even Ovi is that good and he's arguably the greatest goalscorer ever), then the team needs to generate more shots. Shot attempts are just more sustainable over time than shooting percentage. What we're seeing over the last month is a team that's overplaying its talent crash back to a performance more in line with what the underlying metrics would dictate. Not good, not bad. Just mediocre. Mediocre talent can be covered up for with intelligent deployment of assets. A great example of this is Dave Hakstol. With both the Flyers and NoDak, Hak has for the most part utilized his talent as efficiently as possible. He has preached an aggressive pinching system with his d-men and strove to dominate the neutral zone. This is why, despite the fact that the Flyers defense could be best described as a traffic cone in a garbage fire in the defensive zone, they've improved from a negative possession team under Berube, to a positive possession team under Hakstol. And yes they could be better if he didnt do stupid things like start Umberger over Gagner and scratch Medvedev instead of Schultz, but you have to ask yourself, when is the last time Schafer's style has actually positively contributed to his team's peformance. It seem's to me as if all the success has been either small sample size luck or special teams fueled. There is not one time I would call Schafer's teams an even strength monster like the LA Kings. This is why we aren't good.

As I posted on the D'mouth thread, did you see the RPI game? Conservative it wasn't.

And yes, I've seen dmen pinch on multiple occasions every game, sometimes both pinch and then I get worried. So your stats may be correct, but I disagree with your statements. And to use the 2 best ever freshmen as saying that the issue isn't relying on freshmen, well your outliers only go to prove the point. Freshmen just don't normally take your team to the championship.

And as an aside, it would be a lot easier to read your post if you would break up the paragraph.

[Trotsky]

Paul Kariya led Maine to a national championship as a freshmen with one of the greatest seasons in college hockey history. Jack Eichel last year lead BU to the title game. The issue isn't relying on freshmen.

Not to discount the rest of your argument, but when you start with "the issue is not relying on freshmen" and you cite Kariya nad Eichel you're setting yourself up to be ignored.

Well, it is a consistent argument: youth is not an automatic excuse because if the youth is good enough the team still wins.  So, our problem isn't youth, it's the absence of that level of talent.

But... Eichel and Kariya are literally once per generation talents, and among mortals experience does count for something.

[css228]

Quote from Coach Bennett following Union's loss to RPI in the Mayor's Cup yesterday:

"If we're relying on freshmen, we're going to have serious problems these last 10 games."

It's the problem we have as well, just in a little different way. We have been relying on the freshmen to do a lot this year. As with most teams, in most sports, that doesn't usually lead to championships. They are still some of our best players, but unfortunately they still are freshmen.  

The forwards are obvious, but as the season goes on, McCrea has become an excellent defenseman. However there are many times during a game where he has trouble with the breakout. Time, and seeing the situations over and over again, will allow a good player to develop. Unfortunately 19 games are not enough time. The same for the other freshmen. I'm very optimistic for the future and will be extremely happy if we get a first round bye this year.

Paul Kariya led Maine to a national championship as a freshmen with one of the greatest seasons in college hockey history. Jack Eichel last year lead BU to the title game. The issue isn't relying on freshmen. The issue is the talent on this team is not good, and the system is conservative as hell, exposing the weakness of the talent. You have to take calculated risks if you want to win a hockey game without getting incredibly lucky. When is the last time you saw a great aggressive pinch from one of the d-men to keep a cycle alive. Or the last time an aggressive stick in the neutral zone broke up the opponents breakout. As I've pointed out before, our possession metrics against good teams were bad. Now, our overall possession metrics are bad with our even strength CF% at 49%, which seems to corroborate my theory that our good early metrics were a product of small sample size and bad competition. Admittedly our all of our Fenwick statistics and our CF% Close are better but at 19 games in Corsi at even strength is just going to be the best metric because it has the largest sample of data (there have been more than 500 fewer events at CF% close than just CF% at even strength, Fenwick events are even lower due to the removal of blocked shots, which is why it usually takes 30-35 games of data for FF% to stabilize). A team at 49% is just a mediocre team. As shooting percentages begin to fall back to normal levels (You have to ask yourself are Angello and Kubiak really 20%+ good? The only correct answer to this is no, not even Ovi is that good and he's arguably the greatest goalscorer ever), then the team needs to generate more shots. Shot attempts are just more sustainable over time than shooting percentage. What we're seeing over the last month is a team that's overplaying its talent crash back to a performance more in line with what the underlying metrics would dictate. Not good, not bad. Just mediocre. Mediocre talent can be covered up for with intelligent deployment of assets. A great example of this is Dave Hakstol. With both the Flyers and NoDak, Hak has for the most part utilized his talent as efficiently as possible. He has preached an aggressive pinching system with his d-men and strove to dominate the neutral zone. This is why, despite the fact that the Flyers defense could be best described as a traffic cone in a garbage fire in the defensive zone, they've improved from a negative possession team under Berube, to a positive possession team under Hakstol. And yes they could be better if he didnt do stupid things like start Umberger over Gagner and scratch Medvedev instead of Schultz, but you have to ask yourself, when is the last time Schafer's style has actually positively contributed to his team's peformance. It seem's to me as if all the success has been either small sample size luck or special teams fueled. There is not one time I would call Schafer's teams an even strength monster like the LA Kings. This is why we aren't good.

As I posted on the D'mouth thread, did you see the RPI game? Conservative it wasn't.

And yes, I've seen dmen pinch on multiple occasions every game, sometimes both pinch and then I get worried. So your stats may be correct, but I disagree with your statements. And to use the 2 best ever freshmen as saying that the issue isn't relying on freshmen, well your outliers only go to prove the point. Freshmen just don't normally take your team to the championship.

And as an aside, it would be a lot easier to read your post if you would break up the paragraph.

One game does not a system exonerate. Especially one against a team that is worse than Cornell.

And talented freshmen leading teams to great heights isn't an outlier. It happens pretty much every year. And if you want to win, then you need that type of talent. NoDak made the Frozen Four in 2006 depending on Johnathan Toews and T.J. Oshie as a freshman. In fact that team only had 2 seniors. They'd make the Frozen Four again in 2006 with a whopping 5 seniors. The 2011-2012 BC team got major contributions from Johnny Gaudreau. Shayne Gostisbehere was a major driving force in Union being good from the day he stepped on campus. The team that won the conference in 2011-2012 sure wasn't because of age. They had 4 seniors, and their best player was a freshman d-man. Maine made a Frozen Four in 2000 with a roster featuring more freshmen than juniors and seniors combined. The type of talent that wins NCAA championships and brings deep playoff runs is the type that is ready to play from day 1 and then go on to make a difference in the NHL. You look at every recent championship team and they've had those. Cornell doesn't. We have guys that will be lucky to play 100 games as 4th line, 5/6/7 D types.

I could go on all day, but the point is that yes some teams grow into talent over time (see Union) but if the real NHL caliber talent isn't there in the first place then the ceiling is pretty low and it becomes a matter of putting your players in a position to succeed. Schafer doesn't do that. Maybe we don't have the talent to dominate the neutral zone, but an aggressive forecheck that slows down a breakout would help. So would not pulling an Andrew MacDonald. Winning the neutral zone and the blue lines is the key to winning hockey games. We do not break up the opponents plays at either blue line. We do not breakout and exit our zone with control. And we do not enter the offensive zone with control of the puck. We do not do any of these things with regularity or consistency, and we never have in the time I've been watching us under Schafer. An aggressive system would not help with all of these, but it could at least mask the deficiencies in our breakout. If you rarely have to play in your d-zone then you don't need to break out of it as often. That is what good coaching is. Adjusting to the strengths and weaknesses of your team. No matter what the talent, no matter what they do, Schafer does the same old dump and chase 1-2-2 trap. That's why the lack of success the past half decade is on him. The players are what they are. But he has the power to do something about it and doesn't.

[Jim Hyla]

Quote from Coach Bennett following Union's loss to RPI in the Mayor's Cup yesterday:

"If we're relying on freshmen, we're going to have serious problems these last 10 games."

It's the problem we have as well, just in a little different way. We have been relying on the freshmen to do a lot this year. As with most teams, in most sports, that doesn't usually lead to championships. They are still some of our best players, but unfortunately they still are freshmen.  

The forwards are obvious, but as the season goes on, McCrea has become an excellent defenseman. However there are many times during a game where he has trouble with the breakout. Time, and seeing the situations over and over again, will allow a good player to develop. Unfortunately 19 games are not enough time. The same for the other freshmen. I'm very optimistic for the future and will be extremely happy if we get a first round bye this year.

Paul Kariya led Maine to a national championship as a freshmen with one of the greatest seasons in college hockey history. Jack Eichel last year lead BU to the title game. The issue isn't relying on freshmen. The issue is the talent on this team is not good, and the system is conservative as hell, exposing the weakness of the talent. You have to take calculated risks if you want to win a hockey game without getting incredibly lucky. When is the last time you saw a great aggressive pinch from one of the d-men to keep a cycle alive. Or the last time an aggressive stick in the neutral zone broke up the opponents breakout. As I've pointed out before, our possession metrics against good teams were bad. Now, our overall possession metrics are bad with our even strength CF% at 49%, which seems to corroborate my theory that our good early metrics were a product of small sample size and bad competition. Admittedly our all of our Fenwick statistics and our CF% Close are better but at 19 games in Corsi at even strength is just going to be the best metric because it has the largest sample of data (there have been more than 500 fewer events at CF% close than just CF% at even strength, Fenwick events are even lower due to the removal of blocked shots, which is why it usually takes 30-35 games of data for FF% to stabilize). A team at 49% is just a mediocre team. As shooting percentages begin to fall back to normal levels (You have to ask yourself are Angello and Kubiak really 20%+ good? The only correct answer to this is no, not even Ovi is that good and he's arguably the greatest goalscorer ever), then the team needs to generate more shots. Shot attempts are just more sustainable over time than shooting percentage. What we're seeing over the last month is a team that's overplaying its talent crash back to a performance more in line with what the underlying metrics would dictate. Not good, not bad. Just mediocre. Mediocre talent can be covered up for with intelligent deployment of assets. A great example of this is Dave Hakstol. With both the Flyers and NoDak, Hak has for the most part utilized his talent as efficiently as possible. He has preached an aggressive pinching system with his d-men and strove to dominate the neutral zone. This is why, despite the fact that the Flyers defense could be best described as a traffic cone in a garbage fire in the defensive zone, they've improved from a negative possession team under Berube, to a positive possession team under Hakstol. And yes they could be better if he didnt do stupid things like start Umberger over Gagner and scratch Medvedev instead of Schultz, but you have to ask yourself, when is the last time Schafer's style has actually positively contributed to his team's peformance. It seem's to me as if all the success has been either small sample size luck or special teams fueled. There is not one time I would call Schafer's teams an even strength monster like the LA Kings. This is why we aren't good.

As I posted on the D'mouth thread, did you see the RPI game? Conservative it wasn't.

And yes, I've seen dmen pinch on multiple occasions every game, sometimes both pinch and then I get worried. So your stats may be correct, but I disagree with your statements. And to use the 2 best ever freshmen as saying that the issue isn't relying on freshmen, well your outliers only go to prove the point. Freshmen just don't normally take your team to the championship.

And as an aside, it would be a lot easier to read your post if you would break up the paragraph.

One game does not a system exonerate. Especially one against a team that is worse than Cornell.

And talented freshmen leading teams to great heights isn't an outlier. It happens pretty much every year. And if you want to win, then you need that type of talent. NoDak made the Frozen Four in 2006 depending on Johnathan Toews and T.J. Oshie as a freshman. In fact that team only had 2 seniors. They'd make the Frozen Four again in 2006 with a whopping 5 seniors. The 2011-2012 BC team got major contributions from Johnny Gaudreau. Shayne Gostisbehere was a major driving force in Union being good from the day he stepped on campus. The team that won the conference in 2011-2012 sure wasn't because of age. They had 4 seniors, and their best player was a freshman d-man. Maine made a Frozen Four in 2000 with a roster featuring more freshmen than juniors and seniors combined. The type of talent that wins NCAA championships and brings deep playoff runs is the type that is ready to play from day 1 and then go on to make a difference in the NHL. You look at every recent championship team and they've had those. Cornell doesn't. We have guys that will be lucky to play 100 games as 4th line, 5/6/7 D types.

I could go on all day, but the point is that yes some teams grow into talent over time (see Union) but if the real NHL caliber talent isn't there in the first place then the ceiling is pretty low and it becomes a matter of putting your players in a position to succeed. Schafer doesn't do that. Maybe we don't have the talent to dominate the neutral zone, but an aggressive forecheck that slows down a breakout would help. So would not pulling an Andrew MacDonald. Winning the neutral zone and the blue lines is the key to winning hockey games. We do not break up the opponents plays at either blue line. We do not breakout and exit our zone with control. And we do not enter the offensive zone with control of the puck. We do not do any of these things with regularity or consistency, and we never have in the time I've been watching us under Schafer. An aggressive system would not help with all of these, but it could at least mask the deficiencies in our breakout. If you rarely have to play in your d-zone then you don't need to break out of it as often. That is what good coaching is. Adjusting to the strengths and weaknesses of your team. No matter what the talent, no matter what they do, Schafer does the same old dump and chase 1-2-2 trap. That's why the lack of success the past half decade is on him. The players are what they are. But he has the power to do something about it and doesn't.

Well we have done this, so I have to disagree. The RPI game was the ultimate. Yes, they probably aren't as good as their record, and neither were we. When we faced Union and Dartmouth, they clogged up the neutral zone and we had to dump it in. In fact I think the problem with those games was that we couldn't do the dump and chase well enough. The problem with Harvard was that their talent level is better than us.

As I've said before, we're never going to get the guaranteed NHL players. It's just too hard to compete with the big time scholarship schools, and to a certain extent even with Harvard and their scholarship policy. We need to make do with players who will hopefully develop over a couple of years.

But I'll also stand by my statement that it's not correct to say Schafer hasn't changed. As long as we are in a losing phase, this will continue to come up. Hopefully the team can end it soon.