Don't see this box score everyday

[Tom Lento]

That changed a couple of years ago.

Finishing behind Vermont might have been bad for a team like Cornell earlier this year, but in all honesty UVM isn't as bad a team as that Harvard box score would lead you to believe.  The loss to Union is the real blight on Cornell's record, as Union hasn't even been close to beating an established D-I team this year.  There's the lack of scoring talent coming back to bite the Big Red once again.  Cornell outshot Union about 2-1 over the course of the game, and lost 3-1.

There's cause for optimism, as the team is playing fundamentally sound hockey in all three zones for the first time in about 5 years.  The jury is still out on whether or not Davidson is really a great head coach at the D-I level, but she's making a pretty good case for herself.  Now if only she can pick up some big wins down the line. . .

Women's hockey has definitely gotten rougher over the last several years.  I don't remember much contact in the game in 98, when Cornell was in the hunt for home ice and lost 1-0 to eventual ECAC and AWCHA champion Brown in the playoffs.  Now there's a ton of contact - lots of outright body checks were thrown in the Cornell/UVM game, and that's between two teams that aren't attracting the olympians.  

The western teams are picking up the pace a bit, but the ECAC is still the class league.  The way the PWR looks right now, the ECAC could easily send three teams if Wisconsin doesn't win the women's WCHA.  The women's hockey east is down this year, which is odd considering that UNH and Northeastern were the traditional hockey powers right up until the flood of olympic talent that boosted the Harvard, Dartmouth, and UMD programs.

Side note:  I didn't realize that the scorekeeper ran an extra 10 seconds off of the clock yesterday.  I felt like the flurry that led to the GWG started at around 39 seconds, and couldn't believe that it took them 21 seconds to put the puck in the net.  Now the official time of the GWG makes sense to me.