Of Fandom, Then and Now

[Beeeej]

Sure, "Skandurski" works, though ironically I actually remember a few of us being nervous the first time Elliott had to go out for an injured, previously pretty consistent Skazyk.

For me, a large part of the ennui resulted from seeing the very highly touted Kent Manderville grossly underperform compared with his potential.  A few of us expressed our conviction those two years that it wasn't actually him, it was his evil twin, "Skippy."

Of course, now we'd love to have a few more players who put up Kent's kind of numbers - 11-15-26 as a freshman, 17-14-31 as a sophomore - but his sophomore year he also spent a lot of time in the penalty box, and didn't seem to care too much what other people on the team were doing.  When LeNeveau, Duffus, and Pelletier left early, many of us found it difficult to understand - when Manderville left, some of us breathed a sigh of relief only overshadowed later by our elation at McCutcheon's departure and Schafer's arrival.

Missing out on ECAC titles despite a trip to the tourney four years in a row was tough to take, but it was still pretty cool to go to Boston four years in a row.  It was probably tougher for those who personally remembered seeing ECAC and national titles.  I certainly think it was tougher to see us miss Lake Placid and Albany in '99 and '04 after seeing what we'd been capable of in '96, '97, '02, and '03.

Beeeej

[Give My Regards]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

 If you were a dedicated fan in the early 1990s, when did you start to feel that maybe something wasn't clicking and since you can't fire the whole team, maybe a coaching change was in order? [/q]

I was fortunate enough that my initiation into Cornell hockey, the first season I followed the team from beginning to end, was the magical 1985-86 season.  Little did we realize, as we screamed our hearts out during that dramatic and spectacular ECAC championship run, that those memories would have to sustain us for TEN MORE YEARS.

As ugarte mentions, some rumblings had already begun during the 1989-90 season.  That year, the Big Red went into the last weekend of the regular season needing but one point to lock up second place -- which would have been the team's highest RS finish since '78.  The team took to the road against Vermont and RPI and... lost both games.  Oh well, this at least set up a quarterfinal series against hated Harvard, who Cornell hadn't beaten in five years.  Despite being the home team, the Big Red was pretty much written off against the boys in crimson, but the Good Guys wrapped up the series in two pretty dominant performances, sending Bill Cleary off into retirement a LOSER.

I can still see to this day Ross Lemon's heart-breaking penalty-shot miss in the ECAC semi against RPI, so let's move on quickly, shall we?

... to 1990-91.  Gad, this one still hurts, even 14 years later.  If anyone's dumb enough to say, "We've got first place locked up", I am going to sentence him or her to an in-depth review of the 1990-91 season.  Folks, it is possible to blow a three-point lead with a tiebreaker in hand with six games left, because this team did it.  Again it came down to needing one point over the final weekend, this time for first place, and this time hosting Vermont and RPI.  But the Big Red failed to show up for either game, leaving us rooting for Harvard (!) to beat second-place Clarkson (which they did) and, the next night, Dartmouth to do the same (which they did not).  This was the most talented Cornell team in a generation (14 NHL picks!), and to watch them fall short in the regular season, in the ECAC tournament, in the NCAA's, and oh yeah, they didn't even win the Ivy title -- well, it was agonizing.

I think the seed of doubt started growing roots and leaves in earnest after that, though the 1991-92 team's run to the championship game bought the coaching staff some time.  There were certainly calls for Coach McCutcheon's head after the unbelievably bad 1992-93 season, but that wasn't justified.  You can't expect greatness when your team loses more letter-winners (11) than it returns (10).  Quick sidenote from that season:  if you think we're in trouble backup-goalie-wise now, consider that Andy Bandurski had a walk-on career JV'er as his only backup for the first two and a half months of the 92-93 season, until Eddy Skazyk arrived in January -- and was playing two weeks later.

1993-94 was somewhat of an improvement -- well, let's face it, pretty much anything would have been -- and although there were still noticeable problems, 1994-95 was emerging as the year Cornell would take a Step Forward.  Of course, our loftiest goals at the time were for a winning record and maybe quarterfinal home ice; it's all a matter of perspective.

Needless to say, It Didn't Happen.  The 94-95 team had lost two seniors (one of whom only played half the year) and had picked up Jason Elliott, who at least early on was showing the talent that would make him one of the best Cornell goaltenders ever... and they finished ninth.  And they needed an outrageously good string of performances by Skazyk, after Elliott began his sophomore slump a semester early (and Bandurski had left the team), to achieve even that.  I held out as long as I could -- it makes me uncomfortable to openly advocate for someone to lose his job -- but that did it for me.

I had the privilege of participating, in a small way, in the interview process for head coach after that season.  I went in expecting to be bowled over by Mike Schafer (figuratively, not literally), and I was.  Insanely great hire, Charlie Moore.  Thank you.

[Q]Not trying to make fun of anyone being a fan then. But what suffering. And was there a sense of deja vu all over aqain when Schafer followed his two ECAC title years with a couple really mediocre (losing record) years?[/q]

Abso-tively, posi-lutely not.  1999 was a disappointment (more so than '98, when the team had lost a lot of defensive talent and then had a huge number of injuries during the season), but the above diatribe, coupled with the championships, explains why I was (and am) willing to give Coach Schafer a pass on pretty much anything short of NCAA violations.

Just previewed this -- man, that's long.  I hope the ELF readership will forgive an old-timer (ouch) for rambling... just doing my part to point out that, unless you were a Cornell fan back in the late '60's, you've probably never had it so good.

[adamw]

Of course I'm biased, but I believe USCHO has an extraordinary amount to do with this.

When those of us who started USCHO did so in 1996, the whole idea we had in mind was exactly what is being talked about here -- that college hockey was not being serviced elsewhere, and that we thought it was crazy that people in Boston (for example) had no idea who Brian Bonin was (the previous year's Hobey winner) -- and vice versa.

The parochialism of college hockey is still somewhat silly - but it's a lot better than it used to be.

College hockey was - and still is to an extent - the sport that's just not popular enough for ESPN and The Sporting News, but is popular enough to demand quality coverage.  We had no intention to make money then (and don't really now) -- we genuinely just felt that college hockey deserved REAL coverage, and the Internet provided an avenue that made cost of publication very cheap. And we had enough newspaper veterans to guide it along

It was met with extraordinary skepticism by many in the hockey community and NCAA, because no one knew what the groundrules should be for independent online publications. The key for us, then, was to have the utmost standards of professionalism and journalistic integrity. It doesn't mean USCHO was, or is, perfect (and neither is the New York Times) - but those standards were put in place and emphasized immediately.  Stylebook, journalistic ethics, news standards, professional appearance at games, etc...

All of the same applied for my attempts that season (1996-97) to do the first Internet-only broadcasts of NCAA events.  At the time, Mark Cuban (now well known as owner of the Dallas Mavericks) was barely starting up his company, AudioNet (later sold to Yahoo for $6 billion).  As a result, he was directly accessible.  I still have e-mails that I exchanged with Cuban.  I pitched him on the same idea I mentioned above about the popularity of college hockey.  I explained how college hockey was the most affluent demographic of any fan-base, and yet it was spread all over the globe with no way to get the information.

This was just before almost every school started putting their radio games over the Net.  So he agreed to give up the bandwidth for free, and I broadcast all four ECAC tournament final four games, and all 11 NCAA games (Grady Whittenberg actually did the four games that took place at the West Regional). This also required the cooperation of Joe Bertagna at the ECAC and John Painter at the NCAA to recognize the value of it and allow the broadcasts to take place without charging a rights fee. More people, by far, listened to the broadcasts involving Cornell than any other team.

After that, everyone started putting their games online - and well, there's a lot more - but that's all that's relevant to this story

It was seven years before USCHO had a competitor, and seven years before CSTV.  Would all of this happened eventually from someone? Most likely. But when?

There's still more to do. I still want to see a weekly hour-long radio/satellite/net-only show devoted to college hockey, with guests and call-ins ... And/or a TV show along the same lines.  There just hasn't quite been the opportunity, because of bandwidth costs, logistics, etc...

Back to Greg's original premise ... USCHO brought PWR to the public consciousness, and to the NCAA's consciousness for that matter, in 1997. Even though the NCAA was actually using it and just didn't know it (long story).  So that really went hand in hand.

[adamw]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

 If you were a dedicated fan in the early 1990s, when did you start to feel that maybe something wasn't clicking and since you can't fire the whole team, maybe a coaching change was in order?[/q]

I've always considered the abolute breaking point to be the 3-player recruiting class of 1995.

[KeithK]

I remember the McCutcheon must go chants and I remember participating.  So it wasn't all odd looks.

It's a little over-zealous to say we were a crossbar away from playing a team that we had owned.  We hadn't even beaten Vermont that year - just two 2-2 ties.  Granted that was a pretty nice accomplishment considering how strong the Cats were that season.  But I remember thinking that a Cornell-Vermont NCAA matchup might take a week to resolve.

[Steve M]

Adam,

Thank you very much for everything you have done to promote College Hockey.  It's pretty cool how closely I can follow it again now, in spite of the fact that it gets almost zero coverage where I live.  I especially loved the article you wrote about the Cornell-Harvard rivalry a few years ago.  It was nice to find out that Lynah was still one of the toughest places for a visitor  to play. :-D  

Keep up the good work.

[nyc94]

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

 I remember the McCutcheon must go chants and I remember participating.  So it wasn't all odd looks.[/q]

Same here.  I also remember people circulating a rumor that one of the players fathers (I want to say Ryan Hughes) was bad mouthing McCutcheon to other parents with kids in juniors.

[David Harding]

As a member of the Class of '72, I have to agree that they were good years.  Men's gymnastics dominated the Ivy League, too.  A national championship in the IRA regatta.  They even ran the season ticket line well.  :-}  

As a townie, following the teams in the early to mid '60s, I'd have to say that times were pretty good then, too - for the football you mention, for the basketball with Steve Cram and Blaine Austin, and the hockey program starting to make a move with Laing Kennedy and company.  Seems to me that track and wrestling were pretty strong.

[Ken \'70]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

 If you were pick four years to be a sports fan at Cornell, you might often pick the four years you were there because you were there and you found sports moments to savor. That's why so many graduation speeches read like, " ... live in a complicated time like no other." We want to be unique. Plus there has been no time when it absolutely sucked to be a fan at Lynah. Even the .500 teams were pretty exciting compared to any given four years at RPI (OK, there was 1985) or Colgate.

CLASS OF ’70. I think the Cornell Class of '70 or '72 had the best of all worlds. If you entered in 1967 and departed in spring 1970, perhaps even graduated (pass me that joint, Bobbie), you saw the most glorious years of Cornell hockey. And the lacrosse team was darn good. Plus I don't think there was much of the way of finals each spring. Intense dislike of the Vietnam war led to protests and classes being called off, but only in spring semester, when it was warm enough to sit around libe slope, and you still got your diploma. And lastly the Pill worked well enough, and STDs were curable enough, that the social atmosphere then was most excellent - if you could get a date. Oh, yeah, and you could drink at 18 legally.

[/q]

Plus we had an incomparable civics lesson in the form of the Straight takeover in the Spring of '69.  Not only did we have the perfect season and 4 final fours, but we may have been the last class to have had even a hint of what used to be known as a liberal education.  The long trajectory leading to today's political correctness, speach codes, et. al., began, or at least became fully visible, in our years.

A good read about this aspect of Cornell during the glory years of hockey is Donald Down's "Cornell '69".  

And BTW, it wasn't that hard to get a date.

[jeh25]

[Q]RichH Wrote:
 freshman year... senior year...  Oh, and a hockey game in November sent fans over the glass in Lynah.  From that moment on, we just held on for an incredible ride.  After enduring '92-'93 as my introduction to CU Hockey, the only word for it was "magical."[/q]

But when did you compose the Ballad of Matt Weder? That's what we really want to know! Cough it up Rich!

[RichH]

[Q]jeh25 Wrote:

 [Q2]RichH Wrote:
 freshman year... senior year...  Oh, and a hockey game in November sent fans over the glass in Lynah.  From that moment on, we just held on for an incredible ride.  After enduring '92-'93 as my introduction to CU Hockey, the only word for it was "magical."[/Q]
But when did you compose the Ballad of Matt Weder? That's what we really want to know! Cough it up Rich![/q]

The first winter I was not within easy driving distance of Ithaca.  Would've been Jan. '99.

http://home.stny.rr.com/rhovorka/weder.htm

[Greg Berge]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

 If you were a dedicated fan in the early 1990s, when did you start to feel that maybe something wasn't clicking and since you can't fire the whole team, maybe a coaching change was in order?

Or was it always a yearly hope-springs-eternal feeling? Sort of like the NFL house ad Sunday night showing all the smiling Jets and Falcons and etcetera players and the tagline at the end says, "Tomorrow, we're all unbeaten."

There were, what, four straight ECAC final four appearances 1989-92, and since you didn't know the outcome until the end (no ECAC titles any of those years), you were hopeful during the season and hopeful next year would be one level better?

One would think that circa 1993-95 and the two or three seasons well under .500 would be a negative leading indicator.

Not trying to make fun of anyone being a fan then. But what suffering. And was there a sense of deja vu all over aqain when Schafer followed his two ECAC title years with a couple really mediocre (losing record) years? Makes you think what a precarious perch it is. [/q]

I remember my "a new approach is needed" moment distinctly.  On 2/27/93, we had just lost game 10 of the infamous 11-game losing streak, at Union.  I was driving Anne and a noted Cornell hockey personality over to the hotel to drown our collective sorrows, and as we passed a guy trudging through the snow outside Achilles, said personality remarked, "you just missed a chance to run down Brian McCutcheon."  To which I responded, "want me to go back"?

In retrospect, a lot of The Horror that we had for Coach McCutcheon was unfortunate.  He meant and still means a great deal to the program, is undyingly loyal, and has done much to promote Cornell hockey even after his days as coach.  But at the time... oh, it was bad.  You hafta remember that Brian was not a particularly popular coach even at his zenith.  His teams were *very* hard to watch, the '91 team was a talent-laden disappointment, and the '92 team's late run obscured what was a pretty mediocre season.  By '93 we were praying for Schafer but not daring to talk about it for fear it would somehow jinx it.  I remember when I found out about it in the summer of '95, I literally couldn't believe it.

There was no sense of deja vu during the '98-00 run.  The only real disappointment during that entire period was blowing the third period lead and the series at Princeton in the '99 QF: http://www.tbrw.info/boxScores/box19990313.html  But we knew we had the best coach this side of Scotty Bowman and that good times would be back.

[CUlater 89]

[Q]Greg Berge Wrote:

In retrospect, a lot of The Horror that we had for Coach McCutcheon was unfortunate.  He meant and still means a great deal to the program, is undyingly loyal, and has done much to promote Cornell hockey even after his days as coach.  But at the time... oh, it was bad.  You hafta remember that Brian was not a particularly popular coach even at his zenith.  His teams were *very* hard to watch, the '91 team was a talent-laden disappointment, and the '92 team's late run obscured what was a pretty mediocre season.  By '93 we were praying for Schafer but not daring to talk about it for fear it would somehow jinx it.  I remember when I found out about it in the summer of '95, I literally couldn't believe it.

[/q]

I think Greg speaks for himself, although he uses the word "we".  McCutcheon was a very popular coach for the fans when he first arrived, turning a penalty-prone undisciplined team around and using the freshman class to great effect.  He even turned Ross Lemon and Rob Levasseur into legitimate goal scorers.  

You also need to know that the ECAC was a very different league back then, with Harvard and St. Lawrence dominating with a high-scoring, puck control game.  McCutcheon's decision to pursue a defensive-minded style was a concession to the type of player Reycroft generally recruited, a player who couldn't play the puck possession game.  It worked very well at first.  The disappointments in '90 and '91 can be traced to D'Alessio coming down with mono and really never returning to his MVP-level of play from his first two seasons.  Perhaps had Duffus played in '91, the season might have been more of a success; in any case, going to Michigan and winning the opening game and giving the Wolverines all they could handle in game 2 was impressive, considering where the program was when he first arrived.  It was disappointing at the time, because the season began with such high expectations, although anyone who regularly saw the top teams in other conference play could see that Cornell's skill level was not on par with BU or BC, for example.

The recruiting failures in the early '90s lead to the problems from '93-'95 -- the talent just wasn't there (the injury to Auger certainly hurt as well).  But those failures can in part be traced to a change in the admissions offices approach to dealing with the hockey program, when talented players who wanted to come to Cornell were denied or discouraged, but got accepted at Harvard, among other places.

McCutcheon was able to turn it around, however, putting together a deep class that won 2 ECAC titles in Schafer's first two years.  But the losing after Duffus left had loosened McCutcheon's hold on the players, many of whom thought they were better than they were; their grousing affected the new recruits and it wasn't until a fresh breeze rolled in (Schafer's arrival) that they lived up to their potential.

Greg may have been praying for Schafer, but in '93 there was no chance Schafer would come to Cornell.  He wasn't ready to be a head coach.  And in fact he almost didn't come back at all, thanks to Charlie Moore's tight-fisted approach to hiring.  Many Big Red coaches were let go around the same time McCutcheon resigned, in an effort to save money.  

[Greg Berge]

Coach McCutcheon started out with talented rosters when inheriting Coach Reycroft's teams -- the only "undisciplined team" was the '87 mess; prior to that they had been an extremely strong, competitive team which had only needed the arrival of Dadswell to turn them into a conference contender.  At first he built on them with a couple strong classes of his own, aided immeasurably by the recruiting talents of a certain heralded assistant coach.  For whatever reason, his style acquired a negative reputation among the traditional sources of Cornell's talent.  He then attempted to go elsewhere but was essentially trying to build a network from scratch, and so it's hardly a knock on him that he was unsuccessful.

The Disappointment of '91 was the late season conference collapse, which had nothing to do with Cornell's status relative to other conferences.  However, you should not allow the subsequent divergence of the ECAC and HE in talent and style to obscure the fact that at the time the two conferences were similar in talent, especially at the top.  Colgate had beaten BU in the SF en route to the NCAA title game the previous season (one of 5 ECAC squads to make it to the final in a 6 year period), and while Cornell was pulling off the Manderville Miracle in Ann Arbor in game one, Clarkson was methodically working their way through Wisconsin and Lake State en route to the Frozen Four.

Likewise, many fans and Cornell people far older and more knowelgeable than I were touting Schafer as the first choice as the next Cornell coach as early as '93.  If legend serves correctly (and only Mike knows for sure), he was at this time offered but turned down another ECAC coaching position.  He had been a very highly thought-of assistant coach with Cornell, known for his rapport with the players.  In fact he was so highly thought of by Bill Wilkinson at Western Michigan that he was promoted to "associate coach," a quasi-co-coaching position, in '94.

Finally, there was a very strong and admirable personality tie at the highest level of the Cornell sports establishment which kept Coach McCutcheon at Cornell for longer than his coaching record would have warranted.  Considering his subsequent success at other levels, this was to his detriment as much as to the program's.  However, given that situation, it's ridiculous to blame the players.  These were in fact the same "grousing" malcontents who miraculously became Harvard Slayers who bled Carnelian red from the moment Mike got them polishing trophies.  And while there was some talent on those early Schafer teams, they were hardly prima donna -- they were lunch pail teams playing out of their minds and above their heads for a guy for whom they'd skate through walls.

[CUlater 89]

Most of the talent that was on the '87-'88 squad was the freshman class.  Other than those six players, the only guys who had produced anything in previous seasons were Chris Norton, Casey Jones and Chris Grenier (and I only include Grenier because he was may favorite player at the time).  Yes, Schafer was an excellent recruiter, but it was McCutcheon who established the pipeline at Notre Dame, because he was seeking a different type of player than played in the Ontario leagues.  McCutcheon also used Ned as a resource, someone Schafer did not have access to, since Ned and Reycroft didn't get along.

I agree that it was disappointing to not win the regular season championship in '91, but as was shown by the success of Clarkson and St. Lawrence, the other top teams in the league were pretty good too.  I'm well aware of the ECAC success at placing teams in the final game and final four back then, but don't kid yourself that the talent levels between BU and BC on the one hand and Cornell on the other were equivalent.  I saw a lot of games by all three squads in those years and the difference in quality was readily apparent (witness the blowout loss at BC).

Yes, people talked about Schafer in '93 -- he was well liked personally and had been a successful recruiter, but the guy had been the second assistant at Cornell, making very little money (which was the main reason he left; if Don Vaughan had announced he was leaving to go back to St. Lawrence a little sooner, Schafer would have stayed on and been the top assistant).  He needed the time as the top assistant at WMU to grow as a coach.

I don't think it's ridiculous to blame the players, in this case or in any sport.  Whether you like the coach or not (and I'm not saying everyone didn't like him -- the majority of his players valued their time playing for him; Manderville credits him for turning him from a one-dimensional player into someone who could play defense, enabling him to have a job in the NHL despite poor goal scoring stats) and whether you like the style of play or not, it's your job to do your best regardless.  There were a number of players who did not take that approach and their attitude infested others; behind closed doors they talked about how there would be a coaching change, so it didn't matter if you gave your all. This was particularly true of certain players who were not getting regular ice time, but felt they deserved it.  When the class of Chartrand, Drouin and others arrived, they brought renewed hope, but there is only so much that freshmen can do in turning around a locker room's attitude.  As noted, most of those guys were not dominant players, so as freshman they could not take control of the team on the ice either.  The old attitude prevailed.

As an aside, what impresses me most about Schafer is how unified his teams appear to be, despite the fact that plenty of recruits are not playing or hardly playing.  I would have thought there would be more players like Davenport; guys like McKeown, who we seemed to have thought would be a big time scorer; or Pegoraro after last year.

Lastly, the program was on an upswing when McCutcheon left, as he had finally been able to overcome the admissions constraints.  He was the one who recruited Moynihan and Knopp among others.  He was forced out to save money and because certain alums pressured Charlie Moore to make a change, particularly because it was rumored that Schafer would accept a head coaching job elsewhere if the Cornell job did not open up soon.  There were others, however, who felt that it was important to allow time for the new players to develop and didn't want to be perceived like Notre Dame's football program was perceived after it fired Ty Willingham recently.

Obviously, things have worked out extremely well for Cornell, but I think it's important to recognize that there is more to the story of the era under discussion than some believe or recall.