Notes on the Frozen Four (long)

[tml5]

Rumor has it that there are some good recruits coming in.  Also, Bestwick and Murao - two of the top scorers - return.  The sophomores (soon to be juniors) greatly improved this year, particularly Allyson Simpson and Anita Khar.  The current freshmen, Neremberg and Hannah in particular, are solid, gritty forwards that do a lot of little things right.  

The big issue down the line is in net.  Next year the women will have two solid senior goaltenders, which is great.  Unfortunately, how do you recruit a netminder when she knows that she won't see any time?  Cornell could very well wind up with either a talent or an experience problem in net for the 2003-04 season.  It'd be great to see a solid frosh goalie come in next fall, but I doubt it'll happen just because of the two established netminders that are already on the squad.

One thing that I've heard about Coach Mullins is that she does a great job of communicating with her recruits, which I'm sure they all appreciate.  Hopefully that'll land her some more talented players.  Seems like they've all been going to Harvard or Dartmouth lately.  :-/

[Josh '99]

Jeffrey "Beeeej" Anbinder '94 wrote:

Eventually, I think the whining got to him, and he decided he was going to call the next penalty-esque thing he saw:  A Maine player and a Minnesota player colliding, with the Maine player's leg vaguely in the vicinity of the Minnesota player who went flying.  Now, I've read the USCHO column on it (http://www.uscho.com/news/2002/04/06_004401.php), but maybe someone who watched the game on TV can tell me, since the X wasn't replaying penalties, only goals and scoring opportunities - was this really a trip?  The Hauser trips were really trips, and I felt really bad for Maine when they lost.

Granted, they had their chances, and they probably could've done a better job preventing the 6-on-5 tying goal with 53 seconds left.  But you've got to hate to see an OT win come on a power play without a serious infraction causing it.

From my perspective (I've posted this on USCHO but I'll quickly repeat it here), it seemed like a clear leg-on-leg hit, and those have high injury potential (see: Cam Neely, Joe Nieuwendyk, Radek Dvorak).  I think it was the right call for that reason.

[profudge]

Jeff,
 
Can you comment on and add hints and tips for those of us who are Frozen Four in-experienced on how best to attempt to get some tickets to Buffalo next spring?

thanks -

[Beeeej]

Lou,

To be honest, I'm not sure - I'm one of the lucky ones who'd had tickets to the FF for a couple of years before they started doing the lottery by priority, so I may never really have to worry about it again.  But my best advice would be to keep checking http://www.ncaachampionships.com as often as you can in the days leading up to April 22 (which is when they say the application will be available online to the public), and fill out your application ASAP.

Your next best bet - or perhaps even a better one - would be to latch onto someone who has priority and orders tickets every year, and ask them to include you.  For instance Mikey has already claimed one of my three other tickets to Buffalo next year, and I certainly have ideas about who would get first dibs at the other two if they didn't already have tickets and Cornell was in the semis.

Beyond that, USCHO.com and eBay both seem to be reliable methods of finding tickets that are available because someone's team didn't make it; the only question there is whether you'll have to spend more than face value (and note that NY state's scalping laws mean that people won't be able to sell FF tix on eBay legally for more than 10% over face value [and eBay's watchdog mechanism for such things has become much more sophisticated], so it may be that much harder to find tix that haven't already been bid up to the max).  And of course it means waiting until relatively the last minute.

Remember, there's a bit of a disadvantage to getting your tickets through the lottery; they charge your credit card ten months in advance of the tourney.

Beeeej

[jkahn]

While the OT infraction may have been a penalty, early in that PP Hauser clearly clothes-lined a Maine player with the top half of his stick as the Maine player was skating aroung the net.  Unfortunately that wasn't called, as I would've liked us to have a shot at knocking off the defending national champs next December.