Cornell 1 @ Dartmouth 6 (post-game thread)

[Pace]

Well, what can one say? It is much easier to list the few good things about the game.

1) We were alright in the 3rd. No goal, but great improvement after the first 2. A few good PKs.

2) Chabot played well. Certainly better than McKee. I wonder who coach starts next weekend.

[ftyuv]

I remember even as far back as the red-white scrimmage, some of my friends and I were wondering if Chabot and McKee had secretly traded jerseys or something.  I hate to be a fair-weather fan, but...

[billhoward]

Actually could've started this thread a bit earlier. Like midway through the second.

Character-building weekend. Couldn't win every ECAC game unless this were an extraordinary season like Cornell 1970 or RPI 1985.

Now that Harvard and Dartmouth are an ECAC pairing, would you rather play them in the fall and get it out of the way, or do this in, say, February?

Chabot can tend the nets passably well.

Lynah Traveling Faithful were impressive.

Nobody got game DQ'd for losing it.

Their heart wasn't in it, but, sheesh, the first PP unit out there for all 2 minutes in the third and couldn't buy a goal on the 5x3 in the third.

Maybe we lost more of the defense to graduation than we thought.

The mark of the team willl be how well it puts this one game behind.  

... There must be a pony in there somewhere.

[CaribRedFan]

i really wouldn't be surprised if Schafer starts splitting time for McKee and Chabot in the goal....we either lost a lot of defense last year, or McKee is having an off season so far

[Pace]

I can sorta understand McKee, it's hard to keep it together psychologically after 3 or 4 fast goals like that. But still, like someone said, a Hobey Baker finalist simply should not allow this kinda thing to happen in the first place.

[CaribRedFan]

he should be stronger mentally than he was tonight...we've all seen him stronger mentally, he just wasn't out there tonight

[DeltaOne81]

This is not the McKee we saw last year, in any game so far (at least in ECAC play, I won't speak for MSU). It's not like this was his fault, but the McKee of last year would made two more big saves in the first and brought us into the intermission tied. When we actually would wake up and start playing.

That said, that D was ::yark::

And the offense was ::yark:: ::yark::

[billhoward]

Maybe McKee just needs to settle down. Maybe it was the defense plus the goalie that made for the low GAA last year ... and also the low number of shots allowed per game. One of Schafer's verities is that the team that allows fewer shots at the goaltender invariably wins.

Maybe he's sick. Mono or something. Maybe it's drugs. (Not really, but whenever a fellow employee starts acting unusually, drugs seems like an easy solution.) Maybe he didn't work out that much over the summer. Those are all possibilities and all seem far-fetched.

Give McKee a chance. Didn't Dryden have a bunch of off games? (OK, maybe not.)

[Pace]

I think it's also the fact that he knew that he's been playing poorly this year even before the game started. It's not like his previous games showed the "old McKee" form.

But I do not mean to suggest that I lost confidence in him. He's had an off coupla' games. I think we need to give our team a crazy-ass loud welcome next weekend, and particularly a lot of support to McKee. That is, assuming he plays, which I expect he will.

[Pace]

Delta is of course right. We can blame a couple of those goals on McKee, but he played about the level of the rest of the team...

[min]

except for the only cornell goal, the special teams were not as good as last year's. cornell turned over too many pucks while on the pp, and the pk unit couldn't clear the puck either.
the missed opps on the 5X3s were simply... unacceptable.

LGR.

[CaribRedFan]

i don't think we're not giving him a chance...it's alright to have a few off games...and i'm not saying let's play chabot for the rest of the season because of tonight, but i don't think anyone can argue the fact that mckee hasn't really been playing mckee level all season, and tonight was a little more off than the rest, but maybe tonight was what he needed to snap back...i mean a second string goalie going in and showing you up?  it may just be the wake up call he needed...we'll find out next weekend....

still not messing with texas...he can still do it!

[Pace]

Incidentally, and this is hardly our achievement, but after tonight no one is undefeated in the ECAC.

[billhoward]

Better we lost to Dartmouth than Harvard. Even if the "Schafer has trouble beating Dartmouth" mystique will continue until next year (he's what, 9-11-1 now), a loss to Harvard is on the order of, say, a major university losing a charismatic new president a year or two into his term.

[cnunlist]

First the good - we did not lose our composure in the 3rd period when it was out of hand like virtually every other team would have, and our fans were supportive even as we were getting killed, which is nice.  

Now the bad - I've been following Cornell hockey since '95, which is not all that long in the grand scheme of things, but....  I haven't seen us play that poorly since '95 and certainly haven't ever seen a team with this much talent (on paper) play that poorly.  Tonight's game was an embarrassment to the program, plain and simple.  Absolutely no effort in the first 2 periods, no heart whatsoever.

Cabot