CU - tUMD postgame

[Rita]

mvp G david mckee, cornell

all tourney team (as listed in the news-press, and it sounds like what they announced last night):
g Isaac Reichmuth, umd
D ryan o'byrne, cornell
D Mike Lundin, Maine
F Cam Abbott, cornell
F Justin Williams, umd
F matt moulson, cornell

and today's glaring error from the news-press in describing cam abbott's shorthanded goal

"the game's only goals came in the second period when abbott tucked a shorthanded breakaway under McKee at 1:37."

[Ken \'70]

This was a disappointing result and doesn't do anything to inspire optimism.

The tournament consisted of the 5 and 9th place teams in HE and the 5th place team in the WCHA.  Beating NU requires no comment.  Tieing UMD is particularly disappointing since they have a losing record themselves and have managed their 8 wins against teams with a combined record of 56-71-9, and this was a "game that mattered", or as close to it as you can get at this point in the season.

As to Cornell looking better in it's last half dozen games, as some have observed, this was done in six games against teams with a combined 40-55-10 record, among whom only one had a winning record, and that was by virtue of playing in the CHA.  You'd better look good when playing against competition like that.

The next few weeks are equally miserable in terms of opponents with RIT, Quinnipiac and Princeton.  By the time Cornell gets to the St Lawrence/Clarkson weekend they will have played 17 games, of which only 5 (by current records) will have been against winning teams (and it may be down to 3 since Niagara has UNH and 2 against MN coming up).  And of those 5 games, only 1 (Hahvahd) was against a school that itself has a winning record against winning teams.  St Lawrence and Clarkson will be only our 2nd and 3rd games of the year against teams with winning records against winning teams.

Based on that, 2 points, even though at home, would be a good result.  But we shouldn't be surprised by fewer, with RPI/Union as the best data so far. If we got 4 points, then you could say things are really looking better, but only then.

[schoaff]

Boy, next time I have a parade remind me to invite you so you can rain on it.

[duffs4]

I was wondering if people who were at the game thought that colgate, er, um, cornell got the short end of the stick from the officials? Watching on the webcast it looked like most of the penalties called on cornell were weak at best.  5 min major, didn't see it, can someone elaborate?

[jtwcornell91]

[quote schoaff]Boy, next time I have a parade remind me to invite you so you can rain on it.[/quote]

I guess we do have to keep in mind that we tied a team which we, on paper, should have beat.  But tUMD, based on their play this weekend, are better than their record would indicate.  (Their fans told me they've alternated one good weekend with two bad ones this year.  We caught them on the good weekend.  Let's hope they have all good weekends from here on out.)  And I don't think we believe we're as good as our record.

Based on the teams we saw out there, a tie was a fair result.  Would have liked to settle it for real in OT, but you can't control the format.

[jkahn]

[quote Harrier]Is anyone else scratching their heads at the shootout selection??  OB?  Carefoot?

[/quote]

Very surprised at O'B, but I certainly would've had Mitch out there.  When O'B was lining up I turned to the group I was with (JTW, Liz, Rita, Bilmes x 2) and said "O'B??!"  However, you have to trust Mike's judgment, as he sees these guys in practice everyday.  I thought Mitch played a great game throughout - including working the puck out of our zone and down the ice which set up Cam's SHG.  I wasn't there Tuesday, but Carefoot would've made my one day all tourney team.

[ebilmes]

Carefoot did play a good game, but Williams was deserving of a spot on the team. Seemed he was everywhere on the ice on Tuesday and then he had some nice skate/stick work to score UMD's only goal against Cornell.

As to the shootout, I was shocked when OB was sent out. I was even more shocked when Topher wasn't sent out. OB managed a pretty poor shot that went wide of the goal; you have to think Scott would have done something better. To OB's credit, though, he played well defensively during the tournament.

[redhair34]

O'Byrne did score on McKee in the Red-White game shootout.  Also, bear in mind that Schafer has probably seen the guys in shootout situations a ton in practice.  I was a bit suprised, but I have no basis(nor do any of us) to really second guess the decision.

[rstott]

Overall, a solid Cornell performance.  The second period was vintage Cornell hockey.  The downer was the overtime.  Schafer in the local paper made it clear that he was disappointed by the way we turned it over and generally lost our composure. The real worry has to be the power play – 1/15. Two even strength goals is not good, obviously, but with our style it's always going to be a struggle at even strength against anything other than weak teams, I think.  Cornell has to cash in on the power play to be successful.

[The Rancor]

that was a must win game and the tie isnt going to help much in the wcha comparison for post season.

[Josh '99]

[quote Harrier]Is anyone else scratching their heads at the shootout selection??  OB?  Carefoot?

How about Moulson, Abbott, Abbott, McCutcheon, and Barlow?  May have not come down to the last shot if they threw that group out first.[/quote]Carefoot scored on his shot; makes it tough to second-guess that one IMO.

[RichH]

[quote Harrier]Is anyone else scratching their heads at the shootout selection??  OB?  Carefoot?[/quote]
IMO, Carefoot has taken up the role that Iggulden held last season: the SH breakaway threat.  His inclusion on the shootout squad was a no-brainer for me.  I'd love to see Cam and/or 'Cutch work their way into that type of player also.  However, last night was the first goal Cam had scored since the 2004 Everblades, so...

But yeah...O'B in the shootout?  Unless he was going to pull up at the blue line and wait for someone to magically set a screen for a slapshot, I don't know what he was doing there.

[cbuckser]

Ryan O'Byrne's shorthanded goal against Boston College last year showed that he has a dangerous snap shot.  I don't think he was a puzzling choice for the shootout.

[Liz '05]

[quote RichH][quote Harrier]Is anyone else scratching their heads at the shootout selection??  OB?  Carefoot?[/quote]
IMO, Carefoot has taken up the role that Iggulden held last season: the SH breakaway threat.  His inclusion on the shootout squad was a no-brainer for me.  I'd love to see Cam and/or 'Cutch work their way into that type of player also.  However, last night was the first goal Cam had scored since the 2004 Everblades, so...
[/quote]

Mitch played that role last year too - if I remember correctly, he had two shorties and a bunch of good chances then.  I think McCutcheon could pretty easily develop into that role too, as he seems to have blossomed as a solid PKer this year.

As far as the shootout selection...I don't think about that stuff critically during the game.  I have a vague memory of the people around me questioning it.  I might've thought more about it if I had a radio commentator in my ear.  But instead, I just got caught up in the excitement.

[las224]

(Moved from the game thread b/c I didn't see this one at first)

Just got back to Ithaca from the tournament.  My thoughts:

UMD played pretty rough.  I noticed this the first night as well.  I only stayed for the first period of the UMD/Maine game, but it seemed to be a lot faster-paced than the NEU/Cornell game.  Got me a little concerned about how Wednesday's game would be, no matter which team we played.  On Wednesday, within the first five minutes I became worried about fights breaking out for the rest of the game.

Even though UMD was all over us (and our guys dished it back), we seemed to get called on it more than they did.  Glover got pulled for something that really didn't seem to be his fault.  I think that's what Schafer was talking to the refs about during the break.  Meanwhile, a bit before that, Mugford went down by the boards, and two of the UMD guys were literally beating him with their sticks.  The refs did NOTHING about that.  Ridiculous.  I don't know if that showed up the webcast, but I turned to the people around me to make sure I wasn't imagining that whole thing - they were surprised as well.

In general, I thought the refs were terrible.  Not only did they make what I thought were some poor calls (and miss a lot), but they didn't seem to comprehend the idea of staying out of the way of the puck.  At one point (I think in the NEU game) I literally saw a ref standing over the puck while guys tried to get it out of there.  Granted - he was surrounded so he couldn't really go anywhere.  But he HAD time to get out of the way when he was standing by the puck and the guys hadn't gotten to him yet.  In general, the refs were just always in the way, and basically interfering with the gameplay.

I was kind of disappointed with the turnout for games.  I mean, it's in Florida, so I know people aren't necessarily going to travel down like I did.  But - I wish I there was some way to consolidate fans (we were SO spread out), and make sure that everyone knows the cheers.  It was pretty difficult to get people to do most of them when the closest person is 5 feet away and doesn't know what's going on anyway.  Probably can't be helped, but I still thought I'd complain  Maybe give the host Cornell Club (in this case, Cornell Club of SW Florida) copies of the cheers that can be passed out at the reception that was going on before and during the game?  There were a lot of alums with kids, and the kids REALLY into the few cheers that they knew.  If more cheers/traditions were known by more people, it prob could have been decent.  The mini pep band was great, but they were sitting pretty far away from a lot of the fans, and in my section (the adjacent Cornell section), I couldn't hear their cheers at all, except for the few short bursts of LGR that went around.  Would have been great to have everyone knowing the "1, 2, 3, 4, we want more, sieve" chant though.  "Stickless" could also have been applied a lot.  I suppose the "see ya () you goon" might not have been great to pass out to the little kids though, as their parents might not have appreciated.  But we have PLENTY of clean, fun cheers.

I doubt anyone is still reading this, seeing as it's way after the games - so I'll stop here.  Way to go Red!