Clarkson at Cornell postgame thread (2/21/06)

[Rich S]

Drew and Tuba,

Having read through most of the posts on the two threads here and on the Clarkson forum as well, I have to ask you guys:

Just how many years have you been watching Clarkson-cornell games?  Or cornell hockey in general?  For you to say that Clarkson has always been a dirty team might answer the question.  Either that or your glasses have a reddish tint.

An "embaressment to the league"?  Give it a rest.  Sounds like you're still sore about 2004.

Most of the games between these teams in recent years have been hotly contested physical contests which as previously pointed out occasionally have gotten nasty and chippy.  I have acknowledged several times that in the last couple years of the prior coach's tenure at Clarkson, there was a lot of undisciplined, selfish, and stupid play resulting in many dumb penalties mostly by a few guys who hurt their team.  And a couple of post game tussles in which BOTH teams were willing participants.  Cornell has the more disciplined and more talented teams and has rightly won most of theses games.

Prior to that, I vividly recall seeing games in both Ithaca and Potsdam in which the teams lost control and cornell players were the instigators.  The last two times Clarkson won at Ithaca (excl the 2004 playoffs) were in '97 and '99 and in both instances Schafer's tactics caled for roughing up the more skilled Clarkson players, Todd White and Erik Cole in particular.  It was pretty obvious and it didn't work, largely because those Clarkson teams were much more disciplined and stuck to their game plan.

You should also keep in mind that until the last few years when Schafer began recruiting many more higher skilled players, rather than the more strictly physical types, there was a period of several years where a lot of the league coaches were upset about his clutch and grab style and that many officials let them get away with that play, particularly at Lynah.

Don't paint your guys as choir boys or say that any Clarkson fan was "defending his angels".  Neither is accurate.

Interesting that you'd wish they never have success...but it already happened.

And weren't the penalties 15-14 tonight?

[Lauren '06]

[quote canuck89]I agree with that interpretation the most.  By the way, why was our band nonexistent for much of the night.  The Clarkson band had at least twice as many songs played as we did (Think second and third period during play stoppages).  Anyone from pep band can answer this...  To tell you the truth, I was disappointed.[/quote]
Not really sure what you mean.  The Cornell band fit more songs than Clarkson did into the non-hockey portions (got three free ones pre-game and one extra one in the second intermission), and game stoppages were an even trade-off.  Maybe you're so used to hearing our old, tired stuff that it doesn't register. :-D

[Lauren '06]

[quote Rich S]And weren't the penalties 15-14 tonight?[/quote]
I'm sure Cornell was guilty of this as well, but there were several infractions by Clarkson that went unnoticed (two come to mind for me, though I know there were more from the amount of times the crowd went nuts: 1) when the Clarkson player had Barlow around the neck, threw him to the ice, and facewashed him in the first period there was no call, and 2) the nutty everybody-gets-penalized situation in the second period that led to the second Clarkson power play goal unfairly over-penalized the Big Red into a 5x3 when both teams were equally culpable--I mean the Clarkson player blatantly punched the Cornell player right in the cup in front of the entire student section!).  So noting the penalties as 15-14 doesn't really prove anything.

[TCHL8842]

Wow I just found out how volatile the Pwr and RPI rankings are right now.  The two wins this weekend moved us up from 27 to 12 in the RPI, I think that this rise caused our PWR to rise so much.  If you look closely the PWR rankings are generally close to the RPI ranking since RPI is a category in the PWR and also the tie-breaker.  Next weekend looks likes will bring our RPI back down though.  Hopefully this is the last weekend against really low competition (based on the RPI ranking). We still got 6 games against current TUCs and as we seen from this weekend wins against these teams can really boost our ranking.  Then again I think our team played a tremendous game today and it seemed like they played at that same level yesterday.  If we continue playing like this we could see good things in the future.

[Drew042]

RichS-  I have been an avid Cornell hockey fan since '97 and I am sure that I do see things with my Cornell tinted glasses, much like you see things with your Clarkson glasses.  However, that does not negate the fact in every Clarkson game that I have ever been to, as the game nears a close, you begin to wonder which Clarkson player is going to go off the deep end and try to hurt an opposing player.  I am not alone in this opinion, all the people who sit around us (who have been going to games a heck of a lot longer than I have) feel the same way.  But, if the only way that Clarkson can win is to recruit a team full of Nickersons then so be it.  Now, I may hate Harvard hockey as much as the next Cornell fan, but at least they are a program that knows how to play with class (excpet for Welch).

[Trotsky]

RichS has a habit of saying something reasonable in one sentence and then something idiotic in the next.  Suffice to say that Clarkson deserves its bad rep now for exactly the same reason that Cornell did seven years ago: inferior teams have to slow down superior teams somehow, and playing the body and taking a few liberties is one proven way.

Clarkson is an excellent program, and was the ECAC's principle representative in the NCAAs for nearly a decade.  During that time they were, if anything, a finesse team, and it was disappointing that they went one-and-done so often.

Morris cost the Knights many league games with his mismanagement of goaltenders, and God bless him for it.  But "goonery" doesn't fit in the same sentence as Clarkson, as much as Army, any Canadian college beginning with 'W', or Bobby Gaudet.

[ugarte]

I just want to interject that I am happy again.

Also, Tuba, lay off of Drew. He isn't a crazy defender of the faith.

[Tub(a)]

[quote ugarte]I just want to interject that I am happy again.
he
Also, Tuba, lay off of Drew. He isn't a crazy defender of the faith.[/quote]

Not in this thread anyways.

Rich, I admire your love for your team, but there is a reason that I don't complain about the on-ice behavior of any other ECACHL team (except for maybe Brown). Clarkson hasn't changed in the 4.5 years I've been watching them. Is that a limited perspective? Of course, but what happened 8 years ago is hardly relevant to the kind of team that Clarkson is today.

[redhair34]

[quote billhoward]
Cornell PK didn't do so well[/quote]

Maybe so, but I think some of that had to do with Clarkson's PP being very good.  It looked much better than the St. Lawrence PP.

[billhoward]

[quote redhair34][quote billhoward]
Cornell PK didn't do so well[/quote]
Maybe so, but I think some of that had to do with Clarkson's PP being very good.  It looked much better than the St. Lawrence PP.[/quote]
Power play effectiveness in any one game is at the mercy of the gods of small sample sizes. 1x7 isn't so good while 2x7 is a good evening (as Cornell and Clarkson both were), 3x7 is great, and 4x8 would be just south of freakin' incredible if you kept up that pace for several games in a row. But, yes, Clarkson looked decent on PP.

What if we calculated PP effectiveness relative to each opponent's PK effectiveness and made that a stat? For instance, Clarkson's PK is 86% or 14% allowed vs. Cornell's 29% so for that game we did 15 percentage points better than Clarkson's YTD average. (By the same token, relative to Clarkson's PK effectiveness, the Knights gave up one goal extra.)

St. Lawrence is also 86% on PK (14% allowed) and Corell was 2x9 Friday or 22% so we were 8 points better Friday than SLU's season average. Stats experts can help me out here b/c a 1x1 on PP is 100% and that's going to mess up the averages. (Maybe take the median rather than mean of all the season's relative-PP effectiveness calculations? Calculate it not as relative percentages but as PP goals scored vs. PK goals allowed on average, since 4x15 is so-so shooting but it's still 4 goals and that ought to win you most games? Maybe just forget about it and have another beer?)

[Jim Hyla]

[quote redhair34][quote billhoward]
Cornell PK didn't do so well[/quote]

Maybe so, but I think some of that had to do with Clarkson's PP being very good.  It looked much better than the St. Lawrence PP.[/quote]One thing I liked about their pp was when there was a scrum in front, sometimes they passed the puck out to the blueline for a hard shot, rather than always just trying to bang it in.

[Scersk '97]

[quote Jim Hyla]
One thing I liked about their pp was when there was a scrum in front, sometimes they passed the puck out to the blueline for a hard shot, rather than always just trying to bang it in.[/quote]

To my eye it looked more like a skip pass across the crease, after a quick pass to a defenseman that had already crowded towards the goal, but I was thinking the same thing.  Sometimes it's just impossible to bang it through in front, e.g. against Brown and their typical fall on the puck tactics.  Clarkson got quite a few looks at a lot of net from these passes--good thing they didn't bury them.

[Rich S]

and there were several cornell infractions that went unpenalized including a near-mugging; the only difference being that there wasn't a large Clarkson student section to scream to draw equal attention to it.

That said, I think that the 15-14 penalty stat says plenty about the game.  It also reminds us that McDonald was the ref and I hear he's been consistently awful this year.

[Rich S]

042,

If you and those around you, who share the same opinion (and glasses perhaps...lol) can recall that far back, you should reflect on the cornell players taking several runs at Todd White back in the '97 game at Lynah.  Was that the only way Schafer thought they could win?  Or head hunting after Erik Cole in '99?

I have never defended the on-ice undisciplined play of Nickerson in his ONE year at Clarkson and I won't now.  But for you to hold him up as the typical Clarkson recruit and say they recruit "a whole team of Nickersons" is simply ludicrous.  If you really believe that, then those glasses of yours are stornger than anyone could imagine.   :-D

As a factual matter, in the '97 and '99 games, the cornell squad was clearly the aggressor but neither game got out of controll as I recall.  I do recall being at a couple of games at Lynah in more recent years when a couple of your favorite Clarkson targets (one who's related to a former Clarkson coach and AD) got involved in late game or end-of-game dustups and it's fair to say they were the instigators by and large.

But please don't make the cornell players out to be choir boys because they were all-too-willing participants.  Hornby's name comes to mind and I can't recall the others but I do remember the video clips being proudly made available on this forum.

[Jim Hyla]

[quote Scersk '97][quote Jim Hyla]
One thing I liked about their pp was when there was a scrum in front, sometimes they passed the puck out to the blueline for a hard shot, rather than always just trying to bang it in.[/quote]

To my eye it looked more like a skip pass across the crease, after a quick pass to a defenseman that had already crowded towards the goal, but I was thinking the same thing.  Sometimes it's just impossible to bang it through in front, e.g. against Brown and their typical fall on the puck tactics.  Clarkson got quite a few looks at a lot of net from these passes--good thing they didn't bury them.[/quote]I think we're talking about two different things. I assume you're describing something like a backdoor play, or weak side pass. I was talking about passing it right back toward the blueline where a shot could be taken. Both are good change of paces.