Eliot's head?

I was looking at the "classic games" page on TBRW. Just wondering what "Eliot's head" (during the Feb. 1983 game vs. Harvard) means....

A Harvard fan threw an object that injured Eliot's head.

I think November 11, 1995 would make a good addition to this list - the box already exists on your site at [www.spiritone.com]

I agree. That does qualify as a Classic Game.

I hope eventually to include a short article outlining the significance of each game. Great comebacks, upsets, achievements, etc.

How about game one of the 1991 NCAAs at Michigan? Or the two ECAC QF wins over Harvard in 1990?

Also good choices. Game two at Denver in '86. The "own goal" comeback against RPI. Nieuwy's final weekend. Ryan Hughes' 4 goal loss vs BC.

If you're going to include losses, how about February 8, 1997 at Gutterson? Two stick check penalties, one stick check PPG, and another 6x5, falling just short of a five-goal comeback.

THE absolute classic game was Cornell-Providence, ECAC QFs, 1979. Where we came back from being 5-1 down in the third period to winning 6-5 in OT. Nethery ties it. Gemmell wins it in OT.

I've never been to a game like it before or since.

JH

I've been watching Cornell hockey for almost 40 years and the 1979 Providence games was indeed "the absolute classic game." There are a number of games in the 60s and 70s that could be added going back to our first victory over Harvard in 1962.

Also, it should be noted that Eliot geeting clunked with the beer can set off a big brawl that made Sports Illustrated.

IIRC, and I probably don't, it was a soda can. I know the Harvard student was severely and appropriately disciplined.

Don't forget the hotdogging shot at our empty net that went off the post. Years before anyone had heard of Leon Lett or Nick Boucher.

Greg wrote:

IIRC, and I probably don't, it was a soda can. I know the Harvard student was severely and appropriately disciplined.

It was a full can of beer. I believe the student was expelled.

Actually, it didn't even hit the post. It missed by a foot or two.

JH

Jeff Hopkins '82 wrote:
Actually, it didn't even hit the post. It missed by a foot or two.

Oops, I must have conflated that bit of lore with Jeff Oates' ENG in the SIT which went in off the post and/or the EN shot which led to Nicky Boucher's Leon Lett moment.

I wonder if this year's puck rolling on edge in the ECAC Championship game has replaced that as the most famous missed empty net. At least that one couldn't really be blamed on the opposing player.



Post Edited (05-06-03 15:07)

[q]I wonder if this year's puck rolling on edge in the ECAC Championship game has replaced that as the most famous missed empty net.[/q]

Depends on who (-m?) you talk to. Among students, of course, since they weren't born at the time of the Providence game. Among oldsters, of course not. Among we alumni who weren't there for the PU game? Personally, no, I think from the universal reaction that the Lynah game creates in people who actually saw the game, I am taking it on faith that that was the signature missed e.n. in our history.

I do think that the 0:33 tying goal is among the top ten moments in the history of the Harvard rivalry. Thank you, Mark!



Post Edited (05-06-03 16:20)

how about the cornell-brown game at lynah on 11/8/97? down two goals with about 6 minutes to go in the third, moynihan scores to pull within one at 15:59, dailey ties it (EAG) at 18:38, and knopp wins it at 18:58.

boxcore: [www.hockey.cornell.edu] (thanks KK).

it may not be a true "classic" (nothing really at stake), but certainly a great game to watch!

Greg, from one who saw both, this years EN was much more important, and to me will be the more famous over time. The 79 game was a classic, but if we had lost that game we not be talking about it past 1980, I'd bet.

However had we again lost this one to Harvard, with that EN being the deciding goal, then I'd bet (why I use that phrase twice is beyond me right now) this team, particularly the seniors would carry it around forever.

So, just on significance, to me it's the classic EN, if not the classic game.

John T. Whelan '91 wrote:

I wonder if this year's puck rolling on edge in the ECAC Championship game has replaced that as the most famous missed empty net. At least that one couldn't really be blamed on the opposing player.

I'm not so sure that there the Harvard guy shouldn't be blamed. He took a shot at the empty net from over 70 feet, and gave us a faceoff right in front of Dov when he missed. You can't blame him for missing the shot from that distance, but you can blame him for taking it.

big red apple wrote:
I'm not so sure that there the Harvard guy shouldn't be blamed. He took a shot at the empty net from over 70 feet, and gave us a faceoff right in front of Dov when he missed. You can't blame him for missing the shot from that distance, but you can blame him for taking it.

I may be remembering it wrong because of the emotion of the situation, but I recall that Harvard was under some pressure and the guy was sort of clearing it towards the empty net. I have this impression that Bob Norton, who normally harps on endlessly about defensive zone faceoffs, said it wasn't a bad play to launch it on that occasion, even though it ended up leading to a goal.

The Harvard game is one of Cornell's great wins, but I saw both games and the 1979 game is in a class by itself. First, the background. Providence had upset one of Cornell's best teams in '78 in the quarterfinals 8-5. Now we are down 5-2 in the third period in '79 quarters. We storm back to 5-4 and pull the goalie. What made the game so extraordinary was not that PC missed the empty net but did so on a BREAKAWAY. (Has anyone ever seen thast happen before or since?) The PC players on the ice had statred to celebrate and had to scramble to get back on defense, Nethery skated down and scored with 15 seconds or so left, and we won in overtime.

By the way in 1980 IIRC we had to beat BU in the final regular season of the year even to make the playoffs. The game went in to overtime and BU his the post before Cornell scored. We then got hot beat BC the number one seed in the quarters and went on and on to win the ECAC championship

[Q] We then got hot beat BC the number one seed in the quarters and went on and on to win the ECAC championship.[/Q]In fact that ECAC was a classic in itself, since we beat the no. 1 seed in the quarters, no.2 in the semis, and no. 3 in the finals. I don't know if that had ever happened, since they didn't always reseed the teams before. So if you beat the first seed, you used to take their position and would play a low seed. Does anyone remember when they started to reseed the teams after each round of the playoffs?

Well, I personally think it was a great play

However, if I were a Harvard (sucks!) fan, I'd have said "Wait till you cross the redline, you idiot!"

JH

As I recall, 1980 was the first time the #8 seed had EVER won the ECAC tourney.

Unfortunately, Providence repeated the feat the next year by beating us in the final in '81. Their semi was another great game. They pulled their goalie with less than a minute down 3-1, and scored two goals in the last minute to take the game to OT. It's the only time I've ever seen pulling the goalie work when down two goals.

JH

Jeff Hopkins '82 wrote:

As I recall, 1980 was the first time the #8 seed had EVER won the ECAC tourney.

Unfortunately, Providence repeated the feat the next year by beating us in the final in '81. Their semi was another great game. They pulled their goalie with less than a minute down 3-1, and scored two goals in the last minute to take the game to OT. It's the only time I've ever seen pulling the goalie work when down two goals.

JH

2001 NCAA Championship Game. North Dakota, down 2 - 0 to BC, pulls Goehring twice, and scores twice. It worked at least insofar as tying the game, even if BC would go on to win the game in overtime.

[www.collegehockeystats.com]

Jeff Hopkins '82 wrote:

As I recall, 1980 was the first time the #8 seed had EVER won the ECAC tourney.

Unfortunately, Providence repeated the feat the next year by beating us in the final in '81. Their semi was another great game. They pulled their goalie with less than a minute down 3-1, and scored two goals in the last minute to take the game to OT. It's the only time I've ever seen pulling the goalie work when down two goals.

JH

Providence was a #7 seed in 1981, Jeff. And they were playing #1 Clarkson in the semis--during that period when the Knights seemed always to be finding a way to melt-down in the ECACs (also see Clarkson's 1977 semifinal loss to BU after leading by--IIRC--three goals well into the third).

Jim Hyla '67 wrote:

[Q]Does anyone remember when they started to reseed the teams after each round of the playoffs?

1969 was not reseeded. 1973 was. The years between are indeterminate looking back on the results. I don't recall when the change was made.

The best thing was watching all the Clarkson fans show up 15 minutes before the championship was supposed to start only to find out their game ended a half hour before!

Tee hee!

JH

The epic 1980 run is captured here: [www.spiritone.com]

Cornell needed to beat Providence and win at BU just to make the playoffs in the first place; then they made the run of the ages at BC and against Providence and Dartmouth. Remarkably, Cornell came within a goal of getting all the way to the national final that year.

[q] It's the only time I've ever seen pulling the goalie work when down two goals.[/q]

Didn't Don Lucia once pull the goalie for the entire third period while at CC? IIRC, his team actually scored 2 or 3 goals... but gave up a bundle.

In the 80's an NHL team pulled the goalie and scored at least twice to tie it up. I think it was the Pens.

Greg wrote:

The epic 1980 run is captured here: [www.spiritone.com]

Cornell needed to beat Providence and win at BU just to make the playoffs in the first place; then they made the run of the ages at BC and against Providence and Dartmouth. Remarkably, Cornell came within a goal of getting all the way to the national final that year.

And the boneheads at insidecollegehockey.com didn't include it in their list of twelve biggest playoff upsets.

I don't recall the specifics but sometime back in the 50s--I think it was a Rangers-Canadiens game but I could be wrong--one of the two teams found itself in a position where, if it didn't win the game, it had to score some number of goals in the last game of the season to win some kind of tiebreaker in order to get into the Stanley Cup playoffs. Having fallen behind badly after two periods, they played most or all of the last period without a goalie trying to score enough goals to qualify. Didn't work, as I recall.



Post Edited (05-09-03 14:35)

Since we've drifted a bit from comebacks to empty nets, the WHL used to have an absurd round-robin qualifier for the Memorial Cup. On at least one occasion, two teams mutually pulled their goaltenders in the closing minutes of a tied game because a tie would have eliminated both, whereas a win would have advanced one. IIRC, it didn't matter because neither team got a shot on a goal.



Post Edited (05-09-03 14:21)

This is strictly from memory, so it's possible that the scores might be off a little, but I think it's pretty damn close to accurate. Going into the last day of the '69-'70 season, the Rangers were two points behind Montreal for the last playoff spot, and also needed to outscore the Habs by 5 goals to win the tiebreaker. The Rangers beat the Wings 9-3 in an afternoon game. In a night game which I listened to on the radio, the Canadiens fell behind the Hawks 5-2 somewhere in the third period with plenty of time left, at which point they knew the needed three more goals to make the playoffs regardless of the result of the game. They basically played the a good portion of final period without a goalie and lost 10-2, allowing five ENG's.



Post Edited (05-09-03 18:00)

There was a game we lost to Brown in the '70's in which we pulled the goalie down 3 goalies and scored twice and almost got the tying goal. It was one of the years when PBS was doing some Saturday afternoon TV games. I've also seen teams tie it from two down several times in the pros. There was one season in the mid or late '70's (I was living in New Hampshire then) when the Bruins got tied twice like that. At least one of them was against the Flyers, maybe both.

Well, to keep this new thread, 1989 we went to Clarkson for 1/4 finals. That was in the days of the 10 min. mini game to decide the winner ,if the first two games were split.

We won the first 5-3, and the second was 0-0 in the third when Clarkson pulled their goalie to try and win. Neither of us could score, but it was the most exciting 60 minutes of 0-0 I can remember. With the mini game they did not play overtime.

I was not at that 0-0 Potsdam game. Is it correct that with the Clarkson net empty Cornell hit the post, then Clarkson collected the puck and set up an excellent scoring chance in the final seconds?

I don't remember if it hit the post, but excellent chance,yes.

I remember a Bruins/Stars game in Dallas, sometime in the mid-nineties before the Stars were good, where not only did the Stars pull the goalie and score twice to tie the game, but scored again in regulation to win it once the goalie was back in. Ah, yet another devastating early-season loss to tell the fans "this isn't the year."

BTW, if anybody would like to help collect box scores for some of these classic games, I would appreciate it. I have all the ECAC finals we have ever appeared in, and I have all the games since 1996. In addition, I got all the games from my students years (82-86) a few years back by copying them out from microfiche of the Ithaca Journal in Olin Library.

If nothing else, I would love to have box scores of all the NCAA Frozen Four games we have ever been in, the two Providence games 78 and 79, and the 91 Michigan Miracle. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to find these anywhere but the internet, and so far I have not found them.



Post Edited (05-12-03 17:13)

I'll check my archives. I'm pretty sure I have the boxes of all of Cornell's final four games.

That would be wonderful Richard; thanks.

Jim Hyla '67 wrote:
We won the first 5-3, and the second was 0-0 in the third when Clarkson pulled their goalie to try and win. Neither of us could score, but it was the most exciting 60 minutes of 0-0 I can remember. With the mini game they did not play overtime.

What made this game really nerve-wracking is that Dan Ratushny got caught with an illegal stick with about 40 seconds left (see, other coaches do it!), giving Clarkson a power play to end the game. That's when the Knights pulled their goalie, to set up a 6-on-4.

I always felt a little bad for Clarkson goalie Jason Poirier. I'm not sure how much he played with Big Red nemesis John Fletcher around, but when Fletcher imploded in the first game of the series and allowed four goals in two periods, Poirier took over to start the third. Except for being pulled at the end of each game (Cornell's fifth goal was an empty-netter), Poirier played the rest of the way, didn't allow a goal... and then went home.

Bill, thanks for reminding me about the penalty on Ratushny. I had forgotten. Jogging one's memory, for us old folks, is a good thing.

[Q]
Jim H. wrote:

Does anyone remember when they started to reseed the teams after each round of the playoffs?

Al D. wrote:

1969 was not reseeded. 1973 was. The years between are indeterminate looking back on the results. I don't recall when the change was made.
[/Q]

There would have been reseeding in '72 for sure. I remember hanging around the radio broadcasters after the quarterfinal waiting for the Harvard-Clarkson overtime score, as that impacted whether we play UNH or Clarkson. My guess is that the reseeding system started in '71, as I remember an early discussion about it with a '71 grad who wasn't there in '72 - but it was definitely '71 + or - 1 year.



Post Edited (05-14-03 19:49)