Only one home team lost in this, the last weekend for most of the ECAC
before the December break. The North Country road trip proved to be as
tough as ever, as two teams again failed to come away from St. Lawrence and
Clarkson with a point (though RPI came pretty close). Which got me to
thinking about what the toughest road trip in the ECAC has been this season.
Certainly the North Country has been as unkind as usual, with Clarkson and
St. Lawrence a combined 8-0 at home against the rest of the ECAC, and a
combined 10-1 overall (BC beat St. Lawrence at Appleton back in October).
It turns out, however, that there is another pair of travel partners that
has not lost *at all* in their home arenas, combining for a 5-0 home record
(3-0 against ECAC competition). You're not going to believe who it is --
Vermont and Dartmouth. No, they haven't played that many home games, they
didn't play this weekend, and I'm not expecting the two teams to continue to
go undefeated at home, but I thought this was kind of an interesting stat.
The flip side is not so good, though -- Vermont and Dartmouth are a combined
1-9 on the road, worst in the ECAC.
One other note: on Thursday, ECAC Executive Director of Hockey Joe Bertagna
faxed a memo to all the ECAC teams asking them to observe a moment of
silence before each of the weekend's games, in memory of Colgate coach Terry
Slater.
ECAC scores from the weekend:
Friday, December 6:
Brown 5, CORNELL 5 (OT)
CLARKSON 6, Union 1
ST. LAWRENCE 8, Rpi 4
Yale 5, PRINCETON 3
Saturday, December 7:
CLARKSON 4, Rpi 3 (OT)
ST. LAWRENCE 7, Union 3
YALE 8, Princeton 4
Sunday, December 8:
Harvard 2, CORNELL 2 (OT)
ECAC standings as of 12/9/91:
League Overall
Team W L T Pts GF GA W L T Pts GF GA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yale 6 0 1 13 40 25 6 0 1 13 40 25
Clarkson 6 0 0 12 35 15 10 1 0 20 64 30
Harvard 4 1 2 10 34 18 4 1 2 10 34 18
St. Lawrence 5 1 0 10 37 21 7 3 1 15 66 43
Brown 3 3 1 7 29 31 3 4 1 7 34 40
Cornell 2 2 2 6 18 17 2 4 2 6 22 25
Princeton 2 6 0 4 33 38 2 6 0 4 33 38
Vermont 2 4 0 4 21 27 5 5 0 10 42 35
Dartmouth 1 3 0 2 10 29 1 4 0 2 12 32
Colgate 1 3 0 2 16 24 1 6 1 3 28 43
RPI 1 5 0 2 14 28 5 6 0 10 40 50
Union 0 5 0 0 12 26 1 6 0 2 28 38
Notes on some of the games:
Brown 5, Cornell 5 (OT)
You want to talk about "luck" -- Cornell was lucky they didn't lose
this game, in spite of the three-goal lead they had in the second
period. The Big Red delivered so many breakaway opportunities to Brown
that the Bears literally didn't know what to do with them all, com-
pletely blowing at least three. Brown was skating and forechecking
well, and they were able to force a number of mistakes, but the Bears
really are not quite as good a team as Cornell made them look Friday
night. On the plus side for the Big Red, their offense was clicking a
little better, and when the defense wasn't out of position, they were
doing a decent job of keeping Brown away from the puck and of clearing
rebounds.
Cornell got on the board 2:30 into the first period, when defenseman
Marc Deschamps shovelled the puck over to Jason Vogel, who fired a
blast from the left point that took Brown goaltender Geoff Finch by
surprise. Brown's first big opportunity came a few minutes later, when
two Cornell players took each other out at the blue line, enabling a
Bear to take the puck in on a 1-on-0 break -- but he waited too long to
shoot, and the puck bounced harmlessly off the side of the net. Brown
did tie the game with 1:15 left in the first, and with one second left
in a Cornell penalty. Brown was able to mount a lot of pressure in the
Cornell end during their power play, and the payoff came on a Mike
Traggio slapshot from the blue line that Tim Chase deflected behind a
screened Parris Duffus.
All sorts of fun things happened in the second period, when the action
heated up and referee Tim MacConaghy was hard-pressed to keep control
of the game. Speaking of control of the game, Cornell appeared to have
it after scoring twice in the period's first minute on virtually
identical plays. Thirty-three seconds in, Paul Dukovac lofted a shot
from the right point that a screened Finch never saw as it sailed past
his head. Then, just 16 seconds later, Dukovac fired from the point
again, and this time his shot was tipped in front by Karl Williams.
After this goal, Cornell's Phil Nobel and Brown's Scott Hanley got into
a roll-around-on-the-ice slugfest in front of the net. Both were
whistled for roughing minors and ten-minute misconducts, which makes me
wonder what you have to do to get a fighting major/DQ these days (the
same thing happened in the Clarkson game, and there was even a third
man in on that one).
Cornell kept the pressure on, as Shaun Hannah bounced a shot off the
crossbar ten seconds after Williams' goal. A little later in the
period, Traggio got hit with an interference call, and earned himself a
misconduct after mouthing off to the ref. However, MacConaghy at first
neglected to put a second Brown player into the box (to come out when
the minor expired). It was only after the whole scorers' table
hollered and rang the buzzer to get his attention that MacConaghy found
out what was wrong -- a sight that was amusing, to say the least. (In
fairness to MacConaghy, he had a reasonably good game otherwise. This
was not an easy one to officiate.) Later on, Dukovac fired his third
shot from near the blue line, and this one went through Finch and
bounced off the goalpost. Maybe Dukovac should have camped out on the
blue line all night.
Anyway, Geoff Bumstead put the Big Red up 4-1 at the 11:36 mark, taking
a centering pass from Todd Chambers and coming in alone on Finch,
flipping in a wrist shot. Half a minute later, Deschamps was hit with
an interference minor and a misconduct (all these minor-misconduct
calls made the game look like a square dance for a while -- "Swing your
partner into the box"). On the ensuing power play, Mark Shaughnessy
skated toward the Cornell net with the puck, then passed to the right
side of the crease, where Mike Brewer had an open net to shoot at.
With about two and a half minutes left in the second, Cornell got
caught off guard on a line change, when Finch came out to the faceoff
circle and passed the puck to a forward. This set Brown up on a
3-on-1, but Duffus somehow stopped the shot. Seconds later, however,
Derek Chauvette found Sascha Pogor alone behind a fallen Cornell
defenseman, and Pogor banged home a backhander to bring the Bears
within one.
Mike Brewer completed Brown's comeback 54 seconds into the third, as he
took a shot from the left side that Duffus lost control of and the puck
rolled across the line. Cornell went back on top less than two minutes
later when Russ Hammond caught his own rebound and fired it through
Finch's pads. Chauvette's blast from the blue line at the 13:04 mark
ended the scoring, although Brown had a couple more chances (on break-
aways) to pick up the game-winner. Duffus did not have his best game
statistically, but he staved off several 1-on-0 chances and finished
with 23 saves; Finch had 24.
Harvard 2, Cornell 2 (OT)
Dave Smith writes:
>Sigh. Can't we ever beat Harvard in the regular season?
This was a sentiment that was also expressed in a couple of newspapers
this morning, but lemme tell ya -- I'll take the tie. Although this is
by no means the Crimson team of old (it's been a while since I've seen
Harvard play so much dump-and-chase), they were still quite a bit
faster than the Big Red and outplayed them through the first period and
part of the second. The extra day of rest did help Cornell, though --
now why didn't anybody think of that before the Clarkson game?
This being Cornell-Harvard, the announcement about throwing objects on
the ice was read, and then at the request of Cornell head coach Brian
McCutcheon, repeated, before the action started. (It worked -- for a
while) The game was pretty rough at the beginning, and Harvard looked
a little disorganized, but they pulled things together and scored on
the night's first power play. Steve Flomenhoft fired a shot from the
right side at the 7:16 mark that hit inside the post and bounced out
again. Cornell goalie Parris Duffus quickly swept the puck out of the
crease and almost got away with it, but referee John Gallagher blew the
play dead and signalled for the goal. The Big Red seemed to go flat
after that, and the Crimson was up 2-0 less than five minutes later.
Freshmen Ben Coughlin and Steve Martins worked a give-and-go on a
short-handed 2-on-1 break, as a Cornell defenseman missed taking
Coughlin out of the play. Martins drew Duffus to the right side, then
slid the puck across the goal mouth to Coughlin, who had nothing but
net to shoot at.
Cornell came out a little more organized for the second period, and
they had a 2-on-1 break of their own with a minute gone, but the
Harvard defenseman blocked Phil Nobel's shot. At 7:14 of the second,
Harvard defenseman Sean McCann foolishly belted Cornell's Alex Nikolic
in the jaw, and the Big Red cut the deficit in half on the ensuing
power play. Ryan Hughes took a shot that Shaun Hannah deflected into
the right corner of the net past Harvard goaltender Chuckie Hughes, who
was filling in for an injured Allain Roy. This was Cornell's first
man-up goal in 23 chances.
There was no more scoring in the second period, and then during the
intermission, one Cornell fan decided to make things difficult by
tossing a fish out on the ice. Referee John Gallagher immediately
assessed a delay-of-game penalty on the Cornell bench, which predict-
ably was an unpopular call. It wasn't exactly delaying the "game",
since the incident occurred with 50 seconds left in the intermission.
On the other hand, whatever nuclear physicist launched that frozen
missile came within a couple inches of hitting a linesman in the head,
and Gallagher sure as hell wasn't going to let THAT go. The throwing-
objects announcement was read again "for those of you who either didn't
hear or didn't understand it" (is that one accurate, Arthur? :-) For-
tunately for the Big Red, they were able to keep Harvard off the board
during the power play.
When Cornell blew a 52-second 5-on-3 opportunity near the end of the
second period, I said to my friend Ben, "That's it, we're not going to
score again without a miracle." Well, 7:02 into the third period, the
Big Red sort of got one. Joe Dragon shot the puck between two Harvard
defensemen, picked up the puck at the rear boards, and passed back to
Jason Vogel, who fired a shot at the Harvard goal. Chuckie Hughes
blocked the puck and covered it with his glove, but he didn't have
control of it. Ryan Hughes skated in and whacked at the glove, and the
puck popped loose and into the net. About five minutes later, Cornell
had a golden opportunity at the game-winner. Chuckie Hughes came out
to the right circle to play a loose puck, but Phil Nobel got to it
first. He appeared to have an empty net to shoot at, but he never got
the chance, because Hughes tripped him up. Hughes was called for
tripping, but the Big Red could not convert on the power play. Cornell
dominated the rest of the third period, and Harvard controlled most of
the overtime, but both goalies came up big to preserve the tie. Duffus
had 18 saves, while Hughes stopped 24 shots in his best performance of
the season.
Also, I am happy to report that the creative juices are once again
flowing for the Cornell fans. There were a number of imaginative (and
un-crude!) cheers from the Lynah Faithful during this game, the best of
which occurred in the overtime period:
(pointing to the Cornell goal) "DUFF-us!"
(pointing to the Harvard goal) "DOO-fus!"
Even McCutcheon seemed to like that one.
Not much of an ECAC schedule this weekend, although there is the Big North
Country battle at Clarkson's new digs... on Friday the 13th yet! Here's the
abbreviated schedule:
Dec. 13
St. Lawrence at Clarkson
Princeton at Notre Dame (NC)
Dec. 14
Princeton at Notre Dame (NC)
--
Bill Fenwick | Send your HOCKEY-L poll responses to:
Cornell '86 and probably '94 | [log in to unmask]
LET'S GO RED!!
"NCAA."
"NCAA?"
"No Class At All!"
-- "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids"
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