OK, maybe it's a little early to be talking about next year's schedules, but
I do have a comment or two about the one for Union that Jim Teresco posted:
 
>12/27/91        at RPI (RPI Invy)       ECAC
>12/28/91        at RPI Invy             nlg
> The first round game of the RPI Tournament will be counted as a league game.
>The second round games will be non-league.
 
Aack!  Bleah!  Phooey!  *retch*  So RPI and Union will meet in the first
round of the RPI Invitational (as usual) and it will count as an ECAC
game?!?  I see a couple of problems with this setup:
 
1.   A first-round tournament game cannot be considered "just another league
     game" because it is played under slightly different rules.  Consider
     what would happen if RPI and Union were tied at the end of regulation
     in this game (this is not as far-fetched as it seems; RPI and Union
     have played a few close ones in the past).  In a league contest, the
     two teams would play up to five minutes of sudden-death OT, and if no
     one scored, the game would go into the books as a tie.  However, a
     tournament game can't end in a deadlock -- except maybe for the conso-
     lation -- so the two teams would keep playing (ten-minute) overtimes
     until someone scored.  I can just see RPI beating Union in double over-
     time or something in the first-round game, depriving Union of a perhaps
     critical point that the Dutchmen would have gotten had the game been
     played under the normal, single-five-minute-OT scenario.
 
2.   Since one of its normally non-league tournament games is now counting
     as an ECAC game, RPI can schedule what amounts to an extra game, and no
     other ECAC team can do so.  ECAC teams are limited to a maximum of 30
     games (Ivies 26, Union apparently 25), and as the league schedule takes
     up 22 of them, the schools can schedule 8 non-league contests.  Now
     Colgate, like RPI, hosts a tournament (the Syracuse Invitational),
     which eats up two of their permitted non-league games, leaving six.
     With the RPI-Union tournament matchup counting in the ECAC standings,
     the RPI Invitational will take up only one non-league game, leaving the
     Engineers free to schedule *seven*.  Unless they choose to play teams
     from Alaska, no other ECAC school can host or play in a tournament and
     then schedule seven other games.  I admit this is a little nit-picky,
     but I hope the ECAC takes it into consideration.  The scheduling is
     convoluted enough without things like this going on.
 
One Cornell note:  All-American defenseman Dan Ratushny has been invited to
try out for the Canadian Olympic hockey team, and he is going to do so in
August.  Some of the comments he made in an interview indicate that he has
played his last Cornell game whether he makes the Canadian team or not.  In
talking about what he'll be doing until August, Ratushny said, "... it's
also important for me to get a good deal of my degree done.... I'm thinking
of taking a course this summer and make sure I can finish up that degree as
quickly as possible."  He goes on to talk about how playing Olympic-level
hockey will help prepare him for a shot at the pros.
 
This amounts to a "dog bites man" story, since people have been pushing
Ratushny as an Olympian for about two years.  Now we're waiting to see what
Kent Manderville and Ryan Hughes are going to do.  It could be a very long
1991-92 season for the Big Red...
 
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86
LET'S GO RED!!
 
"The biggest adjustment for me... when I got my own apartment, was learning
 how to shop.  I didn't know how to shop for myself.  Like I bought a 90-slice
 loaf of bread -- I said, 'Wow, this'll last me three months', right?  The
 damn thing turned to penicillin before I got halfway through it."
-- Franklin Ajaye