Going in, the series at Lynah between CornelL and Colgate figured to be the
closest and most intense of all the ECAC quarterfinals. It matched two travel
partners who had finished only two points apart in the standings and had split
their regular-season meetings, it was the only quarterfinal series to feature
two teams with better than 0.500 records in the league, and to top it off, the
rivalry between these two has gotten rather bitter. All things considered, it
looked like the two teams were headed for a war.
Well, no. Both games were dominated by Cornell, and while things were close on
the scoreboard for the first 30 minutes both nights, the Big Red wound up
posting a pair of blowout wins, 8-3 on Friday and 8-1 on Saturday. Cornell out-
skated and out-hustled the Red Raiders, who suffered a disappointing end to a
season in which they figured to be challenging for the league's top spot. The
16 goals that Cornell scored on the weekend is, I believe, the third-most ever
in an ECAC quarterfinal series, trailing only the 18 that the Big Red put up
against Colgate five years ago and the 18 that RPI scored on Princeton in
1985.
Some notes on an amazing weekend at Lynah:
Cornell 8, Colgate 3
It took the Big Red a while to get into this one, as Colgate had some good
chances early on -- but Cornell would get fired up and dominate play most of the
way. Goaltender Jason Elliott was huge in the early going, as he denied the
Red Raiders on several opportunities while Cornell was getting itself together.
Elliott's first big test came at 5:49 of the first period, when the Red Raiders
suddenly developed a 2-on-1 right in front of him. Elliott stayed with the
puck all the way, however, and was able to make a nice pad save on a quick shot
from near the left post, kicking the rebound to the back boards. (One of the
biggest areas of improvement for Elliott this year has been in his control of
rebounds; he smothers them or gets them away from the crease much better than
he did last year or even earlier this season) The Cornell netminder came up
with another big one at the seven-minute mark. A pass from the left side came
to a Colgate forward who was all alone next to the net; he tried to bunt the
puck in while it was still in the air, but Elliott raced over and made a
brilliant save to keep the game scoreless.
That one seemed to spark the Big Red, and they responded with the game's first
goal at 8:08 of the first. Vinnie Auger's pass from behind the goal bounced off
the side of the net and came out front to Mike Sancimino, who skated across the
goalmouth and snapped the puck through goalie Dan Brenzavich's pads. (Bren-
zavich came into the weekend having suffered a groin injury in the Red Raiders'
final regular-season game against Clarkson. He looked pretty shaky both nights,
and you have to wonder if backup Matt Weder, who played several games when
Brenzavich injured his calf midway through the season, would have started if
this had not been the playoffs)
Cornell made it 2-0 at the 9:36 mark on a Brad Chartrand goal that one can
easily run out of adjectives trying to describe. (Let's try "unbelievable",
"spectacular", and "awe-inspiring" for starters) Chartrand intercepted a poor
Colgate pass at his own blue line and started up the ice with two Red Raider
defenders in front of him. The Cornell captain eluded an attempted hook by
Jack McIntosh and skated into the Colgate end, making a quick move to his right
that John Dance fell down trying to match. With a clear path to the goal,
Chartrand fired a low shot that caught the net just inside the left post.
Colgate was starting to play a disorganized game by this point, and the Big Red
had a couple of golden opportunities to pad their lead. With seven minutes
left in the first, Cornell skated in on a 3-on-1 break, but Brenzavich came up
with a big save. A few minutes later, a long clearing pass went through the
defense and set up Vinnie Auger on a clean breakaway, but Auger slipped trying
to go to his backhand and was unable to get the shot off. The Red Raiders cut
the deficit to one with a minute left in the first period. Mike Harder got
past defenseman Bill Holowatiuk and, with Holowatiuk trying to take him down,
fell to his knees but got off the shot anyway, a soft fluttering thing that
eluded Elliott.
Cornell restored its two-goal lead 23 seconds into the second period. Tony
Bergin skated in from center ice and, with Rod Pamenter hanging all over him, got off a one-handed shot that Brenzavich dropped to the ice to stop. With
the goalie still down, Jamie Papp skated in and flipped the loose puck home.
Colgate responded just 48 seconds later, when defenseman Steve Wilson tried to
tip the puck away from Earl Cronan in the slot and wound up sending it over to
Tim Loftsgard. Loftsgard and Cronan rushed the net, and Loftsgard's shot just
got by Elliott's right skate.
The score would remain at 3-2 for the next ten minutes before the Big Red ex-
ploded for five unanswered goals. Steve Wilson got things started with a hard
one-timer from the point that Brenzavich got a pad on. The puck came loose in
front of the net, where first Sancimino and then Ryan Smart hacked at it,
finally getting it over the goal line at the 11:39 mark. With five minutes
left in the period, Chartrand almost scored on another terrific individual
effort, as he went end-to-end on a short-handed breakaway, fired a shot off
Brenzavich's chest, and came close to tipping his own rebound through the five-
hole. Colgate also came close to lighting the lamp, as an incredible flurry
in front of the Cornell net forced Elliott to make a number of great saves
before he was finally able to cover up for the faceoff.
Moments after all that, Cornell made it 5-2 at 16:56 of the second. Kyle Knopp
skated in from the Colgate blue line on a mini-break and almost lost the puck,
but got off a shot toward the net. At the same time, both P.C. Drouin and
Chad Wilson skated toward the crease, and when the puck came loose to Brenza-
vich's right, Wilson was there to flip it into the top of the net.
The game started getting chippy at this point, and several times it looked like
referees Alex Dell and Mike Noeth were going to lose control of it. Fortu-
nately, things didn't get totally out of hand, although Colgate co-captain
Earl Cronan crumpled to the ice with under two minutes left and was down for
quite a while. I didn't see what happened, but I would suspect he was slammed
into the boards. He was eventually helped up and skated off the ice to the
locker room under his own power, but he was bent over, holding his arm and
clearly in pain. He separated his left shoulder and would not see any more
ice time for the rest of the weekend.
Colgate came out playing better in the third period, but the Big Red didn't let
up. Four minutes in, with the Red Raiders on a power play, Andre Doll caught
up to a clearing pass and skated in on a short-handed break, firing over the
crossbar. That was only a preview of what happened at the 5;34 mark, when
Sancimino made it 6-2 with a short-hander of his own on a great individual
effort. Sancimino tipped the puck away from the Red Raiders at center ice, skated up left wing, went behind the net and came out to the right circle,
wound up for a shot, and blasted the puck past a partially screened Brenzavich.
Sancimino came close to notching what would have been his first career hat
trick a couple minutes later, when he tried a wrap-around, but the puck skit-
tered through the crease. However, with Brenzavich still looking the other
way, Smart was right on the doorstep to flip the puck into the open left side
of the net at 7:39 of the third.
That was all for Brenzavich, as Weder came into the game at that point. Weder
was able to keep the Big Red at bay for a while, coming up with a couple of big
saves, but at 15:12, Chartrand finally solved him, tracking down a Matt Cooney
rebound and wristing it past the goalie on the glove side. The Red Raiders got
the game's final goal with 3:02 left off a scramble in the Cornell slot;
Elliott made a few pad saves on point-blank shots, but Dru Burgess kept hacking
at the loose puck until it finally went in.
Elliott played an outstanding game, stopping 30 shots. Brenzavich had 20 saves,
and Weder stopped five of the six shots he faced.
Cornell 8, Colgate 1
This one started out being the type of close game that was expected when these
two were matched up in the playoffs. Cornell trailed 1-0 after the first 20
minutes despite holding a 13-6 advantage in shots on goal. However, the Big
Red continued their solid play from the night before and didn't let up,
scoring four times in the second and third periods to sweep the quarterfinal
series with another rout. Earl Cronan was on the bench in street clothes for
the Red Raiders, while Cornell had to make do without Vinnie Auger, whose back
was giving him problems again (freshman Jeff Oates took his place in the
lineup).
Cornell spent most of the first period in the Colgate end, even when Colgate
had a power play early on (the Big Red actually out-shot the Red Raiders on that
power play). However, goalie Dan Brenzavich had seemingly recovered from his
embarrassing performance the night before, and he came up with several terrific
saves to keep Cornell off the board. Meanwhile, Dru Burgess got the only goal
of the first period two minutes before intermission, when Scott Steeves sent him
the puck from behind the Cornell net and he tapped the puck through the five-
hole as goaltender Jason Elliott was going down.
It didn't take the Big Red long to even things up, as P.C. Drouin sent a pass
over to the left point, where Steve Wilson one-timed a blast over Brenzavich's
right pad 48 seconds into the middle period. Mark Scollan had a chance to give
Cornell the lead four minutes later, as he chased down a loose puck in the
Colgate zone, but Brenzavich came way out of the net and dove to poke the puck
away. Nevertheless, the Big Red did take the lead for good at the 6:19 mark,
when Brad Chartrand slated across the blue line on a 2-on-1 break with Scollan.
Defenseman Brad Dexter dove to break up the play, but Chartrand simply maneu-
vered around him and, with Brenzavich dropping to the ice, fired a shot over
him into the net from the right circle.
The Red Raiders had a chance to tie the score seconds later, as they caught
Elliott out of position and had an open net to shoot at, but the puck bounced
harmlessly off the left post. Colgate went on the power play again at the 6:55
mark, but once again, Cornell was the team showing more hustle, as Chartrand
nearly struck for the short-handed goal. He skated the length of the ice and
let fly with a high shot from the slot that Brenzavich was barely able to get
a piece of. But Chartrand was able to set up the Big Red's third goal at the
12:41 mark with some more fancy moves, eluding a diving Burgess at the right point and sending a long pass over to Scollan, who had most of the net to tap
the puck into.
Chartrand made it 4-1 at 15:49 of the second, as he skated in on another break-
away. When a nervous Brenzavich dove too early, Chartrand skated around him
and backhanded the puck into the open net. The goal was Chartrand's 24th of
the season; in his previous three campaigns, the senior had tallied a total of
23. Colgate coach Don Vaughan called his timeout at that point, and it had some
effect, as Cornell would not score again until midway through the third (but
then, Colgate didn't either).
During the second intermission, the Cornell women's hockey team, which won the
Ivy League with an 8-1-1 record and made their first-ever trip to the ECAC
playoffs, was honored. Cornell's fifth goal came at 11:17 of the third, when
Kyle Knopp found Drouin at the top of the right circle and the senior wing
unleashed a rocket that beat Brenzavich high to the stick side. Cornell's
checking line of Jamie Papp, Andre Doll, and Tony Bergin then combined for a
pair of goals, with Papp scoring both. At the 15:47 mark, Papp's low wrister
from the right side beat Brenzavich as he was going down, and then, on a play
that looked like the mirror image of that one, Papp snapped one past the Red
Raider goalie from the left circle with 2:49 remaining.
The final goal of the game came at the 18:28 mark and was scored by senior
Geoff Lopatka, who had endured a frustrating season, lighting the lamp just once
prior to Saturday night. The goal was a short-hander to boot; Doll pounced on
a giveaway in front of the Colgate crease and bounced a shot off the side of
the net, and Lopatka got the loose puck and flipped it over Brenzavich. From
his celebratory skate the length of the ice, backwards, crouched on one leg,
you might have thought he had just scored a natural hat trick including the
game-winner in OT (which he actually did in the preliminary round against
Princeton two uears ago), but I can't fault him for that -- he's had a really
rough time of it this year, and it was nice to see him get in on the act in the
quarterfinals.
And then the game was over, and Chartrand was beckoning the fans to come over
the glass and join the team's on-ice celebration -- which a good number of them
did (yes, including yours truly). Elliott had another superb game, stopping 22
of 23 shots, and he, along with the rest of the Big Red, appears to be peaking
at just the right time. Brenzavich had 28 saves.
Cornell makes their first trip to Lake Placid for the ECAC semifinals this
Friday (the Big Red has made appearances at Lake Placid for the NCAA tournament
in 1970 and various other tourneys in the '80s), taking on Clarkson. This will
be Cornell's first trip to the ECAC Phinal Phour in phour years, when their
opponent was... Clarkson. Judging from what I saw this weekend, the other semi-
finalists are going to have a great deal to worry about from this Big Red team.
One final note: the most heartfelt cheer from the Lynah Faithful came with a
couple minutes left in the second game, when they spontaneously broke into
"Thank you, Schafer!" The coach seemed pretty touched by this; I think I saw
him grin, right before he hugged assistant coach Matt Carlin.
On to the semis! It's been quite a ride for the 1995-96 edition of the Big
Red... and it ain't over yet...
--
Disclaimer -- Unless otherwise noted, all opinions expressed above are
strictly those of:
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86 and '95
LET'S GO RED!!
Rebuild the Tradition DJF 5/27/94
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