Sigh.  Can't we ever beat Harvard in the regular season?  Last year at Lynah,
the Red scored (Tim Vanini '91 was it?) with about 54 seconds remaining in
regulation to force an identical 2-2 tie, and apparently, it took a Ryan Hughes
third period goal to cause the tie this year after Cornell fell behind 2-0
in the first period.  Again, I will leave it to the others to fill in more
details since my knowledge of the game is necessarily second-hand.
 
The Red heads into its final exam break with an ECAC record of 2-2-2 (2-4-2
overall with losses to HE rivals Providence[5-4,OT] and BC [3-0]). I felt in
the beginning of the year that due to the number of losses both to graduation
and to Team Canada that this team would start slow even though it has a number
of experiences seniors on it.  The graduation of two of last year's top
three scorers in Trent Andison and Doug Derraugh, the graduation of defensive
players Bruce Frauley and Tim Vanini as well as goaltenders Corrie D'Alessio
and Jim Crozier would be enough to cause problems on any team.  However, the
additional losses of Kent Manderville and All-American defenseman Dan Ratushny
to Team Canada created a situation where I felt it would take the fall part of
the season for this team to define who its leaders would be and to develop a
sense of chemistry on the ice. (With the possible exception of Bruce Frauley, I
believe of the players lost from last year's team had been on varsity since
their freshman years.)
 
I believed that the Red would be in good shape if they could get out of the
fall around.500, and they have accomplished that much fairly well.  They are
still searching for leadership on offense, but have had consistant play in goal
from Parris Duffus and the defense seemed to manage to at least lower the shots
on goal this weekend to a more acceptable level--although,as Art Mintz
mentioned, many of the shots were apparently high qualty shots due to dumb
defensive plays.
 
What's the point of this rambling you may be asking at this point?  It's simply
this.  This team now has a month off to fix the things that weren't right in
this early part of the schedule.  Cornell is senior-laden, and many of those
seniors have four years of varsity experience.  Now that they have had time to
adjust to their losses from last year and have a better sense of who they are
on the ice, I believe this may be a team that will make a move come January,
February, and Tourney-Time. Perhaps some of the others who have had more of an
opportunity to see this team have a different opinion, but I believe they can
be a contender and will be a dangerous team to play in the second half.
 
 
--
R. David Smith (Dave) [log in to unmask]
Cornell '91 OSU Med '95
Let's Go Red!
In the afterlife, the Faithful will be rewarded.  (The Lynah Faithful that is.)