OK, you've heard the grumbling... now here are the gory details:
Colgate 4, Cornell 3
I'm looking at my notes from last night, trying to find something I
might have written down which would change my opinion of the first
period of this game. Well, I haven't been successful. That may very
well have been the worst-played period of hockey I've seen by a Cornell
team in my eleven years of watching the Big Red. Yes, Andy Bandurski
was doing a solid, sometimes spectacular, job in the net for Cornell,
but the rest of the team looked lost. Under coach Brian McCutcheon,
the Big Red has been a team that relies on an aggressive forecheck, and
that part of the game was completely absent in the first period last
night. Not only were the players tentative, they looked like they were
afraid to try anything out there. The result was that the Red Raiders
skated through the Cornell zone at will, and the Big Red had an awful
time just controlling the puck, much less clearing it. Frankly,
Cornell was exceedingly lucky to come out of this period down only 1-0.
A giveaway in the Cornell zone (and there were a lot of those) set
Colgate's Marcel Richard up with a breakaway (there were a lot of those
too) a minute and a half into the game, but he wound up firing the puck
over the net. Less than a minute later, Clayton Fahey poked the puck
through the legs of Cornell defenseman Dan Dufresne, retrieved it in
the slot, and wristed one that Bandurski deflected to the left side.
However, Dufresne elected to show his frustration by punching Fahey in
the face, and referee Dan Murphy decided to reward Dufresne with a
minor for roughing. It took the Red Raiders just four seconds to cash
in, as Bruce Gardiner won the ensuing faceoff, drawing the puck back to
Andrew Dickson. Dickson's cross-ice pass found Richard at the left
point, and he cut loose with a blast that sailed over Bandurski's right
shoulder and into the net at the 2:29 mark.
A minute and a half later, Colgate was at it again, as they came across
the blue line in a 3-on-2, which quickly became a 2-on-1. Dufresne
tried to keep a Colgate player from getting to the net but succeeded
only in giving him a sort of weak shove, so that the player (I think it
was Sam Raffoul) was right on the doorstep for the centering feed, and
he put the puck past Bandurski at 4:12 of the first. However, the ref-
erees ruled that he had kicked it in, and the goal was disallowed.
From where I was sitting, it looked like the puck hit the blade of his
stick, but I was to the left of the net, which put me directly behind
the alleged goal-scorer. Nevertheless, the Red Raiders were mighty
upset.
Cornell was able to venture out of their own end at times, and they
actually had a few chances to dent Colgate goalie Jason Gates. Five
minutes into the game, John DeHart tried to stuff the puck past him on
a wrap-around, but the puck rolled across the goalmouth and past the
far post. A couple of minutes later, Brad Chartrand uncorked one that
clanged off the right post, and the Lynah crowd finally got into the
game. The noise level rose once again a short while later when
Dickson, the beneficiary of another Cornell giveaway, fired a shot that
Bandurski made a spectacular pad save on. The Red Raiders sustained
intense pressure in the Cornell zone for almost a minute, during which
Bandurski also had to deal with a 2-on-0 break, before Cornell's Alex
Vershinin finally stopped the action by getting called for holding.
Colgate's second disallowed goal, which also probably should have
counted, came at the 11:44 mark, when Bandurski attempted a sliding
save and wound up knocking the net off its moorings. The officiating
started to show a little inconsistency later in the period. At 13:39,
Colgate's Dan Gibson was whistled for holding -- a marginal call,
helped considerably by a little theatrical flair on the part of the Big
Red's Shaun Hannah. But all things even out, I guess; Tyler McManus
spent a good portion of the power play camped out near the Colgate net
and was cross-checked twice and hooked once with nary a peep from a
referee's whistle.
McCutcheon got into a rather loud argument with Murphy with 1:57 left
in the period, when Murphy called Christian Felli for interference.
The problem, as Lisa mentioned, was that Murphy made the call from the
other side of the ice, while Tim MacConaghy, who was right on top of
the play, let it go. Now, I can understand McCutcheon being frustrated
-- first, his team was playing lousy, and second, the same kind of
close-official-lets-it-go-while-other-official-calls-it penalty
happened several times at Dartmouth last Saturday. But, as we've
already seen on this list (and I guess in this posting :-), there's
just no satisfying people when it comes to hockey officiating. Under
the old one-ref system, MacConaghy would have been vilified for not
making the call; now Murphy catches hell for making it. Not only that,
the call was correct.
The Big Red picked up a little momentum at the end of the first period,
killing off 41 seconds of a 5-on-3 situation. I would guess that Mc-
Cutcheon gave his troops the same fire-and-brimstone speech he used in
the second intermission of the Vermont game, because Cornell came out
and played more disciplined and more intense hockey for the second
period. Ryan Hughes tied the score at 2:12, with a slap shot from the
right point that Gates probably never saw. The Big Red then took its
first lead at the 3:35 mark on a terrific play. Geoff Bumstead carried
the puck into the Colgate zone and took a shot which bounced off a
defenseman's shins. Bumstead stuck with it, though, regaining control
of the puck and firing it toward the net. I think Gates deflected it,
but anyway, an onrushing Hannah flipped it over the goalie and into the
corner of the net. (Bumstead was originally credited with the goal,
but the scoring was later changed)
Colgate almost tied the game a couple minutes later, when a hard shot
got past Bandurski, but Etienne Belzile raced through the crease to
knock the loose puck aside. The Red Raiders did even the score at
8:40, shortly after Cornell had blown a 3-on-1 attempt. Dickson got
control of the puck along the back boards and centered it for Craig
deBlois, whose rising slap shot got through Bandurski's pads. Later in
the period, Bill Holowatiuk was whistled for tripping in another one of
those I'm-too-close-to-call-it-you-call-it penalties, helped no doubt
by the Colgate player executing a dive that would have done Greg
Louganis proud. But it was Cornell breaking the tie, on an unassisted
short-hander by Hannah with 3:33 left in the second, as he stole the
puck behind the Colgate net and stuffed the puck past Gates on a wrap-
around.
The Red Raiders lost yet another goal half a minute later, when Bob
Haddock stuffed the puck under Bandurski's leg, celebrated with his
arms raised for several seconds, only to learn that the play had been
blown dead for a crease violation. The score remained 3-2, though the
Big Red had four chances in the last minute to increase their lead. In
order, Jake Karam caught Gates out of position but missed to the left,
Tyler McManus' shot was kicked aside, Mike Sancimino's rebound try went
off the goalie's stick out of play (boy, was Sancimino upset after
that), and finally, Jason Vogel rang one off the right post. Still, it
looked like Cornell had put their shaky play behind them and were going
to take control of this game in the third period.
I don't know what it is with this team, but they seem to have to be
behind entering the third for them to have a chance of finishing the
game well. Cornell is a near-respectable 3-5-1 in games in which they
have trailed going into the third, and in games in which they haven't,
they are now 0-3. This one started out well enough for the Big Red, as
they came close to another goal when a shot rolled tantalizingly
through the Colgate crease, but the Red Raiders began to make their
presence felt again. Cornell's defense started to scramble, and Ban-
durski had to come up with a spectacular leg save to thwart a Colgate
2-on-1 eight minutes in. The Red Raiders tied the game at the 12:12
mark, off a bad play by the Cornell defense. A sloppy pass wound up on
Dickson's stick, and he slid the puck over to Ron Fogarty, who found
deBlois alone in the slot for the tap-in. Cornell fell apart after
that, and the Red Raiders' game-winning goal was almost identical to
the first one they scored. Once again, Dufresne was sent off, this
time for holding, and it took Colgate all of three seconds to score on
the ensuing power play. Again Gardiner won the faceoff, getting it
over to Dickson, who elected to take the shot himself, beating Bandur-
ski with a hard wrister with 4:14 remaining.
A frustrated Cornell team never really threatened again, although
Bandurski was pulled for the extra attacker with 40 seconds left. The
perfect ending to this game came with four seconds on the clock, as
Cornell was fighting for the puck and Colgate's Alan Brown batted it
over the glass into an enthusiastic throng of Red Raider fans. He was
naturally called for delay of game (smart play, though), and Vogel's
attempt off the ensuing faceoff was blocked by Dickson. And there you
have it -- an up-and-coming Colgate team's first win at Lynah in three
years. Gates faced only 19 shots, stopping 16 of them, while Bandurski
made 33 saves. McCutcheon was so angry and frustrated after this game
that he barred his players from the press after it, barely getting
through the post-game conference himself.
One other note, on fans who leave early. Lynah has always had a few, but
last night, a sizeable contingent of the Lynah Faithful suddenly became the
Lynah Faithless, as there was a fair amount of scrambling for the exits in
the third period when Colgate scored to TIE the game. That's all this (or
any) team needs -- to see a number of fans give up hope like that. The
players are already more frustrated than any fan could ever be, and I think
we can give them a little more support than what I saw last night. OK,
enough with the preaching.
--
Bill Fenwick | Send your HOCKEY-L poll responses to:
Cornell '86 and probably '94 | [log in to unmask]
LET'S GO RED!!
"It's THREE million dollars. If you're going to insult me, get it right!"
-- Stanley Roberts of the Los Angeles Clippers, to a fan heckling him for
being paid $2 million to sit on the bench
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