Haven't we seen this script before? Cornell journeyed to Colgate's Starr Rink
and, as they had done on Wednesday night at home, built up an early lead on
the Red Raiders before Colgate came storming back for the tie. Cornell's
goaltender (Eddy Skazyk this time) once again had a spectacular night, while
the Colgate netminder (Matt Weder) recovered from some early shakiness to play
well in the latter stages of the game. More notes on this one below:
Cornell 3, Colgate 3 (OT)
Unlike the game at Lynah three days before, Colgate played fairly well
from the opening faceoff in this one, and the Red Raiders lit the lamp on
their first power play. Freshman winger Mike Harder slapped one from
near the blue line that was apparently redirected by a sliding Cornell
defenseman and sailed into the net over Eddy Skazyk's shoulder at 3:16 of
the first period. The Big Red had some chances of their own later in the
period, especially on their first power play a few minutes after the
goal, when they forced Matt Weder to come up with three or four good
saves. Midway through the first period, Cornell's Geoff Lopatka caught
a rebound on his stick right in front of the crease, but he lost control
of the puck in shifting to his backhand and never got the shot off.
It appeared at that point that the Big Red was going to have a frus-
trating night on offense. But Cornell was able to keep the pressure on,
and they finally tied things up with 12:31 gone in the first. Geoff
Bumstead flipped the puck over the Colgate net from behind, and the loose
puck lay near the crease for a few seconds until Mike Sancimino swooped
in, caught Weder leaning the wrong way, and snapped a backhander inside
the left post. The Big Red outshot the Red Raiders in the first period,
12-8, and Cornell was able to keep generating offensive chances in the
early stages of the second. At the 1:08 mark, the Big Red found them-
selves with their second power play of the game (courtesy of a borderline
hooking call on Sam Raffoul), and this time they converted it. Brad
Chartrand spotted Tony Bergin all alone in front of the Red Raider net
and gave him a perfect feed; Bergin flipped it over a prone Weder at the
1:29 mark to give the Big Red the lead.
Over the next few minutes, Cornell had several opportunities to pad that
lead, including a 2-on-1 break with Vincent Auger and Joel McArter that
ended with McArter firing a shot over the Colgate net. Chartrand also
had a good scoring chance with four and a half minutes gone in the
second, when he skated across the blue line and had a clear shot at the
net, but in what has become a more than annoying trend for the Big Red,
he looked for the pass instead, dumping the puck in the left corner.
This almost proved costly for Cornell, as the Red Raiders pounced on the
loose puck and brought it back the other way, ending their rush with a
slapper that Skazyk just managed to deflect with his glove.
Cornell did end up scoring their third goal at the 9:20 mark, on a shot
no one could have expected, least of all Weder. With Colgate on the
power play, defenseman Steve Wilson skated the puck out of the Big Red
zone and let fly from near the right boards just after he crossed the
Colgate blue line. The shot caught Weder totally by surprised and flew
untouched through his pads. A shocked Colgate team responded by turning
things up a notch, as they proceeded to have the better of the play
pretty much from that point on. Three straight penalties on Cornell
eventually set the Red Raiders up with a 5-on-3 power play, and they had
little trouble taking advantage of it. Actually, that's not quite true
-- they had no trouble setting up a play, with Ron Fogarty camping out by
the left post, taking a pass, and rolling the puck through the crease to
a wide-open Dan Gardner on the other side. Gardner, however, blew the
shot, bouncing it off the side of the net. However, the Red Raiders were
able to work the puck out from behind the net to Fogarty again, who sent
the puck over to Gardner in the exact same spot. This time, Gardner
tapped it home for the goal at the 14:49 mark.
The Red Raiders didn't slack off, and they were able to tie the game less
than three minutes later. This time it was Scott Steeves getting to the
loose puck in the left circle of the Cornell zone. A Big Red defenseman
slid to block the shot attempt, but Steeves skated around him and wristed
one high to Skazyk's stick side. (On a side note, Steeves is one of the
few hockey players I've seen who wears #13.) The Big Red lost Bumstead,
their leading scorer, to a ten-minute misconduct at the end of the period
(Colgate's Earl Cronan was also sent off), which didn't help Cornell's
efforts to regain the lead in the third. They were able to generate a
couple of scoring opportunities in the early going, however, including a
couple of shots off the left post.
After seeing some punch-throwing incidents earlier in the season handled
with roughing minors, I wondered recently on HOCKEY-L what was worthy of
a disqualification penalty any more. Well, now I have my answer: if the
two players involved grab each other behind the neck and spin around a
few times, they're gone. Or at least, that's what earned Raffoul and Dan
Dufresne their fighting disqualifications 5:13 into the third period.
Adding to the ludicrousness of that one, the same thing happened between
two other players at the other end of the ice some minutes later, and
nothing was called -- not even the ubiquitous roughing minor. Anyway, a
couple minutes after the DQs, the Red Raiders found themselves with a
1:41 5-on-3 opportunity, courtesy of a boarding call (this was the one
Arthur mentioned in which the call was made but none of the officials
could figure out who it was on) and a cross-checking penalty on Steve
Wilson. Cornell did a terrific job in killing that one off, however,
particularly Skazyk, who made a few saves that were simply amazing.
Though they were unable to score, Colgate took control of the game in the
latter stages of the third period, and they kept it in the overtime,
during which it seemed impossible that the Red Raiders would not score.
The Big Red could not get a stick on the puck in OT, much less clear it
out of their zone. In fact, the puck was out of Cornell's end only three
times during the extra session: the opening faceoff, a dump-out which
was nullified by coincidental roughing minors, and an icing. The rest of
the time, Colgate leisurely took pot shots at Skazyk, who stopped all six
shots he faced in OT. In one of his best performances in a Cornell
uniform, he wound up with 40 saves, while at the other end, Weder stopped
28 of 31 shots (none in overtime, though).
And I know the officiating in this game has already been discussed at
some length, but I have to relate this one incident which pretty much
sums up the night's performance by the men in the striped shirts. It
came in the third period, when a Cornell player took a shot from near the
blue line that Weder stopped with his glove, holding on to the puck for
the faceoff. Now, anyone who has ever seen a hockey game at pretty much
any level (even just one game!) knows where that faceoff should occur.
But the refs and the linesman picked the puck up from Weder and then for
some reason reacted as if it had gone out of play, signalling for the
faceoff near the blue line where the shot originally came from. The puck
was about to be dropped when one of the refs finally realized that some-
thing was Not Right (a fact that was being communicated rather vocifer-
ously from the stands) and blew the whistle, moving the faceoff to the
appropriate faceoff dot. Odd how that marking got its name, eh? And
people wonder why refs like Pierre Belanger and Tim MacConaghy have
lasted so long in the ECAC -- just look around at their competition
sometime.
Incidentally, this was Cornell's fifth tie of the season, breaking the
team record of four set back in 1985-86 and matched in 1991-92.
--
Disclaimer -- Unless otherwise noted, all opinions expressed above are
strictly those of:
Bill Fenwick | Send your HOCKEY-L poll responses to:
Cornell '86 and '94 (.5) | [log in to unmask]
LET'S GO RED!!
"Why is it whenever you break up with somebody, they always say, 'You'll
never meet anyone else like me'? I should hope not! If I don't want to
go out with YOU, why would I want to go out with someone JUST LIKE YOU?"
-- Larry Miller
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