Tuesday night, Cornell hosted Torpedo Yaroslavl, the Russian touring team,
in an exhibition contest.  Most of the exhibiting was done by Torpedo as
they rolled to a 4-0 first-period lead playing textbook European-style
hockey, then coasted the rest of the way to a 7-4 victory.
 
This being an exhibition game, there was a fair amount of line-juggling
going on for the Big Red, which probably helped make the first period
relatively easy for Torpedo.  Even so, the Russians put on a skating clinic
in the first 20 minutes, showing some dazzling speed, especially in the
transition game.  Their passes were not always as crisp as they should have
been, but Torpedo was able to move the puck around quite nicely for the most
part.  Thanks to a swarming Torpedo defense, especially on the penalty kill,
Cornell could not get much of anything started in the first period, winding
up with a total of four shots on goal.
 
Team captain Andrei Tarasenko got the Russians on the board first at 3:34 of
the opening period, when he took off from center ice on a breakaway and
rifled one through goaltender Jason Elliott's pads from the slot.  Torpedo
proceeded to notch two more scores 26 seconds apart a bit later, starting
with Viacheslav Kurochkin's tally at the 5:12 mark.  Linemate Alexander
Skoptsov skated into the slot, drew Elliott out of the net with a fake shot,
then quickly passed to Kurochkin at the left edge of the crease for the tap-
in.  On Torpedo's next foray into the Cornell end, Yevgeni Shaldibin fired
toward the net from near the blue line.  Elliott got his left pad on the
shot but could not cover the loose puck, and Dmitri Zatevahin hacked it away
from him and into the net.
 
Though Torpedo was doing a good job smothering just about anything the Big
Red tried, the home team did have a couple of big opportunities later in the
period.  With under four minutes left, P.C. Drouin skated into the Torpedo
zone all alone, but his backhander floated wide of the net.  Seconds later,
Matt Cooney and Brad Chartrand raced up the ice on a 2-on-1, but Torpedo
goalie Yegor Podomatski came up with a great pad save on Cooney's low shot.
Torpedo made it 4-0 with 2:20 left in the opening period, on Dmitri Zinin's
wrister from in close.
 
After the opening period, the Torpedo players seemed to get pretty bored,
and their play got sluggish and sloppy, but even so, they were still causing
the Big Red no end of trouble.  Defenseman Blair Ettles was forced to hook a
Torpedo forward around the neck 2:16 into the second period to prevent a 2-
on-0 from developing right in front of the Cornell net, and during the
ensuing power play, Kurochkin found himself on yet another clean breakaway.
However, he got a little too cute, dipsy-doodling and playing with the puck
for a while, and he eventually wound up shooting wide from point-blank range
with a defender bearing down on him.  At the 6:18 mark, Alexei Vasilev
slammed a Cornell player into the boards; the Cornell player crumpled to the
ice and, while he was able to get up moments later, it was enough to earn
Vasilev a major for checking from behind.
 
This looked like a good chance for the Big Red to make some noise, but it
was Torpedo controlling the action for the most part, even though they were
a man down.  Less than a minute into the penalty, Vladimir Samelin dug the
puck away from a couple of Cornell forwards and streaked up the ice on a
short-handed breakaway.  He tried to get Elliott to commit one way or the
other, but Elliott did a great job of giving him nothing to shoot at, and
Samelin wound up taking the puck behind the net instead.  A short time
later, however, Torpedo was lighting the lamp again, this time on a nifty
play by Alexander Ardashov.  With a faceoff in the Cornell zone to Elliott's
right, Ardashov shot the puck forward, and it caught the net inside the
right post behind a surprised Elliott, making the score 5-0 at 7:57 of the
second.
 
Yet another breakaway occurred at about the 9:45 mark, as Skoptsov and
Kurochkin came in on a 2-on-1.  Skoptsov actually had a chance to go one-on-
one with Elliott himself, but he elected to pass back to Kurochkin and his
pass was wide, ending the threat.  Cornell finally converted the power play
at 11:13, five seconds before it would expire.  After a brief flurry in the
Torpedo end, Tony Bergin took the puck behind the net and scored on the
wrap-around.  Ardashov struck again at the 13:20 mark, as he fired a bullet
from the left side that Elliott seemed to have trapped between his pads.
The puck trickled through, however, and rolled across the goal line.
 
Eddy Skazyk replaced Elliott in net to open the third period, and the Big
Red got their second goal at the 5:01 mark on a nice play by Tyler McManus
and Jake Karam.  With Torpedo over-pursuing the puck to the left side,
McManus sent the puck over to Karam in the right circle, and Karam returned
it to McManus in the slot.  McManus spun and fired a low shot that eluded
Podomatski.
 
Then, at the 9:53 mark, came a moment for the NHL highlight reels, as
McManus and Ildar Yubin got into a real glove-dropping, fist-swinging donny-
brook.  I don't know what set Yubin off, but he was furious, landing most of
the punches and continuing to go after McManus even as the officials were
trying to wrestle them apart.  McManus got in several licks of his own, and
I was sure he was going to wind up with a disqualification for fighting, but
both combatants got double roughing minors and a game misconduct each.  The
fight seemed to fire up the Torpedo team, and they began putting some
pressure on the Cornell defense.  The Big Red dodged a bullet when Skazyk
lost the puck after blocking a Torpedo shot; it rolled around behind him and
almost into the net, but a Cornell defender arrived in time to knock it
away.
 
A pair of Torpedo breakaways with under seven minutes left went for naught,
as Skazyk barely deflected the first shot over the net, and Igor Martinov
inexplicably lost control of the puck on the second one as he was skating
toward the slot.  Cornell threw a scare into the Russians with a pair of
goals 23 seconds apart to make a game of it.  At 14:53 of the third, Bergin
skated between the circles, spun, and dished the puck off to Karam, who beat
Podomatski to the glove side.  Then Brad Chartrand took a pass from Cooney
and found himself all alone near the left side of the crease, flipping a
shot over Podomatski's leg to make it 6-4.  Cornell had another opportunity
when Geoff Lopatka and Mike Sancimino combined on a rush a minute later, but
Podomatski kicked aside Sancimino's shot.
 
Skazyk went to the bench with 38 seconds left, and Cornell called timeout
five seconds later, but Torpedo won the ensuing faceoff and Kurochkin
rounded out the scoring with an empty-netter at 19:36.  For the game, Podo-
matski stopped 17 shots; Elliott made 20 saves, and Skazyk stopped all eight
shots he faced.  Cornell will return to ECAC action this weekend, hitting
the road to take on Union and RPI.
--
Disclaimer -- Unless otherwise noted, all opinions expressed above are
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Bill Fenwick                        |  Send your HOCKEY-L poll responses to:
Cornell '86 and '94.5               |  [log in to unmask]
LET'S GO RED!!                                                  DJF  5/27/94
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