OK, actually I do have one faint qualification to Nate's remarks:
 
I've seen 14 games, and this team is a little better than those of the past
two years.  They are not getting the results on the scoreboard?  We shall
see in the last six games.  Over the past six games, Cornell has done this:
 
Opponent        Performance     Result
 
St. Lawrence    Outstanding     W (+7)
Clarkson                Strong          T
at Vermont      Outstanding     W (+1)
at Dartmouth    Weak            W (+1)
Harvard         Strong          L  (-1)
Brown           Strong          L  (-1)
 
Those are, IHMO, five strong performances in six games.  They happen
to be 0-2-1 against the #1, 2, and 3 teams in the conference because
even at their best they won't beat those teams.  Who do they play in their
final six games?
 
at Clarkson
at St. Lawrence
at Princeton
at Yale
RPI
Union
 
After Clarkson, I do not count any of those teams as unbeatable.  RPI is
the best of the bunch, and they are to consistency what Dr. Jekyll was to
mental stability.  If they continue to play as they have for the last six
games...
 
Right now, I would bet on them winning a Prelim game and then going
on to lose the QF at Clarkson or whoever shakes out at #2.  McCutcheon
will then have missed the ECAC Final Four exactly as many times as he
has made it (4 each).  He will have more losses than wins.  And he will
have won exactly 0 ECAC titles (RS or tournament), and 0 Ivy League
titles, and made 1 appearance in the NCAA, in which his team exited in
the first round.
 
Cornell has a brilliant hockey tradition, but that does not constitute a
birthright to continued excellence.  However, excellence should at least be
the goal of the program.  Some of the problems with the Cornell hockey
team stem from that tradition: when you talk to many of the Lynah
Faithful over 40 years old, you feel like anything less than an NCAA
Final Four appearance is uninteresting.  They exude a "that's
very nice, but it isn't The Sixties" patronization, even after the program
has achieved something good (like 4 straight ECAC Final Four
appearances from '89 through '92).  To tap back into Nate's example,
take Brown as comparison.  Brown's current run and Cornell's early 90's
run are virtually identical: home ice in the QF, make the ECAC Final
Four, never win anything.  But Brown is flying high, looking to the
future, feeling a sense of achievement.  In Ithaca, there was always the
implicit criticism that "this is the lowest the team is supposed to play at,"
which detracted from the experience.  The only time I really saw the
Faithful satisfied over that entire period was when Cornell whipped
Harvard in the '89 QF.  After that, it was capacity crowds and large
Boston contingents, but still essentially ho-hum.
 
I do not think we will see Brian McCutcheon behind the Cornell bench
next year.
 
But I have this suggestion: fly all the banners from the Lynah rafters
when the prospects come to visit.  But take them down when the season
starts; they don't need all that hanging over their heads.
 
 
Greg
Malden
Let's Go Red!