Since it's rare that I post to begin with, figure I'll respond to
a few things.
        As for the state of hockey-l, yeah the amount of game reports are
down, but it is still kinda early in year.  As action heats up, so will
the amount of posts as well as discussion...or so I hope at least.  This
remains the best place for discussion of teams and games and
trends of college hockey around.  It's just a slightly down time.
 
        Next onto the ECAC strand.  The fivesome of Vermont, Clarkson,
Cornell, Colgate and either Harvard or SLU (one should be able to join
the other four teams) is quite impressive and ranks right up there with
the other conferences.  But from there, there's a significant dropoff.
The bottom 5 or 6 teams in the ECAC are weaker than the bottom 5 or 6 in
other conferences.  As a larger conference, there are going to be more
poor teams than in a conference of 9 or 10 teams.  That means more games
versus weak competition which tends to hurt ECAC teams in the rankings
which leads to an extent to the ECAC being perhaps underrated a bit.
Last season, the ECAC produced a solid postseason performance and this
year Vermont is even better while Clarkson and Cornell should be about
the same as last year and Harvard and Colgate could be quite good too.
Teams like RPI and even Union and Dartmouth look like they might be
improved too.  So, in other words, I see the ECAC as stronger than last
year, and they weren't even that weak then.
 
        Also some questions from a Cornell observer standpoint.  Former Big
Red icer Jason Weber looked pretty good in the Red/White game.  Was he cut
along with most of the other walk-ons that participated?  Also, what is
the status of Ryan Smart and when is he expected back?
 
                                                Billy Lustgarten
                                                Cornell '98
 
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