I get the feeling that I'm showing latent sadistic bestial necrophiliac
tendencies here (beating a dead horse), but I'm really starting to wonder about
some of the comments being made in this thread.
On Dec 2, 11:12, Sallie Sarrel wrote:
> Having watched
>Cornell hockey for about the past 18 years, I can honestly say, that the
>staff and the crowd are all very proud of playing rude, obnoxiuos hockey-
>legal or illegal.
Leaving aside the crowd for the moment, I find it an interesting conclusion that
the coaching staff has been "very proud" of "rude, obnoxious hockey -- legal or
illegal." I'm not really sure what is meant by that statement, but the Cornell
hockey coaching staffs that I have seen and have on occasion spoken with seem to
favor something a bit different. A bit of background: there have been four
head coaches and I don't know how many assistant coaches here during the period
of time that Sallie refers to. I can't speak for Dick Bertrand's teams, since
he coached before my time. I did watch Lou Reycroft's teams, and they were, uh,
known to mix it up with their opponents at times. I'd like to think that Rey-
croft did not encourage or sanction it, but he was thrown out of at least one
game, which is not the best example to set.
When Brian McCutcheon arrived in 1987, he brought along a disciplined style of
play that dramatically reduced the amount of penalties the team took... and not
coincidentally, the Big Red rose from ninth in the ECAC to third that year.
McCutcheon's teams, at least during the first five or six years, were among the
least-penalized in the ECAC. The flip side of this is that his last few teams
seemed somewhat tentative when it came to checking their opponents, possibly for
fear of taking a dumb penalty or something. Nevertheless, McCutcheon was
certainly no proponent of cheap or dirty play, and his assistants (including one
Mike Schafer for a few years) were not either.
And now the current staff. Under Mike Schafer, Cornell has played more
aggressively in the past, and yes, the penalty minutes have gone up. But to
suggest that Coach Schafer and his staff favor the style of play that Sallie
refers to is questionable at best. Consider the last minute of the game at
Yale, in which Cornell team captain Matt Cooney cross-checked a Yale player to
the side of the head while the Elis were celebrating the game-winning goal, and
got himself a well-deserved major out of it. The coaching staff showed their
pride in this illegal, rude, and obnoxious (not to mention dangerous) play by
giving Cooney the first period off in the game the next night. And while there
are coaches who probably would have suspended Cooney for the entire game, there
are also coaches who would have given him a talking-to in the locker room and
that would have been the end of it (i.e. he would have started the next game).
This is only one (hopefully isolated) incident, but I believe that this,
coupled with statements that Coach Schafer has made about some penalty problems
this season (hint: the statements are not favorable), indicates that the Cornell
coaches support a cleaner style of hockey.
As for the crowd, there is unquestionably a positive and loud reaction when a
member of the Big Red knocks down an opponent, cleanly or otherwise (assuming
the opponent is not injured... I have thankfully not heard the once-ubiquitous
"scrape him off the ice" for quite some time). We like our guys to win those
one-on-one battles, and there is a certain segment of the crowd that perhaps
doesn't care what it takes as long as Cornell comes out on top. I don't defend
this attitude, but I do believe you'll find it in other fans as well. Go to any
college hockey rink, and you'll hear the home fans cheering when a member of
their team levels an opponent and jeering when an opponent dares to try the same
thing against one of the home guys. This will happen regardless of the legality
or illegality of the play in either case. Now, perhaps other fans are not as
crude as the Lynah denizens have been known to be, but that's another subject.
(And I hope a dying one... we'll see on Tuesday night)
>Schafer was brutal when he was at Cornell,
Um, yes, I will grant you that he was a fan favorite :-) But if you watch the
team play now, you might concede the possibility that he's learned something
during his nine years as an assistant under three different coaches.
> My cousins
>who graduated in his year, their first reaction at the Thanksgiving
>dinner table when we started to talk college hockey, was that they loved
>how tough those guys were now.
Frankly, so do I. After three years of watching Cornell get pushed around at
will by just about everybody, it's -- dare I say -- gratifying to see someone
other than a Big Red player bounce backward after a collision. These guys *are*
tough, as well as aggressive, and they play hard, but that does not automa-
tically translate into obnoxious or dirty.
Sorry to ramble on and on again, and I admit there's some emotion tied up in
this... though I'm trying to be as objective as I can. But what I've seen and
heard of this Cornell team does not appear to jibe with what I read in the
original post.
--
Disclaimer -- Unless otherwise noted, all opinions expressed above are
strictly those of:
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86 and '95
LET'S GO RED!! DJF 5/27/94
"A man shouldn't be an athlete after the age of 27."
-- George Foreman, in 1973
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