Cornell emerged from its Tuesday night dust-up with Colgate as the only
unbeaten team in the ECAC, and in a three-way tie for first with Harvard and
St. Lawrence. More on this game later. Here are the scores from the ECAC's
midweek games:
Colgate 4, CORNELL 4 (OT)
Harvard 8, DARTMOUTH 1
Princeton 6, ARMY 3
ST. LAWRENCE 6, Clarkson 5 (OT)
Incidentally, Vermont did beat Middlebury on the day before Thanksgiving, by
a 5-4 score.
ECAC Standings as of 11/28/90:
League Overall
Team W L T Pts GF GA W L T Pts GF GA
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Cornell 3 0 2 8 23 14 4 0 2 10 31 17
St.Lawrence 4 1 0 8 21 18 6 3 0 12 40 31
Harvard 4 1 0 8 34 10 4 3 0 8 35 16
Clarkson 3 1 1 7 25 19 7 1 1 15 57 31
Princeton 3 2 0 6 27 16 3 3 0 6 29 23
Vermont 2 2 1 5 18 16 3 5 1 7 31 37
Colgate 1 2 2 4 18 22 6 2 2 14 47 39
RPI 2 2 0 4 16 16 4 4 0 8 39 38
Yale 1 2 1 3 11 17 2 3 1 5 19 28
Army 1 3 1 3 14 22 3 4 2 8 38 34
Brown 0 3 1 1 8 24 0 4 2 2 15 37
Dartmouth 0 5 1 1 13 34 0 5 1 1 13 34
And now, about that game...
Colgate 4, Cornell 4 (OT)
A tie against a slumping Colgate team doesn't look good for the Big Red
on paper (or in the Instone ratings), but Colgate could very easily
have won this game. Cornell was pretty sloppy at times, giving the
puck away a lot in their own zone, and Colgate was playing an
aggressive forechecking game. Cornell did bottle up Colgate in their
own end on occasion, but not for long enough to take control of the
game.
The Big Red outshot the Red Raiders 15-6 in the first period, but wound
up on the short end of a 2-1 score thanks to opportunistic play by
Colgate and to a probable gift by referee John Galipeau. Four minutes
into the game, Colgate's Jamie Cooke stuffed the puck past goaltender
Corrie D'Alessio during a goal-mouth scramble. The thing is, the net
was knocked off its moorings by another Colgate player, and from where
I sat (behind that net), this appeared to have happened before the puck
crossed the goal line. Nevertheless, Galipeau ruled that the goal
stood. More controversy erupted midway through the first, when the
light behind the Colgate net went on, indicating a Cornell goal. Play
continued, however, as Galipeau ruled that "the puck did not completely
cross the goal line". You can imagine the crowd's reaction to this
announcement; however, a friend of mine who sat down at that end of the
ice says she saw the puck ON the line, but not OVER it. Anybody know
what the TV replays, if any, showed?
Cornell finally got on the board at 13:53 of the first. With Colgate
on the power play, Dan Ratushny cleared the puck from the Cornell zone,
and it went between two Colgate players to Doug Derraugh, who was alone
at center ice. Derraugh skated in alone on Colgate goalie Ken Baker
and backhanded the puck into the net for his 100th career point. The
tie only lasted 32 seconds, however, as the ever-dangerous Marc Dupere
slapped a shot at D'Alessio. The goalie made the save, but the long
rebound went to Colgate's Brent Wilde, who put the Red Raiders up 2-1.
In the second period, it was Colgate's turn to get a little sloppy, as
defenseman Troy Mohns almost put one into his own goal -- his pass from
behind the net banked off Baker's leg and rolled through the crease.
After a lot of end-to-end action, the Big Red was able to tie the game
up with a goal from the fourth line (on one of those occasions when the
Big Red was able to keep the pressure on Colgate in their end). Shaun
Hannah fed Jim McPhee with a pass from the corner, and McPhee took a
shot that trickled in off Baker's leg; both McPhee and Hannah recorded
their first career points on the play. Once again the tie was short-
lived, and again Dupere was involved in the goal that put Colgate
ahead. A minute after McPhee scored, Cornell lost the puck in the
Colgate end; Dale Band picked it up and raced down the ice on a 2-on-1
with Dupere. Band hit Dupere with a pass in front of the Cornell net,
and Dupere flipped the puck over D'Alessio. With 4:20 left in the
period, Baker blocked a shot from Alex Nikolic, but the rebound went to
Jason Vogel, who chopped at the puck and sent it into the net over the
fallen goaltender.
This time, Colgate took a little longer to break the tie -- until 6:06
of the third. Marcel Richard scored for the Red Raiders when he skated
around a couple of Cornell players and uncorked a low slapshot from
just across the blue line that beat D'Alessio on the glove side. Less
than six minutes later, however, the game was tied for the fourth and
final time. As he had done against Clarkson, Ryan Hughes picked up the
game-tying goal on the power play, when he stuffed in a rebound of a
Joe Dragon shot. Both teams had some good scoring opportunities after
that, but Baker (36 saves) and D'Alessio (26) came up big a number of
times in the third period and overtime to preserve the 4-4 tie.
Oh yes, and John Galipeau had some more interesting ideas in the third
period, when a shoving match broke out with 53 seconds left. Colgate
defenseman Bob Haddock had his arm wrapped around Kent Manderville's
neck when the officials came in to break the skirmish up. After that,
Haddock skated away and suddenly went after Dragon. Haddock was given
a roughing minor and a 10-minute misconduct, and Dragon also got a
minor and a misconduct for getting in the way or something. Overall,
it was a bit of a shaky game for Mr. Galipeau.
This weekend's ECAC games:
Nov. 30
Army at Vermont
Clarkson at Brown
Cornell at Harvard
Princeton at RPI
St. Lawrence at Yale
Dec. 1
Army at RPI
Clarkson at Yale
Princeton at Vermont
St. Lawrence at Brown
Dec. 2
Colgate at Harvard
And the big game of the weekend is (drum roll):
Cornell at Harvard
Not only is this a battle between two first-place teams, but this
rivalry is perhaps the most heated in the ECAC (though Clarkson-St.
Lawrence is no picnic either). It won't help matters that the Crimson
will be out for revenge after being unceremoniously booted from the
playoffs last year by Cornell in the quarterfinals. Harvard has beaten
the Big Red in ten straight regular-season contests, and they seem to
have their usual collection of talent (6.8 goals per game in the ECAC),
so the Big Red better have used up their quota of sloppiness against
Colgate last night. One caveat I would offer to Harvard fans: the
Crimson's 4-1 ECAC record should be taken with a grain of salt, because
the wins have all come against the ECAC's bottom four teams -- Brown,
Yale, Army, and Dartmouth, who are a combined 2-13-4. Harvard was
beaten by fifth-place Princeton.
While I'm on the subject of Harvard, let me just add one minor detail to
Mike Machnik's description of the ECAC's travel partners:
> The current pairings, designed
> with geographical location in mind, are RPI-Vermont, Harvard-
> Dartmouth, Brown-Yale, Colgate-Cornell, and Army-Princeton.
> On a typical weekend, for example, Cornell will play at Harvard
> the first night while Colgate plays at Dartmouth, then the next
> night Colgate plays at Harvard and Cornell plays at Dartmouth.
This is ordinarily how the travel partner system works. However, there are
a few quirks, and this weekend is one of them. Dartmouth's academic
calendar consists of "terms" and they have exams at the beginning of
December, while Harvard's calendar is composed of semesters with an exam
break in mid-January. Thus, for their first meetings, Cornell and Colgate
always play Harvard after Thanksgiving (while Dartmouth is off) and
Dartmouth in late January (while Harvard is off). The return matches,
usually in mid-February, follow the normal travel partner system that Mike
mentioned. Just a little incompatibility to liven the schedule up, I guess.
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86
LET'S GO RED!!
"They came out with that survey in _Newsweek_ last year -- did you see this?
It said if you are a single woman over 30, there's a less than 20% chance
you'll ever get married. They should do another survey. They should find
out how many women over 30 ever bought _Newsweek_ again."
-- Rita Rudner
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