No doubt Bill will post another fine and exhaustive
review of this weekend's Cornell men's games, but I
thought I'd comment a bit.
 
Q: What am I talking about?
A: Cornell hosted Yale and Princeton over the weekend.
They tied the Eli (or Elis, I always get that wrong) 2-2,
and were destroyed by the Tigers, 6-3.
 
Q: Was it as bad as that seems?
A: Oh yeah. The Red played one very good period
followed by five of the worst I've seen from them in a
long time.
 
Q: Jason "the next Dryden, or at least Duffus" Elliott
gave up 8 goals - what gives?
A: Let's try a thought experiment. In your mind, start a
game between two teams of five skaters and one
goalie each. Now remove five skaters from one of the
teams...
 
Q: There were apparently a lot of injured Cornell
players; how large an impact did this have?
A: Not much. The injuries were exclusively to
forwards: Smart, Auger, Cooney, McManus,
Sancimino, Chartrand. Of these, Smart (broken wrist),
Cooney (broken I forget), and Auger (concussion,
broken toe) were the only ones who didn't skate. And
the offense did generate a bunch of good chances,
especially against Yale. The defense SUCKS. Elliott only
gave up one soft goal (a quirky wrap-around); he was
no miracle worker, which is what you need when your
team takes a night off, but he still beats Bandurski and
Skazyk every way I can think of. Anyway, it wasn't
that we were missing players, but that many of the
players who were skating were indeed, um, missing.
 
Q: How significant is this?
A: Well, it's not what you would call 'good' now, is it?
But to put things in perspective, by my count there is at
least one "lost weekend" per year when Cornell needs to
(and should) pick up 4 points and winds up sh*tting
the bed.  I think we can confidentally stick a fork in
any dreams of home ice, since from a 1-3-2 start that
would require something like an 11-5 finish.  In theory,
.500 is still a good possibility -- in practice, we have
already played 3 weak teams at home and picked up
just 2 points combined. This more than compensates for
a surprising 3-2 victory against UVM. Indeed, if you
include the exhibition loss to Laurier, the breakdown is:
 
1-2-0 against good ECAC teams
0-1-2 against middle-to-bad ECAC teams
1-2-0 against Canadian teams
 
 
Q: After 8 games (2-4-2), how is this team looking?
A: Worse than we hoped. Elliott is looking very good,
especially for a freshman, and I think we are set in goal
for at least two solid years. Steve Wilson might be the
most explosive player on the team (a sophomore and a
defenseman to boot), and Holowatiuk is settling in on
defense after a year away. Karam, Scollan, Lopatka,
and Doll have been all over the map, but if they can
come together for a protracted period the team has
some offensive potential even if Sance continues to
sleep and Auger continues to not heal. Smart we'll have
to wait on - he was not much of an impact player until
he himself had his "impact"; he starts all over in
January. Predictions:
 
Final Standing...Percent chance
 
1-2 ... 0%
3-4 ... 5%
5-6 ... 20%
7-8 ... 40%
9-10 ... 30%
11-12 ... 5%
 
 
Greg R. Berge
Editor,  "The Big Red What?"
Malden, MA
Let's Go Red!!!