Unlike last year, when everyone had a shot at the ECAC playoffs until the
last day of the season, the league goes into its final weekend with all ten
playoff teams decided. There will still be several battles for position in
the postseason tournament, not the least of which will be the fight for
first place. The complete set of ECAC scores from last weekend:
Friday, 2/15:
BROWN 3, Cornell 0
CLARKSON 7, Army 1
Colgate 6, YALE 3
Harvard 6, RPI 3
ST. LAWRENCE 5, Princeton 4
VERMONT 10, Dartmouth 6
Saturday, 2/16:
CLARKSON 11, Princeton 1
Colgate 9, BROWN 1
Cornell 5, YALE 1
RPI 9, Dartmouth 4
ST. LAWRENCE 6, Army 3
VERMONT 2, Harvard 1
ECAC Standings as of 2/19/91:
League Overall
Team W L T Pts GF GA W L T Pts GF GA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Cornell 14 3 3 31 85 57 15 6 3 33 102 72
# Clarkson 15 4 1 31 107 69 21 6 1 43 160 100
# St. Lawrence 14 5 1 29 92 73 17 10 1 35 120 102
@ RPI 13 7 0 26 111 86 18 10 0 36 158 123
@ Harvard 11 7 2 24 121 69 11 11 2 24 124 88
@ Vermont 11 7 2 24 80 74 15 11 2 32 115 111
$ Colgate 7 9 4 18 85 77 13 10 4 30 121 101
$ Brown 8 10 2 18 72 94 8 13 3 19 87 120
$ Yale 8 10 2 18 74 82 9 13 2 20 87 105
$ Princeton 6 13 1 13 77 100 7 16 1 15 88 118
Army 2 16 2 6 51 100 7 17 3 17 99 115
Dartmouth 0 18 2 2 47 121 1 23 2 4 63 160
$ - Clinched playoff spot
@ - Clinched qualifying round bye
# - Clinched home ice
Some scores from Division III:
Saturday, 2/16:
Bentley 10, Nichols 6
Canisius 5, Cortland State 3
Elmira 4, RIT 3 (OT)
Fredonia State 5, Mercyhurst 4
Hamilton 6, Hobart 4
Potsdam State 8, Iona 5
Salem State 8, North Adams State 1
Skidmore 4, Fairfield 4 (OT)
Notes on some of the games:
Elmira 4, RIT 3 (OT)
With this victory, Elmira moved one step closer to assuring itself of
home ice all the way through the ECAC West tournament. RIT got two
early goals, at 1:25 of the first from Russ Cahill and at the 9:29 mark
from Steve Mirabile, and the Tigers looked like they would run away
with the game. Elmira had numerous opportunities in the first,
especially on the power play, as RIT centers Scott McNail and Tom
Masaschi were both hit with majors and game disqualifications for
spearing. Despite that, the Soaring Eagles managed just one goal in
the first, at 14:42 when Greg Moore scored off a feed from defenseman
(newly converted from center) Matt Weir.
Todd Person restored RIT's two-goal margin at 4:20 of the second, but
Elmira started mounting a comeback. Joey Spinelli and Scott Doherty
raced up the ice on a 2-on-1 break, and when Spinelli passed to Doherty
at the RIT blue line, Doherty wristed the puck past Tiger goalie Mark
Hill with five seconds remaining in the second period. Then Moore sent
a blast through Hill's legs to tie the game up 1:16 into the third.
Only 24 extra seconds were needed to decide the game. Scott Doherty
took a shot off a faceoff, and the puck bounced over to Joe Caswell,
who flipped it over a fallen Hill. The Soaring Eagles kept their road
winning streak intact -- they haven't lost an away game since December
of 1989.
Vermont 2, Harvard 1
Vermont has held some inexplicable hex over the Crimson during the past
few years. The Catamounts knocked off the eventual 1989 NCAA champions
in the semifinals of that year's ECAC tournament, and they beat Harvard
twice last season (granted, these were all one-goal games). Ted Donato
put the Crimson on the board at 2:02 of the first period, but that
would be it for Harvard, as Vermont's Mike Millham continued his
terrific play of late, with 33 saves. Meanwhile, David Browne tied the
game up at 10:57 of the first, and John LeClair got the game-winner at
the 13:11 mark of the second. Chuckie Hughes stopped 30 shots for
Harvard.
St. Lawrence 6, Army 3
A minuscule amount to add to Mike Zak's posting... Army scored twice in
the first on goals by Paul Haggerty and Scott Tardif, to deadlock the
game at 2-2, but the Saints pulled away with three tallies in the
second. Andy Pritchard picked up two goals, including a short-hander
with 2:13 left, for St. Lawrence, while Les Kuntar made 21 saves and
Army's Brooks Chretien made 27.
Colgate 6, Yale 3
To correct an earlier posting by Mike -- it was Yale jumping out to a
2-0 lead in the first, as Colgate goalie Ken Baker faced three shots in
the first 5:23 of the game and saved only one of them. Ninety-five
seconds into the game, after Yale goalie Ray Letourneau had faced an
opening flurry by the Red Raiders, the Elis' Jamie Lavish broke down
the ice, took a pass from Scott Matusovich, and beat Baker on a one-on-
one. Martin Leroux then intercepted a pass near the red line and fed
John Sather in front.
After the second goal, Baker was replaced by Greg Menges, and the move
appeared to spark the Red Raiders, because they scored five straight
times. Craig deBlois got things started for Colgate with a slap shot
from the circle that beat Letourneau at 7:23 of the first, and then
Andrew Dickson and Sam Raffoul each scored in the second to put the Red
Raiders up 3-2. Two more goals in a 16-second span later in the period
pretty much wrapped the game up for Colgate. At the 13:32 mark, Craig
Woodcroft beat Letourneau on a one-on-one while being hooked from
behind by Matusovich. Then Marcel Richard made it 5-2 on a slap shot
after Colgate won the ensuing faceoff. Yale's Mark Kaufmann cut the
lead with a goal at 17:10 of the second, but Woodcroft rounded out the
scoring for the Red Raiders with 44 seconds left in the period. Menges
made 27 saves for the victory, while Letourneau recorded 25.
Brown 3, Cornell 0
OK, I know that whenever Cornell loses, my postings sound like I'm
describing the Apocalypse, but this one was just plain pitiful. You
can tell from the score that the Big Red played poorly, but Brown did
not do very well either, at least on offense. (I'm sure Nate Huang got
sick of hearing me say, "I drove 300 miles for THIS?") Cornell was
lackluster all night, allowing the Bruins to set up a number of 2-on-1
chances during the game, but Brown botched so many of them that it
began to look like the bouncing pass three feet in front of the skater
breaking to the net was a set play. Give the Bruins credit, though --
they were able to beat Cornell at their own game, out-hitting and out-
working a Big Red team which has thrived on physical play all season.
Despite some sloppy passing, Cornell had the better of the action in
the first period, coming up with a few excellent scoring chances, but
the Big Red just could not convert. The most notable missed oppor-
tunity came about halfway through the period, when Brown goalie Geoff
Finch came way out of the net to play a loose puck. Cornell's Joe
Dragon got to it first and skated around Finch, but the Brown defense
forced Dragon to skate wide, and he wound up behind the empty net with
no one in front to pass to. As for Brown, their only real scoring
threat of the opening period came courtesy of the linesmen, who were
having real trouble with the offsides calls. They missed an obvious
one on Brown during a Cornell power play, enabling the Bruins to skate
in virtually unmolested and take about four shots on the Cornell net,
all of which Corrie D'Alessio stopped before finally falling on the
puck. The physical nature of this game probably made it a difficult
one to officiate, but referee Jim Cerbo did seem to miss a rather high
number of holds, trips, shoves, etc.
Early in the second period, the score should have been 1-1, at least
according to the goal judges. (Everybody wants to get into the act)
First, the red light went on behind the Brown goal, but the puck had
been shot off the side of the net rather than into it. Then about a
minute later, the lamp went on at the other end, but Cerbo ruled that
the puck never crossed the line. The Big Red also had another missed
opportunity later in the second period, as Finch fell for a fake slap
shot and went down too early, leaving the net wide open, but the puck
wound up going over the crossbar. Brown's hard forechecking started to
bother a Cornell team that wasn't playing all that cohesively to begin
with (the Big Red players admitted later that they were a little
complacent), and the Bruins finally broke the ice with 6:48 left in the
second. As Kelly Jones broke free behind the Cornell defense, Derek
Chauvette sent a bouncing pass his way. Jones corralled the puck,
skated in from the right circle, and flipped a shot over D'Alessio's
shoulder.
Just over five minutes into the third, a fight broke out in the Cornell
end after Sascha Pogor fell on top of D'Alessio in the crease, but
order was restored after Cerbo handed out a couple of roughing minors
to each team. A wildly scrambling Cornell team was able to mount quite
a bit of pressure in the Brown zone during the early part of the third
period, but they could not figure out Finch, who came up with several
tough saves. The Bruins made it 2-0 at the 11:42 mark on a power play
goal by Steve King. He wound up alone in the slot, deked D'Alessio,
and rifled a low shot inside the right post. By this time, Cornell
coach Brian McCutcheon was juggling his lines, trying to find some
combination that would generate a little offense, but it was to no
avail. Brown iced the game with 4:11 left, on pretty much their only
2-on-1 that was executed properly. Chauvette and Scott Hanley skated
into the Cornell zone, with Chauvette feeding Hanley near the net and
Hanley beating D'Alessio with a hard slap shot from the left side.
D'Alessio stopped 18 shots on the night and frankly received very
little help from his teammates. A lot of the credit for the Brown
victory has to go to Finch, however. The Bruin goalie made 21 saves in
recording his first collegiate shutout, and the first by a Brown goal-
tender since the last game of the 1979-80 season, when Mark Holden
blanked Yale by the same 3-0 score. By the way, with a 5-2-2 record in
Ivy league games, the Bruins can clinch the Ivy League title (which in
hockey exists mostly for bragging purposes) by beating Princeton next
Saturday.
Cornell 5, Yale 1
As if it wasn't bad enough that the Big Red had lost to Brown for the
first time in four years, had missed their own chance to clinch a share
of the Ivy League title, and had dropped into a tie with Clarkson after
leading them by three points a couple weeks before, the team bus broke
down on the way from Providence to New Haven. But there's nothing like
playing a team that's in the midst of a month-long slump to cure what
ails you. The Elis have now gone 0-9-1 since January 12. Dan Ratushny
had played the night before against Brown, bruised wrist and all, but
his injury hampered him and he did not suit up against Yale.
The two major problems for the Big Red over the last couple of weeks
had been a horribly slumping power play unit (one goal in its last 20
chances) and an offense that was pretty much going nowhere, with four
goals in the last three games. Both areas made themselves felt early
in this game, though, as Cornell notched a goal fifteen seconds into
its first power play of the evening. Trent Andison scored on a wrap-
around at the 3:27 mark of the first period. The goal was also the
first scored by the HAD line (Ryan Hughes, Andison, and Doug Derraugh)
in three games; prior to that slump, this line had scored at least once
in 20 straight games. The HAD line would score three more times
against the Elis.
This game was full of roughness, with a lot of skirmishes between
players that, to my typically unbiased eye (ha!), looked like they were
being started mostly by Yale. Seriously, though, the Elis were playing
pretty dirty for most of this game, perhaps due to frustration. At any
rate, there was a big shoving match in front of the Cornell bench at
8:22 of the first, and referee John Galipeau reacted by calling
roughing minors on everyone on the ice except for the two goalies, who
had remained anchored in their respective creases during the fes-
tivities. Now, I admit that my view of all this was not the best, but
I certainly did not see much of anything that would have warranted
clearing the ice like that. I'm wondering if Galipeau was being a
little heavy-handed in trying to stop the game from getting out of
control. If that was his aim, it didn't work too well; there were
several other fights, skirmishes, and other assorted shovings for the
rest of the night. As you might expect, it took about ten minutes for
the officials to work out what players were going to come out of the
penalty box first. Galipeau wound up calling 28 penalties on the
night, 20 of which were offsetting minors or coincidentals.
Play finally resumed, and Doug Derraugh put the Big Red up 2-0 at the
13:37 mark. Bruce Frauley rolled the puck over to him, and when Yale
goalie Ray Letourneau went down to block the expected shot, Derraugh
backhanded the puck over him. Letourneau was very upset after that
goal, and that probably contributed to the one Cornell scored 44
seconds later, when Shaun Hannah came in on a breakaway and fired a
hard shot over Letourneau's shoulder.
Andison scored Cornell's fourth goal at 4:01 of the second period, as
he picked up a rebound of Derraugh's shot in the slot and wristed it
over Letourneau's shoulder. The Elis finally solved D'Alessio at the
10:27 mark, when Dean Malish skated behind the Cornell net and fed
Craig Ferguson in front. Ferguson's shot from the slot fluttered
inside the left post for Yale's only goal of the evening.
Cornell's offense appeared to be back to life, as they outshot Yale
41-28 in the game, and the Big Red generated numerous scoring oppor-
tunities in the third period. Joe Dragon had a breakaway at 7:40 of
the third, but his shot ricocheted off the right post. A little later
in the period, Phil Nobel also came in on a breakaway, but he wound up
losing control of the puck in front of the net. Probably the biggest
chance came with about 4:30 left in the game. D'Alessio made a leg
save on a mini-break by Yale, and the Cornell players raced down the
ice. Letourneau came out of the crease and went down to block a shot,
but gave up a long rebound. With Letourneau still down, a Yale
defenseman wound up in front of the net, making a couple of clutch
saves. The Big Red's fifth goal came with 21 seconds to go and Letour-
neau on the bench, as Derraugh scored a short-handed empty-netter on a
wrist shot from the red line.
Letourneau actually did reasonably well between the pipes, finishing
the game with 36 saves, 18 of which came in the second period.
D'Alessio also had a fine effort, stopping 27 shots. After the game,
some kid in a Yale jacket tried to swipe D'Alessio's stick; D'Alessio
was understandably not too pleased about that, so he butt-ended him (in
the arm, and not viciously, just hard enough to make the kid let go).
More on the flags on the Yale players' helmets: As Mike Zak mentioned, they
all have the American flag, but I think only the players from Canada (Yale
has several of them) have the maple leaf also. I didn't see any American
players with the maple leaf, but Dean Malish, who is from British Columbia,
has got one.
Schedule for the final weekend of the ECAC's regular season:
Feb. 22
Brown at Army
Clarkson at Harvard
RPI at Cornell
St. Lawrence at Dartmouth
Vermont at Colgate
Yale at Princeton
Feb. 23
Brown at Princeton
Clarkson at Dartmouth
RPI at Colgate
St. Lawrence at Harvard
Vermont at Cornell
Yale at Army
Bill Fenwick
Cornell '86
LET'S GO RED!!
"He'll scream from the 60th row of the stands that you missed a marginal call
in the interior line, then he'll go out in the parking lot and won't be able
to find his car."
-- Football referee Gene Tunney, on the average fan
|
