One brief comment on the Ivy fan support: Brown and Dartmouth
experienced significant upticks in attendence when they skated good
teams.  In the Ivies, like everywhere else in sports, fan support is
mostly a function of team success.  As for support varying with Ivy
or non-Ivy opponent, at Cornell at least the Ivy opponents enjoy no
special status and may indeed be less of a draw than Colgate or
Clarkson. (Except for Harvard, of course, but that is a special
rivalry which extends beyond hockey and even beyond athletics).
 
 
Cornell swept the ECAC's bottom-most teams, Princeton and Yale, to
move into third place in the conference standings.  This is the
highest Cornell has been in the league this late in the season since
1991.
 
Both games were very close, and both were comeback victories.
Both Princeton and Yale held 2-1 leads in the second period.  I'll
wait for the usual suspects to post their exhaustive reviews of the
games.  Some general comments on the weekend's implications follow.
 
Cornell should be *very* happy to get 4 points out of these games.
They ran into an inspired Tiger squad in a building in which Cornell
has had no end of trouble: 3 straight o.t. games including losses in
'93 and '95 in which Cornell blew big third period leads.  The o.t.
powerplay goal (with Princeton star Jon Kelley in the sin bin) more
than makes up for Cornell's similar faux pas against SLU at Lynah
earlier this year.
 
The Yale game featured less polished play, although the Eli (Elis?)
played considerably better than their poor showing in Ithaca.  The
Big Red played one solid period (the second) and otherwise looked
ragged; they were saved from the Islanderesque indignity of blowing a
5-2 third period lead when, after two goals in quick succession cut
the margin to 5-4, Yale rang the post on a slapper that Eddy Skazyk
never saw.
 
Cornell had not swept a roadtrip since last year's pair in Burlington
and Hanover.
 
The Big Red are in an excellent position among the ECAC's top 6 teams:
 
St. Lawrence       11   2   1   23
Vermont            10   2   2   22
Cornell             8   3   3   19
Clarkson            9   4   1   19
Harvard             9   5   1   19
Colgate             8   4   2   18
 
They are 1-0 against Clarkson, and 1-0 against Harvard (with a game
at hand).  They are 0-0-1 against Vermont (with a huge home game this
Saturday), 1-1 against Colgate, and 0-1 against SLU.  They will meet
Harvard at Bright in two weeks, and they finish the season in the
North Country.
 
In one quite conceivably scenario, with Vermont swept next weekend
and Cornell also beating Dartmouth, the Big Red would be in second
place with 6 games to go.
 
I've seen all of the other contenders except for Colgate, and IMHO
Cornell belongs on the same ice with any of them.  Ordinarily at this
time of year you hope to sweep all the sub-.500 teams and then split
with the top teams to secure a strong seed, but based on their recent
play I see no reason to assume that Cornell cannot do better than
that.  The name of the game in this year's ECAC is to finish 1st or
2nd: since the top 6 teams are pretty much identical you'ld like to
draw that 7th seed in the QF.  Cornell is going to go into the final
week of the regular season with a chance to finish 2nd -- what they
do in the next 6 games determines whether they will be trying to hold
that position or achieve it with an improbable North Country sweep.
 
As far as a national bid goes, other than the automatic bid extended
for winning the ECAC tourny I think it will be nearly impossible for
Cornell to get a bid without finishing third with an ECAC Final
appearance or second with an ECAC semifinal appearance.  On one hand,
the Big Red did play several very good NC opponents: Colorado
College, BU, and Michigan State.  On the other hand, they were
stomped by all of them.  Granted, the games were early in the season,
and Cornell has consistently improved to the point at which I believe
they are a much better squad; but I don't think the selection
committee cares much about that (other than weighting the final 10
games as a criterion).
 
This is the most fun I've had as a Cornell fan in ten years, for
four reasons.
 
1.  Diminished expectations from 3 rough years.
2.  A high scoring offense and explosive powerplay.
3.  The players are obviously enjoying themselves.
4.  I have tremendous respect for the rookie coach, Mike Schafer.
 
There is the further expectation that this could be the start of
something *really* big, since Mike's great reputation as a coach is
if anything exceeded by his reputation for pulling in blue chip talent
(anybody remember Manderville, Hughes, and Ratushny..?)  One or two
recruiting classes down the road, I expect this will lead to a bigger,
faster, more highly-skilled roster, especially at the blueline.  In
the mean time, piling up those wins can only make Ithaca seem a more
attractive collegiate option.
 
Now we'll see whether the Big Red can contain Perrin and St Louis as
they have recently done with Kelley, Emmons, etc...  If the answer is
"yes", well, it may be a very festive March.
 
 
Greg R. Berge
Cornell '86
Let's Go Red!
 
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