I haven't seen any comments on last night at the Knick,  so I thought I'd say
a few brief things myself.
 
        Cornell v Lake Superior was a conservatively played game,  for the most part.
  To me,  the ice seemed kind of slow and the air warm.   The ice had been
completely re-lined for the tournament.   We noticed that the Zamboni cut it
very little while making ice before the first period,  and the water it put
down was slow to harden.
 
        The story of the game was basically Cornell goalie Jason Elliott.   I the
first period,  he was really shaky and gave up two really weak goals.   In the
second and third he was nothing short of spectacular in stretches.
Unfortunately,  the first period would come back to haunt the Big Red.
 
        Both teams forechecked with two for the most part,  but the breakouts on both
side were confined to elementary textbook stuff.   Nothing fancy,  and not a
lot of hitting.   Lake State dumped the puck in deep almost every time unless
they had numbers on the rush.   Cornell was a bit less inhibited and usually
carried the puck over the blue line.   But the overall flavor of the game was
playoff-style hockey.   Neither team wanted to make a mistake that would cost
them in the final outcome.   In the end,  form won out.   Lake got Cornell
running around in their own end a couple of times and forced them to take
penalties to prevent a goal.   Local product Matt Alvey of Troy and the
Springfield 'Pics got the GWPPG for Lake.   With 1:23 left,  Cornell got a
face-off in the Lake end.   After time-outs by both teams,  Cornell gave it
one last shot in the final flurry with Elliott on the bench in favor of a
sixth attacker,  but Lake withstood the storm.
 
        In contrast,  the Clarkson v Western Michigan game was played at 2X speed.
The first line change came at the 27 second mark of the first,  and I doubt if
any shift was longer than 30 seconds.   As a parent whose kids played this
game not long ago,  I instinctively look for little signs early in a game for
an indication of what kind of night it will be.   The first of these came on
the second or third shift.   It was already obvious that Clarkson had its
forecheck hitting on all cylinders,  but when a rather large WMU defenseman
fired the puck off the boards and out of his zone,  he made the mistake of
momentarily admiring his own handiwork.   He got absolutely DRILLED by a Tech
forechecker in open ice who was giving up thirty pounds or so.   Squared up,
shoulder to breastbone,  legs driving at the moment of impact,  a thing of
beauty.   That was the moment that Tech served notice it had come to play,
and from that moment on they hit everything that moved and finished every
possible check.
 
        Still,  it was a wild and woolly type of game.   Wide open in many respects.
 Had Murphy not been playing out of his mind,  Clarkson could easily have been
down by four after two.   Tech was guilty of some very sloppy defensive play.
They gave up two clean breakaways and coughed up the puck to an unmolested
attacker in the low slot at LEAST twice in the first.   Murphy stoned them
all.   WMU had apparently had heard that Clarkson was vulnerable to the long
range headman pass to a hanging wing.   This tactic nearly worked on a number
of occasions.
 
        All in all,  a very uninhibited style of play and not playoff type hockey at
all  --  but very entertaining.   I left for Hartford with 8 minutes left and
Clarkson up 4-0 and things getting VERY chippy.   Chris Clark (South Windsor,
CT,  Springfield 'Pics,  a hometown boy to us) seemed to be planning a career
in the penalty box.   And you could tell that WMU was monumentally frustrated.
 
        Misc.:   the Cornell contingent was large and vocal.   I always liked playing
the alma mater at the start of the third,  which their band did with emotion.
 It was obvious that it had been awhile for their fans.   And the Big Red team
gave them a nice salute after the game.   Clarkson fans on the other hand were
probably more numerous,  but much more diffuse in their seating pattern and
much less into the scene.   They seem to have become like UConn Husky B-ball
fans in thinking that an NC$$ appearance is the natural order of things.   As
always,  a very professional rich-sounding Clarkson band with almost too much
bass  --  but really nice.   They are simply on a different level.
 
        Tonight?   Lake Superior is probably in pretty good shape to take on Vermont.
  They didn't get beat up too much against Cornell,  and Jeff Jackson is a
master.   Clarkson,  on the other hand just played a very emotional and
physical game against WMU.   I just don't think you can play that way two
nights in a row.   And on top of that,  their bodies have got to be really
sore.   You don't hit like that all game long and then wake up the next
morning without really feeling it.   But I think Clarkson was bitterly stung
by criticism of their performance last week,  and they know that the weekend
will not be a success unless they go to Cinci.
 
 
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