Last year, Union and Vermont started league play a week earlier than the
other ECAC teams, and I thought this was to accommodate Union's schedule,
but maybe it was the start of some sort of trend. This year, it was Harvard
and Brown getting the jump on everybody else, and Harvard's win puts them in
first place in the league standings. Another note concerns inter-league
play, specifically games against Hockey East. It's a little early in the
season, and all but two of the games have taken place at ECAC rinks, but so
far, ECAC teams have posted a 7-4-3 record against Hockey East competition
(this does not include the Merrimack-Dartmouth result, which I've managed to
lose), good for a 0.607 winning percentage. This after last year, when the
ECAC posted a 13-20 record (0.394) against Hockey East. Even though it's
supposed to be a relatively weaker than normal season for Hockey East, this
is a bit of a surprise. Of course, no one in the ECAC has played Maine
yet...
Results from the weekend:
Friday, 11/6:
Boston University 2, RPI 2 (OT)
CLARKSON 12, Northeastern 1
ST. LAWRENCE 6, UMass-Lowell 4
(Merrimack at Dartmouth)
PRINCETON 8, McGill 0 (exhibition)
Saturday, 11/7:
Harvard 3, BROWN 2
Army 6, UNION 5
Boston College 2, VERMONT 2 (OT)
ST. LAWRENCE 9, Northeastern 2
UMass-Lowell 4, CLARKSON 3
CORNELL 9, Waterloo 5 (exhibition)
YALE 14, McGill 3 (exhibition)
Sunday, 11/8:
Rpi 3, MERRIMACK 3 (OT)
ECAC standings as of 11/9/92 (pending Merrimack-Dartmouth result):
League Overall
Team W L T Pts GF GA W L T Pts GF GA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Harvard 1 0 0 2 3 2 1 0 0 2 3 2
Clarkson 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 4 21 6
Colgate 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 5 8
Cornell 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Dartmouth 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Princeton 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
RPI 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 2 4 10 8
St. Lawrence 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 6 19 9
Union 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 5 6
Vermont 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 3 7 9
Yale 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Brown 0 1 0 0 2 3 0 1 0 0 2 3
Many, many notes on Cornell's win over Waterloo:
Cornell 9, Waterloo 5
I admit it's a little dangerous to read too much into a victory over
a Canadian university team, since they generally don't do too well
against Division I competition anyway (see McGill's weekend at Prince-
ton and Yale). On the other hand, Waterloo is one of the better teams
from Up North. Going into Saturday night's action, the Warriors had
won all eleven of their games, most by outrageous scores (in their
previous game, against the University of Toronto, they scored 10 goals
*in the second period*). Time will tell, but maybe the Big Red's nine-
goal outburst (in two periods -- it took them an average of three whole
games last year to get that many) truly indicates that they have found
an offense, rather than that they were just beating up on weak oppo-
sition.
The game started off true to form -- in the first couple minutes,
Waterloo looked like a team that was playing its 12th game, and Cornell
looked like it was playing its first. The Warriors lit the lamp just
1:56 into the first period, as Steve Woods broke down the left side and
found John Wynne all alone in front of the net (the Cornell defense had
problems most of the night). As Wynne kicked the puck to his stick,
Big Red goaltender Andy Bandurski dropped down to block the shot -- too
early. Wynne flipped the puck past him and into the empty left corner
of the net. Waterloo went up 2-0 half a minute later. The puck popped
loose off a faceoff in the Cornell end, and Chris Kraemer got control
of it. Bandurski quickly dropped down to block the expected shot, but
there wasn't one -- until he was down, at which point Kraemer fired it
over him.
Last year, a 2-0 lead on Cornell would have held up until Judgment Day,
but in this game, it lasted less than a minute. Waterloo goalie James
Organ blocked a shot by P.C. Drouin, but left the rebound for Ryan
Hughes, who stuffed it between the pads at the 3:07 mark. Cornell tied
the score on an outstanding effort by Shaun Hannah, who dug the puck
out of the defensive zone, flew up the ice, worked a give-and-go with
Mark Scollan, and blasted the puck between Organ's legs. At 5:38, the
Big Red took its first lead of the game, when Tyler McManus went behind
the Waterloo net to wrestle the puck away from a Warrior defender, then
came out to Organ's right and fired in a tough angle shot. Hannah and
Brad Chartrand almost combined on a shorthanded goal a minute or so
later, but Organ came up with a nice save.
The Warriors tied the score with a power-play goal at 8:43 of the first
period. The Big Red defense tried to get control of the puck, but
succeeded only in leaving it in front of the crease, where Jamie
Hartnett found it and flipped it over Bandurski. (Darren Snyder, who
played for the Big Red six years ago, got an assist on the play) Fifty-
eight seconds later, Waterloo was in front again, as a shot by Kraemer
deflected into the net off Cornell forward Mike Sancimino's leg. This,
by the way, was the only goal of the first period that Bandurski
couldn't have done anything about. He later admitted he was very ner-
vous at the start of the game (it showed), and he settled down and
played well the rest of the way.
Waterloo got away with one later in the period, as a Warrior grabbed
Hannah's stick and lifted it up in the air. Referee ?? Dell called
Hannah for high-sticking. Ouch. With about three minutes left in the
first, the Warriors' Troy Stephens raced up the ice on a breakaway, but
Christian Felli made a nice play on him and forced the puck away from
him between the circles. Cornell tied the score again with 1:03 to go
in the period on a give-and-go with Jake Karam and Russ Hammond, with
Karam firing the return pass over Organ's shoulder.
In the second period, Maine showed up. Or something like that, because
the Big Red came out, skated hard, and blew Waterloo out of the
building. Cornell took 19 shots in the period (an astonishingly high
number for the Big Red) and scored five times. Waterloo coach Don
McKee made what turned out to be a bad move at the start of the period,
replacing Organ with backup Shane Murphy. The first shot he saw came
from Mark Scollan, who took a pass between the circles, held the puck
for a few seconds, than fired it between Murphy's legs for a 5-4
Cornell lead at the 2:08 mark. At 5:34, Hughes extended the lead to
two with his second goal of the night. On a power play, he received
the puck at the edge of the right circle from Drouin, looked to pass,
then changed his mind and unleashed a rocket that caught the net inside
the left post.
Waterloo started coming apart after that, and it wasn't long before
Cornell was lighting the lamp again. Hannah and Scollan combined for a
textbook 2-on-0 break at the 9:12 mark, with Scollan sliding the puck
over to Hannah for the tap-in. Hannah completed his hat trick with
seven minutes remaining in the period, as Murphy left a rebound of a
Scollan shot loose in front. Hannah skated by and flipped the puck in
the net. Cornell's last goal of the game came courtesy of Drouin, and
it was a power-play tally almost identical to the one by Hughes.
Drouin held the puck near the right circle, then fired it inside the
left post at the 17:35 mark.
The third period saw Organ return to the net for Waterloo, and he
played very well, keeping Cornell off the board. There were also all
sorts of extracurricular fun and games going on, and finally at the
7:52 mark, the Warriors' Barry Young was nailed with a ten-minute mis-
conduct as well as a minor. He left the game, although technically his
penalties would expire with eight seconds still on the clock. (It took
me a while to figure out why nobody was serving his minor -- it was a
five-on-five coincidental-minor situation. Boy, is this going to take
some getting used to) At any rate, Waterloo scored at the 10:22 mark
on a shot by Woods. Bandurski was partially screened, and he got a
piece of it, but the puck trickled behind him and across the line.
Cornell had several opportunities to satisfy the Lynah Faithful's
thirst for a tenth goal, but Organ was a wall. He made a nice stop of
a breakaway by Joel McArter with about eight minutes left, and a few
minutes later, he stopped three point-blank shots on a Cornell power
play. (Speaking of power plays, part of Waterloo's collapse could be
attributed to the fact that they took eleven penalties over the last
two periods)
So what does all this mean for the Big Red? Well, so far the offense looks
quite good, even without Czechoslovakian nightmare Jiri Kloboucek. The Big
Red seems to have gotten itself a nice crop of speedy forwards, who can and
will shoot the puck. Defense -- well, so far, the offense looks quite good.
Actually, the blueliners pulled together over the last two periods of the
Waterloo game, but there were still a few problems clearing rebounds and the
like. A couple guys also seemed not to know how to cut off a pass on an
opponent's 2-on-1 break, and since it looks like there's going to be a
number of those this season, that will be a crucial skill. (Even one of the
Cornell forwards said after the game, "We need to work on our defense.") As
far as goaltending goes, Bandurski seems to have finally gotten the butter-
flies out, and he looked pretty good over the last two periods. But be
forewarned, Cornell fans, if you thought Parris Duffus was aggressive, you
ain't seen nothing yet. At times, Bandurski was playing like a third
defenseman, or even a fourth forward. Early on, he was trying to do way too
much, but he settled down and looked more like the goalie who held the team
together against Vermont last year.
We'll find out more about this Cornell team this weekend, when they host
Princeton (who for whatever reason always gives the Big Red fits) and Yale
(another team loaded with speedy forwards). Here's the weekend schedule, as
the ECAC league competition begins in earnest:
Friday, 11/13:
RPI at Brown
Yale at Colgate
Princeton at Cornell
St Lawrence at Dartmouth
Union at Harvard
Clarkson at Vermont
Saturday, 11/14:
Union at Brown
Princeton at Colgate
Yale at Cornell
Clarkson at Dartmouth
RPI at Harvard
St Lawrence at Vermont
--
Bill Fenwick | Send your HOCKEY-L poll responses to:
Cornell '86 and probably '94 | [log in to unmask]
LET'S GO RED!!
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