Ironically, the exact same thing happened at Cornell last year. The refs
issued a warning to the fans after the warm-ups, but some idiot threw his
fish on the ice late in the first, and Harvard quickly converted on the
subsequent Big Red bench minor.
        The game ended 6-5, Harvard. When will the fans learn?
        Great point, though. And it'd be a terrific way for a couple of
daring supporters to get their boys an early power play on the road...
 
        Ian Kennish
        Harvard '94
 
On Mon, 13 Feb 1995, Jeffrey T. Anbinder wrote:
 
> Okay, I think we may have dealt with this one before, but I honestly don't
> recall the concensus or applicable rules, so I'm going to ask again, since
> it came up at this weekend's Harvard/Cornell game.
>
> The referees were understandably upset on Friday night when the ice was
> suddenly covered with fish during the pre-game introductions, and they were
> quite justified in asking the fans not to throw anything else on the ice.
> They also issued a warning that if any further foreign objects were thrown
> on the ice, they would call a bench minor against Cornell.
>
> Well, some yutz in Section D was either late to the game, or just plain
> stupid, and threw something right before the second period started anyway.
> Cornell gets called for a bench minor, Sancimino serves it, Harvard breaks
> the scoreless tie 56 seconds into the penalty, and wins by one goal.
> Everybody's pissed, because Cornell stayed in the game with Harvard for 60
> minutes, and it's been a LONG time since that happened in the regular
> season (and going on four (five?) years since it happened at all).
>
> Here's the problem:  What's to stop me from going to Bright Arena at
> Harvard next year and throwing something on the ice every few minutes, to
> get penalties called against Harvard?  Not that I'm going to do it, but
> here's the sticky point - what rule in the book allows the officials to
> assume that it was a Cornell fan that threw the foreign object?  If it was
> a Harvard fan, there was nothing that either the Cornell team or the
> Cornell fans could have done to stop it, and although I'm fairly confident
> that it was probably just some idiot sophomore who didn't get there until
> after play had started, it *could* have been a Harvard fan.  Gentlemen,
> start your rulebooks.
>
> So did anybody else also notice that the officials' discussion with
> McCutcheon about the bench minor delayed the game about three times as much
> as the removal of the offending object did?
>
> --
> Jeffrey "Beeeej" Anbinder                                [log in to unmask]
> Development Assistant, Cornell University      [log in to unmask]
> Editor/Novelist/Freelance Writer             [log in to unmask]
> DJ, 93.5 WVBR-FM                            http://beeeej.cit.cornell.edu
>
> "An artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind
> theirs."
>                    - Edgard Varese