I get the feeling that I'm showing latent sadistic bestial necrophiliac tendencies here (beating a dead horse), but I'm really starting to wonder about some of the comments being made in this thread. On Dec 2, 11:12, Sallie Sarrel wrote: > Having watched >Cornell hockey for about the past 18 years, I can honestly say, that the >staff and the crowd are all very proud of playing rude, obnoxiuos hockey- >legal or illegal. Leaving aside the crowd for the moment, I find it an interesting conclusion that the coaching staff has been "very proud" of "rude, obnoxious hockey -- legal or illegal." I'm not really sure what is meant by that statement, but the Cornell hockey coaching staffs that I have seen and have on occasion spoken with seem to favor something a bit different. A bit of background: there have been four head coaches and I don't know how many assistant coaches here during the period of time that Sallie refers to. I can't speak for Dick Bertrand's teams, since he coached before my time. I did watch Lou Reycroft's teams, and they were, uh, known to mix it up with their opponents at times. I'd like to think that Rey- croft did not encourage or sanction it, but he was thrown out of at least one game, which is not the best example to set. When Brian McCutcheon arrived in 1987, he brought along a disciplined style of play that dramatically reduced the amount of penalties the team took... and not coincidentally, the Big Red rose from ninth in the ECAC to third that year. McCutcheon's teams, at least during the first five or six years, were among the least-penalized in the ECAC. The flip side of this is that his last few teams seemed somewhat tentative when it came to checking their opponents, possibly for fear of taking a dumb penalty or something. Nevertheless, McCutcheon was certainly no proponent of cheap or dirty play, and his assistants (including one Mike Schafer for a few years) were not either. And now the current staff. Under Mike Schafer, Cornell has played more aggressively in the past, and yes, the penalty minutes have gone up. But to suggest that Coach Schafer and his staff favor the style of play that Sallie refers to is questionable at best. Consider the last minute of the game at Yale, in which Cornell team captain Matt Cooney cross-checked a Yale player to the side of the head while the Elis were celebrating the game-winning goal, and got himself a well-deserved major out of it. The coaching staff showed their pride in this illegal, rude, and obnoxious (not to mention dangerous) play by giving Cooney the first period off in the game the next night. And while there are coaches who probably would have suspended Cooney for the entire game, there are also coaches who would have given him a talking-to in the locker room and that would have been the end of it (i.e. he would have started the next game). This is only one (hopefully isolated) incident, but I believe that this, coupled with statements that Coach Schafer has made about some penalty problems this season (hint: the statements are not favorable), indicates that the Cornell coaches support a cleaner style of hockey. As for the crowd, there is unquestionably a positive and loud reaction when a member of the Big Red knocks down an opponent, cleanly or otherwise (assuming the opponent is not injured... I have thankfully not heard the once-ubiquitous "scrape him off the ice" for quite some time). We like our guys to win those one-on-one battles, and there is a certain segment of the crowd that perhaps doesn't care what it takes as long as Cornell comes out on top. I don't defend this attitude, but I do believe you'll find it in other fans as well. Go to any college hockey rink, and you'll hear the home fans cheering when a member of their team levels an opponent and jeering when an opponent dares to try the same thing against one of the home guys. This will happen regardless of the legality or illegality of the play in either case. Now, perhaps other fans are not as crude as the Lynah denizens have been known to be, but that's another subject. (And I hope a dying one... we'll see on Tuesday night) >Schafer was brutal when he was at Cornell, Um, yes, I will grant you that he was a fan favorite :-) But if you watch the team play now, you might concede the possibility that he's learned something during his nine years as an assistant under three different coaches. > My cousins >who graduated in his year, their first reaction at the Thanksgiving >dinner table when we started to talk college hockey, was that they loved >how tough those guys were now. Frankly, so do I. After three years of watching Cornell get pushed around at will by just about everybody, it's -- dare I say -- gratifying to see someone other than a Big Red player bounce backward after a collision. These guys *are* tough, as well as aggressive, and they play hard, but that does not automa- tically translate into obnoxious or dirty. Sorry to ramble on and on again, and I admit there's some emotion tied up in this... though I'm trying to be as objective as I can. But what I've seen and heard of this Cornell team does not appear to jibe with what I read in the original post. -- Disclaimer -- Unless otherwise noted, all opinions expressed above are strictly those of: Bill Fenwick Cornell '86 and '95 LET'S GO RED!! DJF 5/27/94 "A man shouldn't be an athlete after the age of 27." -- George Foreman, in 1973 HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.