Harvard 2022-23: What's Up?

[ARM]

Knights were down 3-0 and took IMHO some frustration cross checking and body checking penalties in the last half of the third. None were that egregious but they were called. When the 4th penalty was called with 12 sec remaining I guess the Quinny coaching staff had seen enough. They called timeout and then sent their top line out. Won the faceoff and eventually tick tack toed the puck around down low and scored with 2 sec left. Anyone want to comment on that one.

What we don't know is what Q discussed during that timeout. It could have been setting up a play or it could have been along the lines of the need to keep your composure and not get involved in anything outside the rulebook. I probably wouldn't send my top kids out at that point because why risk an injury if you think your opponent is taking runs at people, but I understand wanting to send a message within the rules.

The question of a team scoring late in a game that's all but over comes up in many sports, and the best advice that I've seen goes along the lines of this. If you don't like that your opponent is scoring in those late situations, then stop them. Beyond that, reflect your indignation on the scoreboard the next time that you play them. Winning is the ultimate way to stick up for yourself and your teammates.

[thirdtime's . . .]

I would be more likely to question the sportsmanship in the situation that you suggest, if UMD pulled its goalie while up a goal with two seconds left in the game, a situation where it clearly doesn't need an additional goal.

The situation I meant to suggest was certainly not this, but rather one where a team was either down one goal or tied, not up one, as with UMD. So no, I’m not in favor of piling on! Enough from me. Glad to have the various input. I’m a stranger in a strange land here who can only hope to live long enough to see the day when Harvard has the WCHA figured out.

Now that that’s settled (!) I’d like to move on to what was the most significant aspect of the UMD series for Harvard:


Saturday’s game marked the end of an amazing streak for Crimson hockey, and it was an end that was only tangentially related to the scoreboard. It was the first time ever that senior captain Anne Bloomer had not laced em up since joining the team as a freshman. Never missed a game her entire career until after being taken into the boards at UMD Friday afternoon. That’s 107 games in a row. And we’re not just talking about someone who gets an A for attendance, or basic things like stamina, endurance and dedication. Her skills made her the second highest goal scorer her sophomore year and gave Harvard its team leader in scoring last year. A lynchpin. So I think of this team having to start Saturday's game without #3 on the ice, and presumably not knowing when she’d return, as being equivalent to already feeling down 9-0 before the opening face-off. Or maybe down 107-0, which is what it felt like to me. I certainly hope we’ll see her well and back on the ice some time soon.

[pgb-ohio]

The situation I meant to suggest was certainly not this, but rather one where a team was either down one goal or tied, not up one, as with UMD. So no, I’m not in favor of piling on! Enough from me. Glad to have the various input. I’m a stranger in a strange land here who can only hope to live long enough to see the day when Harvard has the WCHA figured out.

Appreciate the civility of the conversation & can certainly respect a competing point of view. But you've identified the central issue, and we simply disagree. IMHO, if the outcome is in doubt, it's not piling on.

[Skate79]

How about this one in the Clarkson - Quinny game on Friday.

Knights were down 3-0 and took IMHO some frustration cross checking and body checking penalties in the last half of the third. None were that egregious but they were called. When the 4th penalty was called with 12 sec remaining I guess the Quinny coaching staff had seen enough. They called timeout and then sent their top line out. Won the faceoff and eventually tick tack toed the puck around down low and scored with 2 sec left. Anyone want to comment on that one.

I've been on both sides of that situation. Frustration sometimes gets the better of you especially when you are playing a top team in the conference. Not saying I resorted to that type of physical nonsense but one of my teammates had enough and decided he was going to punish the opposing team's top two players. All it bought us was more misery and a lopsided score and yeah, the opposing coach decided to run his best out there to keep scoring. No love loss.

Being on the winning side and having the other team take runs or inflict unnecessary hits, one of my teammates right before the draw near the end of the game when we were on like our 10th PP stood up at the faceoff dot and pointed to the scoreboard with his stick. He then got ready to draw and at the last minute drew back his stick and let the other guy win the draw. He then smirked and said something to the effect "That's about all you're going to win tonight". Again, typical chirping in the heat of the moment. It happens.

[thirdtime's . . .]

Harvard is not quite toast, but what can you say about a team that had to wait for the last game before the break to score its second PPG in some 50 attempts? Not the note I was hoping for the three seniors to be going out on. But necessity has meant a lot of ice time for all, and Pellicci is being forged into a top goalie.

What’s to look forward to in the second half? These lines and pairings have to jell a bit at some point (not so sure about the PP), so we can’t rule out January surprises, but they will be surprises. So this season seems to turn more than ever on the Beanpot, and all one can say is that the team BC sees in February will not be the one they saw last month, licking its wounds after Duluth.

[thirdtime's . . .]

Snow at Fenway and a very non-blowout by QU.

https://gocrimson.com/news/2023/1/6/...en-fenway.aspx

This is what they must mean when they say, “Just go out there and have fun!”

[Skate79]

Harvard is not quite toast, but what can you say about a team that had to wait for the last game before the break to score its second PPG in some 50 attempts? Not the note I was hoping for the three seniors to be going out on. But necessity has meant a lot of ice time for all, and Pellicci is being forged into a top goalie.

What’s to look forward to in the second half? These lines and pairings have to jell a bit at some point (not so sure about the PP), so we can’t rule out January surprises, but they will be surprises. So this season seems to turn more than ever on the Beanpot, and all one can say is that the team BC sees in February will not be the one they saw last month, licking its wounds after Duluth.

Pretty simple, really. Short on talent. They don't have what they need to compete against teams in the ECAC and are totally overmatched when it comes to playing outside the conference. They rely too much on a handful of players leaving the younger members of the team to fight for a few minutes each game. You can't develop depth/bench that way and it shows up when they have to compete against better teams.

[Steamboat]

Pretty simple, really. Short on talent. They don't have what they need to compete against teams in the ECAC and are totally overmatched when it comes to playing outside the conference. They rely too much on a handful of players leaving the younger members of the team to fight for a few minutes each game. You can't develop depth/bench that way and it shows up when they have to compete against better teams.

That sounds like a coaching issue to me. Anyone else think so?

[ARM]

That sounds like a coaching issue to me. Anyone else think so?

Coach Stone has always been an enigma to me. They were a dominant program when they had some of the top players in the game, but usually didn't have enough of them to get over the top. Now there are seasons where they seem to go completely off the rails, and just when I'm ready to write them off, they respond with a championship season. It seems like she is great at coaching/developing stars, but not so much when it comes to role players.

Fans of the team are in a far better position, and likely far more qualified, than I am to judge.

[thirdtime's . . .]

Pretty simple, really. Short on talent. They don't have what they need to compete against teams in the ECAC and are totally overmatched when it comes to playing outside the conference. They rely too much on a handful of players leaving the younger members of the team to fight for a few minutes each game. You can't develop depth/bench that way and it shows up when they have to compete against better teams.

Short on talent? Yes, but they don’t rely on a handful of players because no one, other than the goalie, is very reliable this year. If you mean inordinate ice time for the first and second lines, that’s just not the case; almost everyone is skating a lot. Coaching issue? More likely a recruiting issue, which all the Ivies share. Strong rosters will pop up periodically —- Cornell, Harvard, now Yale — but there’s a structural ‘weakness’ at play.


You will grant them one day of fun, no?

[Skate79]

Short on talent? Yes, but they don’t rely on a handful of players because no one, other than the goalie, is very reliable this year. If you mean inordinate ice time for the first and second lines, that’s just not the case; almost everyone is skating a lot. Coaching issue? More likely a recruiting issue, which all the Ivies share. Strong rosters will pop up periodically —- Cornell, Harvard, now Yale — but there’s a structural ‘weakness’ at play.


You will grant them one day of fun, no?

Of course. Playing at Fenway is a dream come true.

Where I respectfully disagree with you is playing time. Coach Stone's playbook has always been to play the stars at the expense of developing depth, and it has cost the team when going up against teams that do play their benches. If you want to build confidence up and down your roster, you need to bring them along and play them in situations where they can learn and grow. That doesn't happen enough with this program.

[Skate79]

Coach Stone has always been an enigma to me. They were a dominant program when they had some of the top players in the game, but usually didn't have enough of them to get over the top. Now there are seasons where they seem to go completely off the rails, and just when I'm ready to write them off, they respond with a championship season. It seems like she is great at coaching/developing stars, but not so much when it comes to role players.

Fans of the team are in a far better position, and likely far more qualified, than I am to judge.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the lack of depth and development of younger players at the expense of the 'stars' hamstrings Harvard especially down the stretch of the regular season. One look at this year's team tells you all you need to know about where the program is headed. Lack of discipline (taking incredibly stupid penalties), a non-existent power play, and no visible coaching of the D where lack of positioning and D zone awareness keeps cropping up game after game. Yeah, it's a coaching issue.

[thirdtime's . . .]

A good 40 minutes yesterday, then a collapse, leading inevitably to a 5-on-3 goal. Yes, discipline is a yewg issue for this team. We sorely miss Sydney Daniels. Among other duties she was in charge of special teams, and the PP has cratered in her absence. She would have pulled her hair out seeing a D leave her point to join an already crowded scrum kicking at a frozen puck along the boards, a puck that subsequently found its way to a Princeton stick and was then gleefully carried over the abandoned blue line for a short-handed rush. Is this team young and was the D a freshman? Yes. But is this season also coming into its fourth month? Yes. So certainly coaching comes into play here, but I’m not sure why it’s cast into a star/supporting role player divide. How you can coach one and not the other, mutually dependent as they are? And what happens if you find that the stars don’t show up?

So Skate79, I think you're right about the mess but wrong about the reason for it (Stone's playbook), and ARM, I think you’re wrong to think that we might know more than you do about the situation. lol. We’ll have to stick with your “enigma."

Not so BTW, Princeton was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Hobey Baker rink this weekend. (January 5, 1923!) Lots and lots of history, so from that angle the Tigers' wins were nice to see. (I was last at Baker rink almost 100 years ago myself.) And let me maybe be the first to say that the freshman Issy Wunder is going to be Princeton’s next wunderkind, currently second to Fillier in total points. Anyone can score 5-on-3, but her second goal was a gem.

[Skate79]

A good 40 minutes yesterday, then a collapse, leading inevitably to a 5-on-3 goal. Yes, discipline is a yewg issue for this team. We sorely miss Sydney Daniels. Among other duties she was in charge of special teams, and the PP has cratered in her absence. She would have pulled her hair out seeing a D leave her point to join an already crowded scrum kicking at a frozen puck along the boards, a puck that subsequently found its way to a Princeton stick and was then gleefully carried over the abandoned blue line for a short-handed rush. Is this team young and was the D a freshman? Yes. But is this season also coming into its fourth month? Yes. So certainly coaching comes into play here, but I’m not sure why it’s cast into a star/supporting role player divide. How you can coach one and not the other, mutually dependent as they are? And what happens if you find that the stars don’t show up?

So Skate79, I think you're right about the mess but wrong about the reason for it (Stone's playbook), and ARM, I think you’re wrong to think that we might know more than you do about the situation. lol. We’ll have to stick with your “enigma."

Not so BTW, Princeton was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Hobey Baker rink this weekend. (January 5, 1923!) Lots and lots of history, so from that angle the Tigers' wins were nice to see. (I was last at Baker rink almost 100 years ago myself.) And let me maybe be the first to say that the freshman Issy Wunder is going to be Princeton’s next wunderkind, currently second to Fillier in total points. Anyone can score 5-on-3, but her second goal was a gem.

Thirdtime, it all comes back to coaching, whether it's the playbook or failure to coach up on fundamentals. I watched the third period of the Quinnipiac-Colgate game yesterday and the two teams displayed a system and structure that Harvard can't match. Yes, both teams have more talent. No one will argue that. But talent alone isn't the sole determining factor.

[thirdtime's . . .]

Thirdtime, it all comes back to coaching, whether it's the playbook or failure to coach up on fundamentals. I watched the third period of the Quinnipiac-Colgate game yesterday and the two teams displayed a system and structure that Harvard can't match. Yes, both teams have more talent. No one will argue that. But talent alone isn't the sole determining factor.

The Dartmouth win showed that Harvard could bring its season’s PPG total (3) even with its SHGs, while the Sacred Heart loss showed that Harvard could take the fourth-place team in NEWHA to OT.

On a roll!