Not surprisingly to me,
Cornell was the more penalized team this weekend, and
Cornell fans were the more vocal whiners about said officiating.
Having said that, Colgate couldn’t/didn’t take advantage of those Power Play situations.
We really need to take a hard look at how we play these types of clutch-n-grab, physical, aggressive, against-the-boards, chirty opponents, at even strength and with a man advantage. I submit that Mike Harder’s run-n-gun, everybody-have-fun style is more of a mismatch with these types of teams than Don Vaughan’s basic defensive style. Mike’s record against Cornell is now 2-4, while Don’s last six games showed 2-2-2 by NCAA standards and 4-2 by ECAC standards (including shootout wins).
Once again, when interviewed on the big screen tonight, Mike stated that he wants everyone to have ‘fun.’ But neither game this weekend was ‘fun’ to watch for this fan, nor do I imagine that they were ‘barrels of fun’ for the ‘Gate players (especially the seniors). We were never in contention this weekend, plain-n-simple. We were out-shot, out-scored and just out-played (and, especially, out-raced… to the puck nearly every time in our own end). A third-place standing in the ECAC regular season and a first-round bye all went for naught. Oh, well, I will be at Lake Placid next weekend, even if the Colgate team won’t be, cheering for Quinnipiac, Dartmouth and either Clarkson or Harvard.