Re: 2013-2014 Union Dutchmen - Can U Three Peat? (Part II)
Like most older Union Fans, I could never have imagined the team doing this well these past 4 years. I never dreamed we would ever win a single Cleary Cup or even finish high enough to get a first round ECAC bye. We had been the league's doormat. The beams in our barn were the home to pigeons and bird dung, not banners. Sellouts were for concerts. Storied programs like Harvard and Cornell and Clarkson and SLU and Yale had barns with so many banners you would think their roofs would collapse. Each year we would serve as a punching bag for the IVY hoping that we could at least give them a good contest.
I hope this Union team reaches whatever goals they set for themselves and something tells me its higher than what they have achieved thus far. As far as my expectations ... they have been more than meet. With the loses from last year we were picked to finish somewhere from 4th to 8th and there were rumblings of a "rebuilding year". After our first 5 games, the injury riddled Dutchmen were 1-2-2 and I don't think many of us were thinking Cleary. The Dutchman did show "Guts". They were not going down without a fight. I saw the game at Harvard where they were down 2-0 and came back to win 4-2. The injured were returning to duty and the play keep improving. You could only hope that the upperclassmen could carry the team while the coaches worked with the freshmen to make them productive and bring them on-line as fast as possible. If the coaches succeeded we would have what we desperately needed, depth.
+1
I know many of you are salivating over the possibility of bigger and better things. The Cleary to me represents the ECAC's best. When QU won it last year, there was no question, within the ECAC, they were the best. With this third Cleary we are up there with some of those prestigious storied programs that we have so admired and have tried to emulate. Its a great honor for us, the smallest school in DI ECAC hockey. And remember, we are still one of the new kids on the block.
ECAC RS Champions (Credit Cornell Fan)
Clarkson 62 66 77 81 82 91 95 97 99 01 08
Cornell 68 69 70 72 73 02 03 05
Harvard 75 86 87 88 89 92 93 94
BU 65 67 71 76 78 79
Union 11 12 14
Yale 98 09 10
SLU 00 07
Colgate 90 04
RPI 84 85
Providence 64 83
BC 63 80
Quinnipiac 13
Dartmouth 06
Vermont 96
UNH 74
There is something else this team did. With that frozen 4 appearence in 2011/2012 we helped crack the ice for the ECAC that Yale and QU smashed into tiny pieces last year. I never thought I would ever read something like this:
"Yale won the conference's first NCAA Championship since Harvard in 1989. In-state rival Quinnipiac joined Yale in the all-ECAC title game. Union, the ECAC Tournament champions, upset Hockey East power Boston College in the first round of the national tournament. The impressive performance by the three ECAC teams in the 2013 NCAA Tournament was not lost on other league coaches at the annual media day last week in Lake Placid." "It's not the fact that Yale won the championship. It's how Union, Quinnipiac, and Yale dominated the national tournament. They didn't just go in and win it. It's the fashion they won it," said Cornell coach Mike Schafer. "As a coach in this conference for 19 years, I'm very proud to see the teams have success," added Schafer.
http://www.sbncollegehockey.com/eca...ozen-four-union-success-recruiting/in/4532713
My plate is full. For me, this team has already exceeded my expectaions and anything more going forward is "icing on the cake". I am pretty sure, however, this team has expectations of themselves that far exceed mine
Its still going to be a wild ride
