Are we angry or not?

In the final seconds of the Jan. 17 game at RPI, which Cornell won 3-0, RPI's Erik Burgdoerfer delivered a big hit on defenseman Taylor Davenport that left him laying on the ice for a few minutes and resulted in a three-game suspension for Burgdoerfer.

It's important to understand the context of the hit. At the risk of violating copyright, the Ithaca Journal's Brandon Thomas has a good description of the final minute:

With 1 minute, 4 seconds remaining, RPI entered the offensive zone. As the puck approached the crease, Engineers forward Jordan Watts bowled over goalie Ben Scrivens.

"Going on top of the goaltender with a minute left with a fourth-line right wing and that kind of play at the end, there's no reason for it," Cornell coach Mike Schafer said.

A minor penalty was called. But rather than send out checkers to whittle away the remaining time, the Big Red responded by sending its first power-play unit onto the ice — something that clearly got noticed by the RPI bench.

...

After a give-and-go with Tyler Mugford along the boards, Davenport took a bad-angle shot that left him off-balance when Burgdoerfer sent him flying into the wall.

Whether or not the hit was warranted based on Cornell's play at the end of the game, this is the kind of thing that teams remember. When Davenport finally rose to his feet and skated off the ice, the team followed, without shaking hands with RPI.

The IJ article implied that Burgdoerfer was a marked man when RPI comes to Lynah next month:

"Our guys will have a long memory when they come back to Lynah," Schafer said.

Those absolutely sound like fighting words: if Burgdoerfer skates in that game, he'll have a target on his back.

But check out the article from today's Sun, entitled "M. Hockey Rejects Policy of Payback." Schafer sounds sympathetic to Burgdoerfer's position:

“[Cornell players] don’t have a grudge against the kid. Our guys know the kid pushed Davenport, but Taylor put himself in an awkward position and the kid did something,” Schafer said.

And:

"We’ll go out of our way to make sure we don’t do anything hard against the kid."

Jeez. Keep in mind that Burgdoerfer also received a two-game suspension last season for a dirty hit on Cornell forward Joe Scali. Maybe Schafer got some criticism for his quotes in the original Ithaca Journal piece, but now he sounds excessively tame.

How will Cornell respond? Will we retaliate? I guess we'll find out February 20.