Patting Myself on the Back

My predictions for the ECAC playoff series this past weekend (actual results in parentheses):

Yale in 2 (Yale in 2)
Cornell in 3 (Cornell in 3)
Princeton in 2 (Princeton in 3)
St. Lawrence in 2 (St. Lawrence in 2)

After an exciting weekend of hockey, our semifinal matchups are set for Friday:

#4 St. Lawrence vs. #1 Yale, 4:00pm
#3 Princeton vs. #2 Cornell, 7:30pm

This is my fifth trip to see Cornell play in the ECAC final weekend at the Times-Union Center (formerly Pepsi Arena) in Albany.

In the 2003 championship game, I saw Cornell defeat Harvard in overtime, 3-2, in one of the games that really turned me into a Cornell hockey fan. Harvard was winning, 2-1, with 33 seconds left in the game, when Mark McRae scored an extra-attacker goal to tie the score. Eighty-three seconds into overtime, Sam Paolini scored on a shot from the point to win.

In the 2005 championship game, I saw Cornell defeat Harvard, 3-1, in one of those physical, defensive-minded games that were characteristic of our teams from earlier in the decade.

In 2006, I saw Cornell shut down a good Colgate team, 2-0, in the semifinal on Friday night. (See picture above, stolen from eLynah.com) On Saturday, they collapsed. All-American goalie David McKee let in 6 goals on 25 shots as we lost to Harvard, 6-1. McKee redeemed himself the following weekend, stopping the first 59 shots before Cornell lost a heartbreaker to Wisconsin, 1-0 in triple overtime.

Last year, we again lost to Harvard, this time in the Friday night semifinal. We then defeated Colgate in the consolation game, 4-2, to close the season on a positive note.

This year, who knows? I'll have some predictions up later in the week.