Cornell Hockey Officially Announces Class Of 2013

No shockers here if you've been following the recruiting scene. It had looked like Armand de Swardt would defer until the fall of 2010, but he's coming in August. As Big Red Puckhead notes, we'll have a whopping 17 forwards on the roster for next year. Not exactly reassuring news for those of us who think star forwards Colin Greening or Riley Nash might bolt for the pros over the summer, leaving spots for the freshmen to fill.

The big story here (no pun) is the size of our new guys! Check it out:

Yes, those are three defensemen with an average size of 6-3, 199. The coaching staff will deny that there is any sort of purposeful trend towards bringing in bigger guys, but the numbers don't lie here. For a few years in the middle of the decade, we flirted with bringing in some smaller, faster players to help transition to the style of hockey which we thought would better enable us to compete for the national championship. For various reasons, some of these smaller guys didn't work out. We've been bringing in bigger guys the past couple of years, capped by the defensive recruits coming this August.

Chris Moulson is the younger brother of former Cornell standout Matt Moulson '07, who sits 7th on Cornell's list of all-time scorers, with 71 goals from 2002-2007. I don't think anyone expects Chris to equal Matt's numbers, but it'll be nice to see a new player skating around with Moulson on their sweater.

Omar Kanji comes in with the lowest expectations of anyone on the team. Don't take my word for it; take Coach Schafer's:

Cornell Coach Mike Schafer on Kanji: “Omar was highly recommended to us character-wise, and we wanted someone who can come in as our number three goaltender with great character. We wanted someone who wanted to work hard, much along the lines of a kid like Dan DiLeo – a great teammate and knows his role coming into the program. He’ll start out as our third goaltender, and he’s a great student and a great kid.”

DiLeo was by a key supporting member of the team for four years, but remember that DiLeo played 4:36 of hockey in four years at Cornell.

As I've said before, on paper, we have a very solid team for next year. The departures of Nash or Greening would hurt us significantly on the offensive side, but if everyone stays, the Frozen Four will be a realistic goal for this team.