Following Up on Yale

How did I do with my pre-game post?

Cornell needs to focus on defense. Yale is a fast team and our slower d-men will often find themselves a little behind the play;

This wasn't as much of an issue as it was earlier in the season in New Haven. In that game, Cornell had some truly awful line changes which allowed cherry-picking Yale forwards to get ahead of our fresh defensemen. On the powerplay, however, Yale's rapid puck movement seemed to confuse our PKers and they had some nice back door opportunities.

despite this, we need to limit Yale to 3-5 powerplay chances.

Well, we limited them to five. Yale was officially 0-for-5, although their first goal came on a continuation of a PP. Things could have been much worse if Scrivens hadn't played so well. Yale, perhaps remembering how well our PP did earlier in the season, was very disciplined and only went to the box twice.

Hope for a strong performance from Scrivens,

Strong would be an understatement. This was an epic performance in a losing effort, along the lines of Dave McKee's game against Wisconsin in 2006.

and maybe the monster line of R. Nash-Greening-Kennedy will generate some offense.

They got the first goal and will probably be the top line through the end of the season. Look for Blake Gallagher's production to continue to decline with him off the top line.

In New Haven, Yale outshot Cornell 22-8 in the first period, but it was tied, 2-2, after one.

Similar feeling on Saturday. Tremendously outshot, but a tie game into overtime.

Although Yale didn't pull ahead until the end of the game, they outplayed Cornell for most of the night and certainly deserved the win.

Ha. You could argue that Ben Scrivens deserved the win more than anyone else did, but as a team, Yale certainly generated the most chances.

I know goaltending has been a liability for Yale this season, but Cornell has had a lot of trouble getting pucks on net.

It's hard to get shots on goal when you don't have the puck. Blase played pretty well, but he wasn't called upon to do much.

See our column in the Sun today for more on the Yale game and some striking parallels between Saturday's game and the loss to Princeton last February at Lynah.