​Eras define all things. Ideally, as Frank Costello quips in The Departed, leaders try to make their environments a product of them. Often, however, something’s epoch limits the latitude of even the greatest of people. This reality is as true in sports as it is in business, academia, law, politics, or life. Athletes shape their eras, but their times provide the studio, raw materials, and accoutrements.
 
One example springs to this writer’s mind. It is one that has jumbled around in his head for some time. It is telling in how it reveals one of this contributor’s athletic pastimes and passions beyond his life among the Lynah Faithful.
 
Greatness is not known independent of time. Who was the greatest cyclist of the late 1990s and early 2000s if one excludes ex post punishments? Was it Jan Ullrich or Lance Armstrong? Armstrong won seven Tours de France on the roads of Europe. Ullrich won the Le Tour in 1997, finished second to Armstrong three other times, and fell third to the American’s first on one other occasion. The German had one other second-place finish that the Texan did not exact.
 
Reader, if you do not know, five wins in the Tour de France is the gold standard for the legends of that most celebrated of the Grand Tours. Armstrong is the only rider to have worn the yellow jersey on the last day of the race more times. It could have been Ullrich. It was Jan Ullrich, not Armstrong who was suffering from cancer in 1996 through 1998, who was rumored as the one likely to win more than five Tours. Armstrong’s return prevented that.
 
Removal of Armstrong alone conceivably would give Ullrich five earned victories. One finds it tempting to assume that German with a penchant for off-season debauchery would have won six Tours but for Armstrong. It never will be. The era of Armstrong defines and throttles Ullrich’s legacy through no fault of his own.
 
Both were two of the best cyclists ever. They competed mightily. However, one will be remembered (now, for more reasons than initially thought). One will not.
 
This reader watching the resurrection of a dormant Harvard program after the arrival of Paul Pearl has wondered in this era of the Cornell-Harvard rivalry: Who is Armstrong and who is Ullrich? Cornell clearly is building toward something big. The tales of the recruiting trail foretell that. However, is Harvard building toward something bigger?
 
The Red may prove that it is superior to Crimson. That possibility is weeks in build-up. Let’s live now.

​Cornell hockey is nothing if not the product of its era. It has found ways to climb to the pinnacle of its sport in eras when defense dominates, offense controls, and even when teams played seven a side. This team seeks to add to that legacy.
 
To the sincerest chagrin of this contributor, college hockey is in the vicious throes of the at-large bid victor. Union is the only program since Where Angels Fear to Tread launched to have won the national title in the traditional way. Yale lost twice in championship weekend. Providence got swept at home. North Dakota lost and tied before it strung together four wins. The Dutchmen alone won their way into the Frozen-Four field.
 
Conference titles should matter. Conference titles do matter. However, only one of the last four national champions lifted conference-sponsored silver before it hoisted NCAA-sanctioned lacquer. This writer ventures that Coach Schafer has noticed this trend. He has built this team for this type of four-game run.
 
Success in a conference tournament bears little correlation to success in the tournament that culminates in the Frozen Four. Half of the champions of the Frozen Four have failed to win their conference’s top prize since the NCAA adopted its current balanced four-round format in 2003. Only four teams not named Boston College have won in this current era with winning their conference tournament.
 
The triumphs of fourth-seeded Yale and Providence invite the assumption that this trend will grow only starker.
 
This team all season has been focused upon getting to the Frozen-Four tournament through whatever means that it can. Coach Schafer and its members know that this is the formula that has served well recent national champions. A team need not win its conference tournament to prove that it is the best in the nation in this era. It need only have an account full enough to buy a ticket to the dance. Cornell was not overdrawn this season.
 
Like Armstrong and Ullrich, Cornell does not choose its era. It just has to win in it.
 
Now, it is time for Cornell to make good on this timely plan in the ways that Denver, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Duluth, Yale, Providence, and North Dakota have.

​Cycling, like all endurance sports, is an exercise in divided focus. The easiest way to pass the time and ride true is to focus upon the horizon, the closest thing to the endpoint that one can see. If a rider does this for too long, he will find himself rubbing the tire of someone ahead of him and causing a wreck. Or, simply, one may find their front tire in a pothole while grimacing into the sunlight trying to see the flamme rouge.
 
The River Hawks of Lowell are more than a pothole. They may in fact be more like the Category 2 climbs that thin the pack on an expectedly mundane stage. Sure, they never would be declared hors catégoire like…on second thought, do not even think about the other side of the bracket. Norm Bazin and Lowell are nothing to overlook.
 
The River Hawks never played in ECAC Hockey despite their winning three of the last five traitor’s trophies in the Hockey East Division. Aficionados of ECAC Hockey might not know this without engaging in a bit of research, but that means Lowell is now more decorated in the East’s other conference than is New Hampshire.
 
New Hampshire, now there is a program that imbues fear and disdain in the hearts of generations of the Lynah Faithful. The River Hawks have won their conference now more times than have the Wildcats. Cornell cannot afford to allow Lowell to gain similar footing in the national tournament against it as has the host of the Northeast Regional.
 
This is the fourth time that Norm Bazin has led Lowell into the Frozen-Four field. Three of those four tournament appearances ended with the River Hawks bowing to a program from ECAC Hockey. There will be no amount of underestimation in the opposing team’s locker room. Norm Bazin never has lost in the Frozen Four First Round.
 
Bazin has a perfect record in “the first game” not because of luck of the draw. Sure, his River Hawks have beaten titleless Miami, Minnesota State, and New Hampshire. They have slain a Frozen-Four blue blood in Wisconsin.
 
Fans of the designed haves of Hockey East often malign Norm Bazin’s system as one that presupposes that a game can be won 0-0. They often say that watching paint dry would be more exhilarating. Generally, Lowell’s approach is viewed as a flattened, less creative version of the scheme for which Coach Schafer is known.
 
Lowell has not had to win many games 0-0 lately. The River Hawks soared scoring four or more goals in three of its four victories en route to a Hockey East championship. It has averaged outscoring opponents by 3.25 goals per game over that run. This satellite school on the ice need not orbit anything It brings its own gravity to bear.
 
So, instead of a team that seeks to win 0-0, the Lynah Faithful should look at Lowell and see a disharmonious union of the elements that make Cornell and Union such dangerous teams this season. Lowell, like Union, will not defeat itself. Lowell, like Cornell, brings a balanced offense that relies on no line for its survival than others.
 
The River Hawks are neither as sound as the Dutchmen nor as balanced as the Red. The weakness of Lowell’s backside on the power play was on full display against Notre Dame and Boston College at the TD Garden. Only Boston College converted, but it was apparent why Lowell has the ignominious distinction of allowing the third-greatest number of short-handed goals this season. Alex Rauter or Mitch Vanderlaan may crack the history books if either can spring for a shortie in Manchester.
 
Lowell exhibited sloppy play in the neutral zone against Boston College. Jerry York’s Eagles only made good on those mistakes enough to fall one goal shy of the ospreys. War is always built for wars of attrition in the neutral zone. The Red’s comfort in such battles as this game will be may give it a catalyst to precipitate victory.
 
The balance of Lowell’s offense still sees its top line of C.J. Smith, Joe Gambardella, and John Edwardh produce 40.3% of the team’s goal scoring. Its contribution was relatively consistent over the Hockey East tournament. Freshman Colin O’Neill found his form in the playoffs and doubled his regular-season production in just five games.
 
The River Hawks have versatile weapons. They have weaknesses that Coach Schafer and his team can exploit on the ice of Manchester. Those are not numerous. The Cornell team that played in Lake Placid will win this game.
 
The question remains if that team is the one that laces its skates on Saturday morning. Cornell dominated a team sounder than Lowell in Union in the 2017 ECAC Hockey Semifinal like few teams in the nation can. The Red was relentless. It never saw a puck that it did not want. It never doubted the prospect of a rebound and bore down to finish through when one emerged. Beau Starrett was the hero of that story. Cornell’s power play was dynamic.
 
Cornell played no differently on Saturday. The difference largely was a product of luck. Luck is not an excuse from failure. It is one from disappointment. The Red did almost everything right. It was not rewarded for it. The difference between the Schafemen’s 4-1 dismantling of the Dutchmen and 4-1 humbling to the Crimson was misfortune. Ted Donato conceded that Cornell had his talented Harvard squad “on the ropes” for much of the game.
 
The car just came off the rails last weekend. It is time to get in line for the next ride.
 
The River Hawks like to pounce early. Cornell will need to weather that storm or, better, bring its wrath to Tyler Wall’s doorstop early. Lowell scored within the first half of the first period in its last three wins. It took only 66 seconds to best Boston College. The Eagles gave the River Hawks all that they could handle.
 
A disallowed goal went in Lowell’s favor. Boston College still got within one when Lowell nursed a two-goal lead in a defensive shell. For those who fancy outmoded metrics, the team rated 14th in the Pairwise Ranking took Norm Bazin’s Lowell to the brink. What can the 11th-rated team do to them?
 
Focus and determination appear like anger to some. Anger can be distracting. Cornell needs to be ready Saturday.
 
Whether it is the usual suspects of Anthony Angello, Jeff Kubiak, Mitch Vanderlaan, and Trevor Yates, those more infrequent contributors who rise to Cornell’s generational call for playoff glory like Noah Bauld and Eric Freschi, those whose name the Lynah Faithful cannot wait to yell in this postseason like those of Matt Buckles and Alex Rauter, or the throngs of Lynah Faithful harassing Norm, his River Hawks, and his misnomer of a netminder, everyone who bleeds carnelian this time of year must give everything to start this four-game season with a win.

​Cornell may have the bluest of blood in the Northeast Regional. Its nobility is not distinct. The other prong in the regional sees the 12th-most dominant post-season program in college hockey in the Golden Gophers of Minnesota.
 
Match-ups between Minnesota and the fourth-most dominant playoff program in college hockey, Cornell, are unique. No, not literally, but very close. The two programs have met only twice in their storied histories.
 
Cornell and Minnesota were the best teams in the nation regularly during the 2000s. The 2002-03 season set the two diametric styles and histories on a collision course. The final conflict never happened.
 
The one time that the Red tangled with maroon and gold was in the 2005 Frozen Four Quarterfinal. Cornell had the privilege of playing the late game in that regional. Oh, yeah, it was played at Mariucci Arena too. The less-rested Cornell squad fell to Minnesota, 2-1, in overtime. It seems only appropriate that the Red repays the favor if given the opportunity with the Gophers on our ice and playing in the later game.
 
Gopher leader Don Lucia will need to defeat his alma mater for a rare Cornell-Minnesota meeting to occur.
 
Cornell’s history with Notre Dame hockey is far richer than one would expect. The series is also deeper than the one that Cornell shares with the Fighting Irish’s first opponent. The non-sectarians of New York’s land-grant university have skated against the golden domers twice as many times as the former has against Minnesota.
 
The recent drama of the series relates largely to developments off of the ice. The Irish envied Cornell hockey for one thing after the 2004-05 season. Paying no mind to this commission of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Fighting Irish who recently had decided to take hockey more seriously resolved to lure Coach Schafer away from his alma mater.
 
Notre Dame Athletics marveled at what the legend behind the bench could do at an Ivy-League institution. They salivated at the prospects of him leading their hockey program. They knew that Cornell and the Lynah Faithful never could offer Coach Schafer as much in staying as Notre Dame could to induce his leaving.
 
Coach Schafer thankfully was not led into temptation.
 
That is when Notre Dame learned its most important lesson about Cornell hockey. We live it. If the opportunity presents itself, Cornell is fit to deliver another lesson as this team will reach its ninth Frozen Four with a victory over Notre Dame while the Fighting Irish languish with their two appearances under Jeff Jackson.

​The grandest things warrant the simplest introductions.
 
Jeff Vincent. Kevin Pettit. Mike Sancimino. Sam Paolini. Charlie Cook.
 
Those legends seized immortality for themselves the moment that they struck at the heart of Cornell’s nemesis for a game winner. Cornell and Harvard have met seven times in championship match-ups. Tonight, a tradition steeped in more than one century of lore takes center ice at the Olympic Center with the Whitelaw Cup on the line.
 
It has been 11 years since Crimson and Red collided with a trophy in the balance. The first championship meeting occurred 106 years ago. Jeff Vincent, a self-made hero of the Rust Belt, defeated Cornell University’s institutional foil in overtime for the 1911 Intercollegiate Hockey Association title. The last time that the class of the Ivy League and ECAC Hockey met for the Whitelaw Cup at the Olympic Center closed ECAC Hockey’s first tenure there.
 
The Crimson won that installment. It took two overtimes to mete out which team was superior. The benefit of retrospect makes it predictable that Cornell and Harvard are even in championship meetings in Lake Placid.
 
The melodically named Mike Sancimino put Coach Schafer and the hockey program of Cornell University back on top in the 1996 ECAC Hockey Final at the Olympic Center. The fortuitous arc of the puck after Sancimino’s release behind Harvard’s Tripp Tracy is one that the Lynah Faithful remember even if they have not the advantage of witnessing it. This writer lives that moment even though on that day his thoughts were far from Lake Placid.
 
This game is a rubber match for the foreseeable future. Cornell won the first meeting in Lake Placid. Harvard answered six years later. Lake Placid’s spellbook of magic is about to add a page.
 
The narratives of both programs differ slightly from the last time that the hockey programs of America’s oldest university and New York’s land-grant institution met in the shadow of the Adirondacks. The Crimson then derided the Red as “big and slow.” This lumbering giant evidently wielded a club large enough to slay the careers of two of Harvard’s bench bosses as the Crimson ceded its series lead against Cornell once Coach Schafer led the Red.
 
“Big and slow,” Cornell is no longer, if it ever was. Harvard’s inflated rationale for its victory over its rival in the 2002 ECAC Hockey Final, a moment archived on the walls of the Crimson’s renovated home in Cambridge, provides neither comfort nor excuse tonight. Speed and skill are as much a part of Cornell as they are of Harvard.
 
Ye of much Faith’, fear not the big sheet. Harvard’s victory over Cornell in November was the Crimson’s first such home victory in over seven years. Bill Cleary saw that his program’s home ice surface would be larger and more spacious so that Harvard’s finesse game could overcome the hard-hitting, honest tactics of Cornell’s Canadian-influenced brand of hockey. It has not worked. The team wearing carnelian recorded a 0.688 winning percentage and four wins on Cambridge’s nearly Olympic-sized ice since the 2009-10 season began.
 
Tonight, Cornell will be wearing carnelian and the sheet is Olympic-sized.
 
The frozen pitch of this contest unexpectedly may be exactly what gives the Red a key advantage in the most important meeting of these two rivals in over a decade. However, it is a cliché, but in this series, the previous records do not matter. All that matter is what each team can prove on the ice.
 
Cornell and Harvard have proven to be two of the best teams in the nation this season. It is the natural order of things. It is only fitting that these rivals who met in the first weekend of ECAC Hockey play this season will close the conference’s slate tonight. It is almost as if it were writ.
 
Harvard is one of three teams against which Cornell did not register a conference victory. The Red retired one of the other last weekend. It is time that the Red exacts the same treatment on the Crimson. A lesson in humility is due.
 
Partisans of the Crimson faction (yes, there are some) have been proclaiming that their team is bound for the Frozen Four. In a display of what constitutes modesty only in Cambridge, those same people predict that despite Harvard’s tying Union for the regular-season trophy, Harvard is the inevitable victor of the Whitelaw Cup. It falls to Cornell to teach Harvardians a lesson. As it so often does.
 
Earning and entitlement are what are on display. The purer Red of hard work and the sullied Crimson of privilege will battle for supremacy tonight at the Olympic Center. It is how college hockey has been since its 12th season. It is how it will remain. Ardor will be in one corner. Praise will be in the other.
 
The drama and narrative never changes. The times and players do. Cornell and Harvard are not dissimilar in one regard. They both are blessed with the talents of stars who know how to make their teams better. These distributors of pucks are both equally uncanny in their ability to create openings, sense opportunities, and trust in their teammates. Ryan Donato stands in that role for the Crimson. The Red calls upon Jeff Kubiak. Neither side should be shocked when magic happens on the ice and either player is present for the prestige.
 
The deadliest weapon that goes largely unnoticed because of the head of the team from along the Charles River is Merrick Madsen. His parents may have shortchanged him with a name that sounds taken from wadded parchment in the studio of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, but he rarely comes up short for Harvard. The Crimson goaltender looks solid against other non-carnelian teams. He looks unbeatable at times against Cornell. Cornell will need to find answers.
 
The test that Cornell will provide Harvard is an equally rigorous one. Mitch Gillam has proven to know where his playoff gear is and when to slip into it. The Red has played complementary hockey like few other teams in the nation this season. It has gotten only better in the post-season. Gillam needs not get a shutout if the floodgates have opened. Meanwhile, when scoring is at a premium, he delivers stellar efforts that neutralize opponents.
 
Harvard compared itself to Goliath early in the season. The Crimson can have that likeness. Perhaps more than a cursory skim of the tale’s wiki would serve their boosters well. It is only appropriate that the carnelian and white in this context become David. Cornell University always was more welcoming to the sons and daughters of David.
 
The Red, the more cunning, prepared, and savvier belligerent, looks to slay a Philistine tonight.
 
Tonight, we are privilege to the rarest of sporting events. An event that needs neither build-up nor superfluous adjectives. In academic or philosophical senses, it is viewed with varying perspectives. But, manifestly, it is a hockey game. It is so much more. Cornell University and Harvard College on a sheet of ice in Lake Placid.
 
The stakes are real. Harvard assumes that it will win. It also assumed that a neophyte university in Upstate New York never could rival its global and national reputation. Now, it scrambles to rival its relevance in science and emergent fields. The founder of American education faces off with its redeemer. We need each other.
 
Whether one turns to the maxims of The Lego Batman Movie or the Book of Proverbs, one realizes that Cornell and Harvard need each other. They make each other better. Cornell and Harvard are each other’s reason for waking, pumping iron, and preparing for the moment that their clashes mean just a little more than usual. Their sharpened iron crosses tonight. The stakes hardly could be higher.

​This writer told you that it would take a 120-minute effort, one double-length game, to advance to Lake Placid. He just never told you which 120 minutes. This team, true to the form of its character and the University for which it played, took the harder path to the Adirondack Region. Time will tell if it was the correct route.
 
Reader, you might find yourself asking aloud, “how can advancing in three rather than two contests be advantageous?” Well, to you, this contributor says, did you watch last Friday’s game? Cornell clearly was not playing in that contest. It took Friday off and played only on Saturday and Sunday. I kid, I kid. Mostly.
 
The rest is now history. This team defended Lynah’s hallowed playoff ice with the home team’s 34th post-season series victory. Coach Schafer mashed a fruit of his coaching tree. The Red won with its back against the wall in patient fashion. Real senior night occurred on a Sunday evening.
 
Cornell will participate in its 37th Eastern championship weekend. ECAC Hockey got the semifinal of its dreams.
 
There are two ways to win a college-hockey series in three games. Option one is to win game one, surrender game two, and win game three. Option two is to forfeit game one and win out the series’s remainder. The former builds no momentum. It also creates little urgency. The team could remain an oscillating tempest of inconsistencies.
 
Winning two games in sequence when each serves as a de facto single-elimination game from playoff glory requires far sterner stuff in the traveler. Momentum must be built and not seized in this case. The benefit of possessing already the credit of a game won to leverage later is unavailable. Everything must be earned in the present.
 
Cornell played itself into this mindset last Friday. It ensured that its next loss would jettison this team from the ECAC Hockey tournament and end its pursuit of a Whitelaw Cup. Cornell did not play either of its last two games with the benefit of tomorrow’s promise. Value therein lies.
 
The Red will begin every contest in the post-season as it did on Saturday night: knowing that if it delivers less than its best, it will be its last chance to advance toward associated championship glory. The same stakes will accompany every game that the members of this team play and the journey on which they take the Lynah Faithful.
 
These stakes loomed like banners hung above the ice on Saturday and Sunday. The astounding thing was how this team played its methodical, calculated, and cold-blooded style of hockey nearly faultlessly with knowing the task. On Friday, the Golden Knights ought to have chartered the Mystery Machine for how they unmasked the fraudulent ghoul that they faced. Carnelian and white became Baba Yaga and showed no mercy on Saturday and Sunday.
 
Like the emblematic John Wick, this team had to return to workin’ from a state of grave despair.
 
If journalism is the first draft of history, then social media and blogging now chisel the first lines of legend. If this team lifts the Whitelaw Cup, Frozen-Four trophy, or both, the moment historically identified as the beginning of the run occurred in the first half of the first period of game two of the 2017 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal.
 
Jake Weidner leapt to snag the puck out of the air along the blue line. The captain connected with fellow senior Eric Freschi who sent the puck across ice. This contributor’s call for an offensive defenseman to lead this team as was the championship tradition of Cornell hockey since Frank Crassweller in 1911 did not go to voicemail. Paddy answered with an unstoppable snipe from the blue line making good on Freschi’s disorientation of Clarkson’s defenses.
 
Everything changed then. The improvisation and teamwork of seniors gave Cornell its first lead of the series. It was the fitting beginning to a series rally. Cornell did not need to score first as it proved the next day. However, its scoring first altered the course of the series. The seniors saved the series.
 
The last two hours of play during the 2017 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal demonstrated exactly how Cornell hockey wins. The team trusted in itself to a player. A simpler team would allow the fear of elimination give rise to frenetic play that would eviscerate a season each shift. The members of this team played confidently, believing in themselves and each other, on Saturday and Sunday.
 
Clarkson’s scoring the first goal did not unravel these carnelian champions. Cornell answered in little over two minutes. The Red was contented defending leads while responsibly challenging Clarkson. It was a complementary balance of give and take. Cornell capitalized when it needed on the opportunities presented. Clarkson presented few.
 
The Ithacans did leave a handful of goals on their home ice. The peskiness of the Golden Knights cannot be ignored, but if this team hopes to go yard on the shot that Mitch Gillam called before the season turned to Schenectady, it will need to convert the promise of what it generated into capitalized results. Too many shots from the slot were directed wide. Too many breakaways led to gasps rather than taunts. Too much hesitation closed once-open lanes.
 
These deficiencies would have sent a lesser team to the locker room for a week of rest and anxious hope. This team is neither simple nor less. It is Cornellian in its character. Cornellians deliver in the clutch, when it matters most, when it is the proverbial or actual playoffs. They often do this after putting much unneeded drama in the tale to historic achievements. It is perhaps the demure arrogance or youthful brazenness of our University that causes these lapses. It remains archetypally Cornellian to dare greatly, often overthinking or second guessing, and to fall from grace. However, with swelling pride, whether it is in college admissions, prelims and final exams, professional licensing exams, graduate studies, employment opportunities, or college-hockey playoffs, Cornellians will deliver like none of their predecessors. They rarely need more than a second chance.
 
This weekend marks these seniors’ second kick at ECAC Hockey’s championship weekend.
 
Union reached Friday’s semifinal contest against Cornell in the fashion that many expected. Mike Vecchione scored a scripted overtime game winner to send the Dutchmen to Lake Placid. Oh, as if that storyline needed a more dramatic flourish, the winner was scored off of a penalty shot awarded to Union’s hero. Cornell and Union won in the ways that one would expect of their teams this season.
 
ECAC Hockey’s Baba Yaga embodied pure focus, commitment, and sheer will in its patient grappling with Clarkson over the two games that it played against its first playoff opponent. Clarkson held sway at times over that run. Cornell never lost control. It relied on discipline and focus. It lacked some of the thrills of the semifinal gun fu classic, but the determination of our hero was no different.
 
The determined standpoints of Cornell were not necessarily those that leap from the series’s box scores. Noah Bauld was a nuisance and pest in generating offense despite not registering a point. Eric Freschi and Jared Fiegl were the woad warriors with their omnipresent threats in the blue paint. Jeff Malott, previously handled as “Ffej,” did what he could to tilt the ice toward Clarkson and was rewarded mightily with Saturday’s crucial game-tying goal.
 
Luc Lalor failed to stand out which was a good thing for a skater who made no major missteps appearing in just his fifth and sixth games of his career in the crucible of the playoffs. Cornell’s power play cycled with moments of brilliance each time that it was called into service in the last 120 minutes of it series.
 
Noteworthy was the play of Yanni Kaldis who played all weekend with the form that the Lynah Faithful attributed to him most of the season. Anthony Angello’s point in every game of the series and two goals indicate that the sophomore is hitting his first-half stride from last season at the season’s most pivotal time.
 
Mitch Gillam proved beyond a doubt that he is ready to win as a Cornell goaltender in his senior season. Gillam defied the laws of logic and physics with several of his saves last weekend. This criminality will need to continue if Cornell wants to double dip on playoff glory. The senior netminder showed no signs of slowing down.
 
Union advanced with little hiccups in a predictable fashion. The Dutchmen scored eight goals over their series. Only four of Union’s skaters deposited the puck behind Colton Phinney. Mike Vecchione rifled nearly 40% of Union’s salvos. Spencer Foo contributed one quarter of the Dutchmen’s offensive output against Princeton.
 
Cornell played as Cornell does. Five different skaters for the Red recorded a goal in its quarterfinal series. The carnelian and white scored two fewer goals than did Union, but it did so with more players finding the back of the net. The Red attack remained lethal and multifaceted. Union’s front proved pointed and potent. Predictable.
 
Cornell and Union have written the greatest emergent rivalry over the last seven years. The programs are equal. Their coaches are bound for lists of all-time greats. The teams play their similar but respective styles unapologetically and with few mistakes. Garnet and Red have clashed five times in the last seven post-seasons.
 
The seniors on the ice Friday night will have played this series in every post-season of their careers. The legacies of the seniors at both institutions is interwoven forever. Mike Vecchione returned to Union College for his senior season to elevate its hockey program to its level when he joined the program. This alone indicates why he is one of the best in college hockey. That lofty target on which he has trained correlates to Union’s possessing only the second run of winning three consecutive Whitelaw Cups of current members of ECAC Hockey.
 
Cornell is the possessor of the other run. Oh, the Red won four that time too. Vecchione’s ambitions run afoul of those of this senior class at Cornell University. Cornell’s seniors have not wavered in seeking to uphold the traditions of Cornell hockey since they faithfully committed to the University and program. They lack presently a rite of passage for Red skaters: a Whitelaw Cup to call their own. They return for that goal.
 
This senior class in carnelian has had one heck of a run. Last weekend, they righted the wrong of a game-two quarterfinal loss in their freshman campaign against the same opponent. They did it their own way. They nonetheless got a sweep. This writer was disappointed at times, but emerged proud. Poignant history is again in play Friday.
 
The lake below the Olympic Center will cut as a plane through this senior class’ legacy. It will bisect the careers of these seniors between their sophomore and junior seasons. This plane, much like the lake, may stand as a mirror.

These seniors ended their freshman season with a semifinal loss to Union. They ended their sophomore seasons with a first-round sweep at the hands of Union. They repaid the favor a year later with ending the Dutchmen at Lynah Rink in a sweep. Their sophomore and junior seasons mirrored each other.
 
Will the reflection continue? Can this senior class close this saga with a semifinal victory over Union? Will their careers come full circle?
 
A moment unnoticed to many made this contributor realize that this team knows that it has the potential for greatness. Players from Clarkson tried to goad several players into fisticuffs on Sunday to draw the Red into foolish penalties. Even Cornell’s most pugnacious members did not bite. Beau Starrett noticeably laughed off such an invitation in the second period.
 
This team did not need to become mired in the pettiness of the moment. It knows that it has better things, bigger things to do. Cornell draped in carnelian went to Union on Friday, February 3 in search of a signature win. It got it. Why stop there? It seeks the first letter of a signature season on Friday against those same Dutchmen.

The time has arrived. It is the most wonderful time of the year. Now is when legends are made. Stitches of nameplates years removed from fixation will be planned from the moments that occur in the coming days.

The next seven days will see every conference in the throes of college-hockey playoffs. The zealotry becomes all-consuming for the partisans of any teams left playing in March and April. The emotion of the early Spring is hard to explain to the uninitiated. College-hockey playoffs are something unique.
 
The post-season in intercollegiate hockey at the NCAA Division I level is unlike anything else. It suffers from neither the exclusion of the College Football Playoff nor the dilution of the Final-Four tournament. A tournament whose design necessarily excludes at least one of the victors of its dominant conferences never can capture the imagination of a nationwide fanbase. A field of 68 teams and apportioned asymmetric advantages of byes render entry into that tournament less precious and its allotted paths unequitable. College hockey strikes the balance.
 
Conference tournaments matter in college hockey. No, not just the conferences that the media prefers, not just the most powerful unified cadre of programs. Every conference tournament matters. Additionally, those invited to the national tournament represent roughly the top quartile of the sport. The ultimate Frozen-Four champion is a legitimate national champion because each team in that tournament must traverse as similar a path as college hockey’s current constitution will allow. This is why college hockey’s playoffs gain unparalleled international attention.
 
College hockey is cosmopolitan. No, this writer is not talking about the cocktails that you threw back with Carrie before Red Hot Hockeys I and II in Manhattan. Our sport is international in a way that few others are. American talent dots rosters. Canadians have remained mainstays on the rosters of the best teams since Murray Armstrong and Ned Harkness penned sweet, sweet symphonies off of the riffs of their frontmen from North of the Border.
 
European talent from nations such as Finland and Sweden has contributed to deep playoff runs. Russians are now trickling into the ranks of programs young and old. Coach Schafer recently accepted the commitment to Cornell of the first Chinese-born NHL draft pick. Neither college football nor college basketball can boast of equivalent breadth and depth of buy-in from such a globally sprawling audience. This still fails to explain the rollercoaster of emotions that college-hockey fans will experience in the coming weeks.
 
Why should the ride of college hockey’s March and April come with approved harnesses? Well, that question is quite elementary, fellow thrill-seekers. Analogy is an instrument. Proportionality gives it reason.
 
Perhaps inevitably, sports in the collegiate ranks take cues from their professional counterparts. Hockey is no different. How many teams make the Stanley Cup Playoffs? How many teams make the Frozen Four First Round? Conveniently and symmetrically, the answer to both questions is 16. This is one of the many reasons that this contributor believes the current format of the national tournament is the closest to ideal possible at this time.
 
The same number of teams enters the ultimate stage of each season to claim the sport’s highest prizes. The answer to why college hockey has the most feverish sprint toward tournament hardware herein lies. Now, the denizens of Motor City must double fist cephalopods before they let the octopi fly because it takes 16 wins to raise Lord Stanley’s Cup. It takes just four wins to lift the oaken prize as champion of the Frozen Four.
 
Each victory from the Frozen Four First Round to the Final carries with it the weight of four wins in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. However, teams arrive in the First Round after as many as three weeks of playoff hockey. What of the meaningful conference tournaments that unfold before John Buccigross reads 16 names on a late March morning?
 
It takes 12 wins to claim either the Campbell Bowl or the Prince of Wales Trophy as a conference champion in the NHL. It typically takes four wins to decorate a program’s trophy case with a Lamoriello Trophy or Whitelaw Cup. Atlantic Hockey follows the same structure, but does not name its top prize.
 
Meanwhile, on either side of the four-win norm are the WCHA and B1G. The former requires five wins to get the hotel miniature of the Broadmoor Trophy. The latter effectively requires only two wins to earn the B1G Championship (no team has won from the first round yet). So, each win in a conference tournament moves college-hockey fans by roughly two and a half to six times as much as a win en route to the NHL’s conference hardware sways professional fans.
 
This writer for simplicity will assume the four-win paradigm that applies for a plurality of men’s conferences and three of the four women’s conferences in college hockey. This all explains why college-hockey fans experience the best and worst of times during the months of March and April. It is a simple product of scale.
 
The events of a conference tournament in college hockey are weighted by a factor of three relative to their professional analogs. The incidents of the national tournament are fourfold as impactful as those of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Despair and elation rapidly succeed and continuously oscillate like no other time in sports.
 
Each minor penalty feels like a major and more. Each save prevents the ruin of four goals allowed. Each breakaway against looms as damnation while racing the other way it promises salvation. Each winner buckles twine with quadruple moment. Each sentence is a paragraph in a program’s annals.
 
This is why college hockey has the best post-season.
 
It is not the fact that college hockey first recognized a national champion nine years before the Montreal Canadiens were founded. Nor is it the fact that the Whitelaw Cup was awarded six times before the NHL first expanded. It is the fact that everything, every split second, shift, call, and scheme scrawled on a whiteboard, tilts a season’s balance.
 
This is why college-hockey fans live the best post-season.
 
College-hockey fans are blessed this time of year. May your blessings not feel as curses. See you at the rink.

​The Lynah Faithful know the truth of Lynah Rink in the playoffs whether they know the facts behind it or not. Lynah provides a post-season home-ice advantage that franchises and fanbases of the NHL openly covet. Hockey fans the world over need not know that the Red has won 33 of the 38 playoff series that it has hosted on East Hill to know what a game at Lynah means: carnelian victory. Opponents know this. Cornell needs to prove this each and every time that it has the benefit of home ice in the Eastern tournament. The proving is the task this time out.
 
Another fact should nag in the minds of the Lynah Faithful, Assistant Coach Sean Flanagan, Associate Head Coach Ben Syer, Coach Schafer, and this team. Cornell dominated ECAC Hockey in the regular season in a way that it had not since its last historic run to a Whitelaw Cup in 2010. However, unlike that most dominant team in the history of the ECAC Hockey tournament, this team does not host a team that it has defeated twice already in the playoff’s opening round. The task is quite the opposite.
 
Only three conference teams denied the carnelian and white victory in both of their meetings. Keith Allain sent one of those teams back to its locker room to start early Spring cleaning last weekend. Harvard, well, Harvard will have to wait for another time. The third team? Clarkson. Cornell has not bettered Casey Jones’s Golden Knights yet.
 
Cornell salvaged a home tie and sacrificed a road win to their weekend crashers. It does not matter that by metrics subjective and objective that the Red should reign over green in the next few days. What matters is that each time that Coach Schafer led this team against the team of one of his protégés, there was no meaningful difference between the two squads.
 
There will be a victor this weekend. In an even series such as this one, a bad bounce can unravel the toil of a season. It does not matter that Clarkson is projected presently to be the tenth team out of the Frozen-Four tournament. The Golden Knights were the most unaccommodating team in the 2017 ECAC Hockey First Round.
 
Clarkson obliterated RPI with putting up 5.50 goals per game over last weekend. Yes, the Engineers were having quite the off year, but Casey Jones had his team humming at a rate that led it to net nearly two goals per game more on RPI than it had allowed through a lackluster regular season. This humiliation likely was not a mere factor in the “evaluation” in Troy that led to the ouster of Seth Appert.
 
If the change in leadership at RPI was the stick of last weekend’s series, Cornell must not underestimate the carrot that may be feeding the draft horse from Potsdam. Rumblings there for at least two seasons have rattled the ground on which Casey Jones stands. Clarkson is demanding that its Cornellian bench boss deliver results.
 
Clarkson likely delivered such an emphatic series victory which cost the Engineers their head coach to preserve the career of its own. Goldenrod brings unexpected thorns from the North Country. The aura of Lynah Rink alone against a program that an alumnus of Cornell hockey leads whose tenure it wants to maintain and is just two wins away from what it believes will be a home-ice advantage in Lake Placid will prove impotent.
 
This contributor is not one to shy away from analogy to other forms of entertainment. He has likened Cornell’s taking the ice in the playoffs to the ominousness of The Undertaker’s entrance in WWE. Last season, in a similar homage, this writer declared that the Cornell-Union first-round series at Lynah was Hell in a Cell. Neither season resulted in the Red lifting playoff silver or lacquer. The emphasis was misplaced.
 
Whether it was the calamity of clapping thunder and the flashes of flame associated with ‘Taker’s entrance or the vicious confines and stakes of Hell in a Cell, this contributor failed in one key regard. The spectacle is never the event. It is the team. The team makes the moment, not the converse.
 
The task before this team is a steep one. A juggernaut succeeded. The Phenom from Death Valley and the Beast Incarnate proved inadequate golems. The choice is clear. If the Boogeyman himself is insufficient, then this Cornell team must model itself on “the one you sen[d] to kill the…Boogeyman.”
 
John Wick is the perfect inspiration in more than his lethality (he leaves a wake in two films that outstrips any two of the franchise death tolls of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees (not Paula’s relative), and Michael Myers, the Boogeyman himself). Now, that might give you nightmares. The manner in which Wick conducts his business is the paradigm, especially for this weekend’s series.
 
Love drives Wick back into a life of violence that he once abandoned. His return is very personal. The enemies that he must vanquish are former partners. This connection makes him no less methodical. There is a heated nonchalance that Keanu Reeves’s stoicism grafts upon the character. This will be the most important aspect this weekend.
 
It is love of program, fans, and University that will drive this Cornell hockey team onto the ice surface on Friday and Saturday. Casey Jones, one of our own, is the foe that must be felled. It is hard to end any team’s season (well, except for Harvard, right?). It grows only harder when it is a friend. Coach Schafer and Cornell cannot hesitate this time.
 
Harvard and Union will take no moment’s pause in advancing to Lake Placid. This time, Cornell must not either. There it is again. The nagging subtext of the press conference after game three of the 2014 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal risks becoming again the story of this team.
 
Coach Schafer mourned understandably ending the season of a fellow coach whom he coached and with whom he coached at their alma mater. This was just one night removed from when his team clearly unprepared for game two gifted the Golden Knights another day of hockey in a contest in which the Red trailed for 53 minutes. Did compassion lead one of the greatest coaches in the history of ECAC Hockey to spare one of his mentees a sweep?
 
This contributor likes to think not. The prospect still stirs in the minds of the Lynah Faithful as it does his. Coach Schafer and his squad can allay those doubts on Saturday. Sweeping Clarkson is a narrative beyond that between Coaches Jones and Schafer. It is a beginning fit for the closing chapter of this senior class.
 
The seniors on this 100th team to represent Cornell University began their careers lifting their program to a bye in the regular season. Their first of four playoff series at Lynah Rink was against Clarkson. The Golden Knights cost them a sweep and maybe more in game two. These seniors advanced to ECAC Hockey’s Lake-Placid reunion in three games. The Dutchmen awaited the Red at the Olympic Center.
 
Had Cornell swept that quarterfinal series in 2014, what would be different? A more rested Union team defeated the then-freshmen and dispensed with Colgate the next day. The Dutchmen then rattled off four more wins to end the season with both the Whitelaw Cup and Frozen-Four title. What if?
 
A rested Cornell might have defeated Union. A rested Cornell might have won the Whitelaw Cup. A rested Cornell might have won a third NCAA title. These seniors have the chance for a second draft of their freshman season.
 
The rewrite begins with the flourish of a sweep of the Golden Knights. The rest will fall into place. SHagwell prophesied five weeks ago that Cornell and Union would meet in the 2017 ECAC Hockey Semifinal. The first two steps of this carnelian reboot seem to be in place. Let’s hope it is more Batman Begins than Psycho.
 
The surest way to make sure it is Christopher Nolan behind the camera and not Vince Vaughn in the walls is sweeping Clarkson. The task will be harder than it was in March 2014. These Golden Knights, the same ones that tied the Schafemen twice, have slipped into a different gear.
 
Clarkson’s formula for success in the first round predictably resembled that of most Cornell teams. The North Countrymen scored 11 goals last weekend. Six of those markers came on the power play. Each game winner came when the Golden Knights played with a man advantage. Clarkson was so efficient in deconstructing the Engineers that the former converted three times as frequently as had RPI allowed on average through the regular season.
 
This borderline dependence upon its power-play production is a weakness wrapped in a strength. Clarkson averaged only two goals per game during five-on-five play last weekend. Yes, it was a series in the North Country where such situations are the exception rather than the rule, but stalwart penalty killing and measured play from the Red should deprive Clarkson of the edge that propelled it to victory in the first round.
 
Clarkson’s play in transition is what shocked this writer last weekend. Sheldon Rempal terrorized Seth Appert. The Golden Knight’s attack is as versatile as claymore and as hard hitting as a trebuchet.
 
Who leads ECAC Hockey in scoring rate since February began? Here is a hint, reader, it is not Mike Vecchione, Ryan Donato, Alex Kerfoot, nor Spencer Foo. It is Troy Josephs.
 
The preventer of a Cornell-imposed senior-night loss for Clarkson averages one goal per game since the calendar flipped to year’s second month. If Josephs’s inability to wait even one minute to tie the carnelian and white once they had gained a lead at Cheel is insufficient to put the Lynah Faithful and this team on notice of the level at which this Clarkson senior is playing, nothing that this contributor puts across a screen will.
 
If the production crew can get this reboot up and running, this series is a 120-minute drama with a 21.5-hour intermission. Advance in two. Channel the Beastie Boys: two wins ‘til…Placid.
 
There will be no excuses from this corner if the Red fails in that pursuit. There are no excuses available. Cornell’s offense displays no ill omens in the build-up to the playoffs which is unlike similar metrics in the past three seasons.
 
The carnelian and white have scored 27.1% more goals per game in the regular season’s ultimate month than they had in the season’s first four months. The Red played nine games including four tilts against stout Clarkson, St. Lawrence, and Union. Cornell scored 3.56 goals per game in February.
 
This gaudy figure outpaces the analogous rates observed at programs with more offensively conducive systems at Boston College, Boston University, Duluth, and North Dakota. Coach Schafer was right to mock of that hackneyed criticism of his program in the program’s video for Giving Day. His team must continue in March and April what it has started in February. Pertinent history runs deeper than just one month.
 
This contributor described Cornell’s meetings with the North Country as akin to games between Original-Six franchises in the NHL. The history between Clarkson and Cornell is vast. Nearly one-third of ECAC Hockey’s postseasons have seen a Clarkson-Cornell duel.
 
Cornell has faced Clarkson 17 times in the Eastern playoffs before this weekend. The team from the university formerly known as Tech is Cornell’s most common opponent in ECAC Hockey’s postseason. Crimson and Red have clashed one time fewer prior to this season. The carnelian and white defeated green and goldenrod in runs that gave Cornell half of its Whitelaw Cups (one more than Clarkson owns as a program).
 
A history somewhere between one month and 51 years is also salient. Saturday is the real senior night for Holden Anderson, Matt Buckles, Ryan Coon, Eric Freschi, Mitch Gillam, Jeff Kubiak, Paddy McCarron, and Jake Weidner. It is the night on which these dedicated players who have given themselves in their own ways to this program should advance to seek immortality in Lake Placid and places beyond. The contributors of Where Angels Fear to Tread will be there to salute them.
 
The hesitation from March 2014, no matter its cause, must not be there. Otherwise, this team very readily could be taking a week off vainly tinkering with preferential scenarios in the Pairwise Ranking Predictors. As dapperly dressed in vintage-inspired threads as John Wick, this team needs to reify his passionate indifference in the playoffs.
 
When Clarkson and Casey Jones ask this team and Coach Schafer, “are you here on business, sirs?”
 
The answer should be simple, clean, and measured.
 
“Afraid so, Casey.”