The cultures of major universities are nearly indistinguishable from their associated sports cultures. Duke University is not Duke without basketball and Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Johns Hopkins University is not Hopkins without lacrosse and Homewood Field. The Pennsylvania State University is not Penn State without football and Beaver Stadium. Those programs and those venues reify a vigor that drives each institution in distinct ways. The list does not end there. Among the most glaring exceptions from that list is Cornell University. What first-year Cornellians will learn quickly as they experience their firsthand orientation at our great university, their #CornellWelcome, if you will, is that Cornell belongs on that list.

Cornell University is not Cornell without hockey and Lynah Rink.

As developing Cornellians, there is one thing you will learn that our institution reinforces in you: never accept anything as writ without critical challenge. So, you not only may find yourself asking, you must find yourself asking, is hockey the sport of Cornell University? And, if it is, why is hockey the sport of Cornell University?

The intent of this writer is not to demean the traditions, successes, and fan bases of the other sports at Cornell University. The purpose is to state a reality. Cornell football has a proud tradition and Coach Archer has its current teams dreaming of reclaiming greatness. Cornell men's lacrosse perennially contends on the national stage. Cornell men's basketball has impressive recruiting and shows germs of being able to return the Big Red to the NCAA tournament. Cornellians should go experience those environments and support those teams. One thing will remain clear. Hockey is Cornell. Cornell is hockey.

Football. The athletic raison d'être of the Ivy League. Why is it not the sport of Cornell University? Well, regaling you with Cornell lore is one of the many services that we offer here at Where Angels Fear to Tread, so we will break you in now. Andrew Dickson White, co-founder and first president of Cornell University, remarked famously upon receiving word that the football team of the University was invited to play the team of the University of Michigan in Cleveland, OH, "I refuse to let 40 of our boys travel 400 miles merely to agitate a pig’s bladder full of wind!" Football never quite recovered. Students and alumni began to look elsewhere for a congealing escape.

The first students at Cornell University, your historical antecedents, arrived on East Hill just 28 years before Cornellians dreamt of a carnelian-and-white hockey team. The sport that such a team would play was even younger. In four years's time, Cornell played in its first intercollegiate contest and had its first undefeated season in hockey. Early American legends of ice hockey played at Cornell University including Jefferson Vincent of Buffalo, NY who led Cornell to a perfect season and national title in hockey in 1911.

The history did not end there. Fear not, the Big Red hockey team is not the Chicago Cubs of collegiate hockey in its need to rely upon distinguished but antiquated greatness for comfort. Ned Harkness, a coach whose skill equaled or surpassed that of figures like Herb Brooks who live in pop culture through such films as Miracle, returned Cornell to hockey greatness in opening a flowing pipeline to professional hockey and restoring recurring success, including two more national titles, at the regional and national level for Cornell hockey teams. The greatest team ever to play collegiate hockey played for Cornell. That greatness continues under Coach Schafer, an alumnus who spearheaded Cornell's 1986 Eastern championship.

This writer said "Cornell hockey," did he not? Nowhere did this writer say "Cornell men's hockey." This is precisely why hockey unlike many other sports on campus that are reasonable contenders is Cornell University's sport. There is no female analog of football and the female counterpart of lacrosse is all but a distinct game. In the words of Doug Derraugh, alumnus, legendary goal scorer from the Class of 1991, and current head coach of the women's hockey team, "hockey is hockey." Change in gender of the participants is moot.

Women began playing ice hockey on East Hill in the early 20th Century on the same frozen waters of Beebe Lake, the paintbrush of the scenic vista that separates North and Central Campuses, that trained the great 1911 team. Modern women's hockey began at Cornell University in 1971. The program immediately became one of the most dominant programs in women's athletics. The Big Red won six consecutive Ivy League postseason tournaments. More recently under Coach Derraugh, it has won four Eastern tournaments in just five years.

The Lynah Faithful, the zealous fans who flock to Lynah Rink to support Cornell hockey, live the best of the vision of the University's founders. In one of the more frequent manifestations of the guiding spirit of coeducation and equal opportunity, the Faithful do not distinguish their zeal or loyalty toward the men's or women's programs. Both programs are supported passionately. Both programs enjoy the best playoff crowds in the nation in their respective spheres. Perhaps above all else, in living coeducation and living the tautology that hockey is in fact hockey, hockey is Cornell's sport.

Yes, yes, winning, as you can see, is a very big part of this. Drawing from the earlier examples, students at Duke measure their time in terms of Final-Four runs, students at Penn State know their era by bowl games, and students of Hopkins know their national-tournament runs in lacrosse. For Cornellians, each era of students knows its time by the ECAC Hockey championship(s), Eastern championship(s), that was(were) won during its time. With 16 Eastern tournament titles shared between the two hockey programs, the vast majority of graduating classes celebrate raising a championship banner.

The environment itself is why hockey is Cornell. It is hard not to feel belonging watching the superorganismic antics of the Lynah Faithful in harassing goalies ("sieves," as you will learn), singing volumes of songs from the University's past, and unleashing incomprehensible zeal when the Red scores. From this writer's personal experience, there are few better ways to let out steam and recenter after a long week and challenging prelims (as you will learn to call them) at our rigorous university than watching some good, honest physicality that lays the lumber on opponents over the weekend. Trust me, the feeling will be all the greater when the opponent is wearing sweaters (or jersey, if you are so inclined) of certain shades. 

Cornellians become a community at Lynah Rink and share the experiences of Cornell hockey.

In a few short years, at commencement, when the alma mater is sung, you will feel and likely will succumb to the urge to lock arms with the Cornellian next to you and sway in time, like you learned at Lynah Rink.

Some performances are downright offensive. At times, last season was offensive in all the wrong ways. The season culminated in the dually most and least offensive moment of the season: a 7-0 humbling to Union at home in the playoffs. The scoring production hit rock bottom. The usually rare disillusionment of the Lynah Faithful soared for the first time in a decade.

This is not to say that last season was without its memorable moments and high notes (think second win in the Frozen Apple, historic defeat of Denver, and two emotional Harvard games). None can erase what lies ahead of this coming season. The Cornell hockey program will be on a path of proving next season. All the questions with few exceptions encircle addressing the Red's offensive woes throughout the entirety of last season. In a multipart series, this contributor of Where Angels Fears to Tread will address the ways in which the coming team will redress this fever-inducing problem.

It would seem monumentally unfair if the one constituency of the 2015-16 team that bore no blame for the dissatisfaction in how last season resolved was expected to find the means of lifting this coming season. Stated clearly, the incoming freshmen are expected to contribute in large ways in the coming season. The class is wildly talented with Angello, Lalor, McCrae, Nuttle, Otterman, Shore, Smith, Starrett, and Vanderlaan. 

Anticipating redemption exclusively among their ranks may be too much. Upperclassmen will decide if this 99th season of Cornell hockey gets off the ground. It is the freshmen who may decide if it can soar. Therefore, the steepest curve on which to prognosticate about the freshman class would be requiring the new wearers of the carnelian and white to recoup the losses of offensive production that departed with the graduation of the generally productive Class of 2015.

So, reader, let's see how these freshmen should fare. The Class of 2015 contributed 31.6% of Red offense last season. The six members of last season's senior class generated 2.85 points per game and 0.82 goals per game in the aggregate. Can nine newcomers erase those losses and go beyond to add flourishes to a much-needed statement season?

It would be a folly to assume that a player's production in prep or junior hockey correlates exactly to offensive production in that player's freshman-year production. Adjustments are required. The emergence of fairly sizable databases of junior hockey statistics over the last two decades allows a model to be built and projections to be made.

Firstly, all junior leagues are not the same. Customary allocation of points and systematically different styles of play may lead to one league's style skewing numbers or preparing players for differing aspects of college hockey. The model for each league remained independent. The expectations of how a player's performance from the USHL to his freshman season may vary from expectations associated with a player transitioning from the AJHL to his freshman season. This specifies and individualizes the data. The model of predicting how a player's performance during his last season from junior hockey correlates to that player's freshman production emerged after comparing the relationship of players's production during their last seasons in a given league of junior hockey to their first-year production on East Hill. These production comparisons were used to derive a model for each league that relied upon data from 16 seasons of incoming freshmen for the Big Red.

This approach indicates that players from the CCHL might benefit from a system that awards points more liberally than in college because point production is much reduced from one's last season of junior hockey to one's first season at Cornell. Contrastingly, production in terms of goals per game in the CCHL tracks very similarly with the scaling of goals and points per game in the USHL to a player's first season in college hockey. For example, each goal scored in a player's last season in the USHL averages equating to 55% of a goal scored as a freshman in a carnelian-and-white sweater.

Where the data from junior hockey leagues has exploded over the last two decades, the data for prep hockey lags behind. Therefore, where a nuanced model can be applied in predicting the freshman production of players from the AJHL, CCHL, and USHL, no such model of individualized prediction can be applied to the offensive statistics of prep-hockey players like Chad Otterman and Beau Starrett in predicting which digits they will scrawl into ledgers. A very, very crude average of points produced during the freshman seasons of other prep hockey alumni who played for the Big Red was used as the unit offensive production in points and goals per game and then multiplied to approximate Otterman's and Starrett's contributions.

And, what result? The freshman class alone is projected to generate 1.79 points per game and 0.53 goals per game. The aggregate first-year production of these underclassmen will erase 62.8% of the point production that Cornell lost from the 2014-15 team. Furthermore, more impressively, 64.6% of the goals per game that the seniors from last season contributed are expected to be met if these freshmen perform in accord with mean expectations.

Yes, such a result still leaves wanting 35% of Cornell's anemic offense from last season, but an overwhelming majority can be expected to be replaced with the talent on this freshman class if these freshmen deliver only average first-year performances. If their attitudes and ambitions are indicative, they want to deliver to the Lynah Faithful a freshman season better than average. The first verse of the ballad of this class was sung many months before its members and their families were packing their family vehicles to begin the slog up East Hill. The words were of Beau Starrett but they have proven to hold true for all of these freshmen. When asked about his choice to attend Cornell University, he responded that why would he attend a university where hockey is loved when he could play for fans, alumni, and students whose religion was hockey. 

They have come to help their upperclassmen restore the faith.

The topic of Beau Starrett gives further statistical hope. The projections for Otterman and Starrett estimate that each will register less than 5% of one goal per game. 15 skaters on last season's team produced superior goals-per-game totals. Put another way, as soon as the scoring of Starrett and Otterman combine for more than two goals in the season, a likelihood that many rightly view as a certainty considering their natural talents, the model will have an error of nearly 30% in estimating the output of these former prep players; an error that would make the Lynah Faithful and this writer quite pleased.

This model provides a mixed lens of average and worst-case-scenario approximations. It seems safer to assume that the latter is more apt. If these incoming players merely have average freshman campaigns relative to the skill that they demonstrated in their last seasons of hockey, they will erase nearly 70% of the offense that Cornell lost on their own. This leaves very little for the other corners of the team to fill in to put Cornell in a position to increase its offensive potency.

One must remember that 70% includes the legacies of Cole Bardreau, Joel Lowry, and John McCarron, players whose names will not be forgotten soon and whose immortality is yet undecided. Equaling or overshadowing the offensive deficits left in their wake is no small task. Nevertheless, these newcomers have the potential to do that if they prove that they are above average.