Lynah Faithful everywhere rejoiced on Monday, as Cornell entered the national Top-20 for the first time in a year. Out of 59 NCAA Division 1 hockey programs, the Red slotted in at eighteen, two spots ahead of its conference foe, Clarkson. Off to a 5-1 start, Cornell certainly deserves the eighteenth place. Yet, comparing Cornell hockey to other teams around the country has always felt awkward. This is because Cornell is far from significant college hockey hotspots, is isolated from major population centers and plays a different style of hockey than most teams.
College hockey doesn’t have the fan attraction level of the major college sports, football and basketball. The two main markets where college hockey draws significant attention are the Minnesota and Boston areas. Many Division 1 schools are located in or around these regions, but Cornell is not; no college hockey fanatic from either locale can take a short trip to Cornell to see a game. Thus, most college hockey fans have never been to Lynah Rink to see the Red in action. It is harder for them to accurately rank Cornell compared to schools in Minnesota or near Boston they’ve seen play many times.
Cornell is also isolated within New York. Lynah Rink’s cozy confines seat 4,267 vociferous students and Ithacans. However, few people regularly make the trek to Lynah from longer distances. Schools such as Colgate and Union likely benefit from the proximity of Syracuse and Albany, respectively. Cornell’s fan base, on the other hand, is confined to students, locals and Cornell alumni. Colgate and Union’s location near those medium-sized cities draws attention from large media outlets. For example, if Cornell was located within thirty minutes’ drive of New York City and the New York Times occasionally ran Cornell hockey write-ups, the Cornell fan base would increase significantly. It goes without saying that Cornell’s location in New York limits the publicity available to the Red.
Cornell plays a defensive style of hockey, which differs significantly from most top college hockey programs. Coach Mike Schafer’s ‘85 system emphasizes physicality, strong defensive play in the neutral zone and winning the puck back on the forecheck. Schafer’s teams, therefore, often play low-scoring games. Last season, Cornell scored the second-fewest goals in the NCAA, but still won nine of 22 conference games. This season, Cornell has been scoring often, but this should be treated as an outlier. In 21 years of Mike Schafer teams, it’s clear that his dominant and preferred style breeds low-scoring games. Many top programs prefer an end-to-end, offensive style of hockey. Schafer has always employed a defense-first system, which makes Cornell tricky to compare with offensive-focused teams.
Another element of the Cornell program also distances it from other Division 1 schools; Cornell has always focused its recruiting on Canadian players. In the 5-1 win versus Colgate on Friday, five different players scored goals for the Red and all were Canadians. The Red has players from provinces as far west as British Columbia and as far east as New Brunswick. Cornell’s Canadian tradition was symbolized by the Harvard-Cornell rivalry in the 1970s, which was widely seen as America versus Canada, respectively. It’s no wonder the Cornell Big Red Pep Band has a tradition of playing “Oh, Canada” every game, even when the opposition doesn’t hail from the Great White North.
Many members of the college hockey media are from the Minnesota or Massachusetts areas. They rarely, if ever, get the chance to see Cornell in action. Furthermore, Cornell is located far from major metropolitan areas and plays a different style of hockey than many other schools. Cornell hockey and other teams are incompatible because of the Red’s isolated state. A final word of advice to the Lynah Faithful: take Cornell’s national ranking with several grains of salt.
![By CHRIS STANTON
[caption id="attachment_3101" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] Courtesy of G.O.O.D. Music[/caption]
“The president of G.O.O.D Music has been announced / A quarter million a year, and that don’t bounce,” raps Pusha T on his latest single, “Untouchable.” The song is the first taste of the 38-year old’s long-awaited sophomore album, King Push, but the rapper born as Terrence Thornton understands what the big news is here: G.O.O.D Music has changed management. Pusha T himself has taken over the position of president from Kanye West, who founded the label in 2004 after the release of The College Dropout, and built it into the star-studded roster it is today. That Kanye would trust his brainchild to Pusha T is no surprise — the two have worked together closely for more than five years now, and West played a big part in helping the former Clipse member find success as a solo artist. However, the announcement symbolically reaffirms every Kanye fan’s most cynical suspicions: that Yeezus himself has turned his back on music in favor of fashion and family. “Untouchable,” then, inevitably feels like a consolation prize — the teddy bear a nice carny gives you if you cry enough.
Thankfully, “Untouchable” is a great song, equipped with all of the gleeful menace and layered wordplay we’ve come to expect from Pusha. This time around, he goes one step beyond wearing his influences on his sleeve by repurposing an old Notorious B.I.G. lyric as the song’s hook. The omnipresent Timbaland provides a bizarre, anxiety-inducing instrumental straight out of a John Carpenter movie, which serves as the perfect backdrop for the self-proclaimed King to remind us why My Name Is My Name was one of the best albums of 2013. “Untouchable” is no “Numbers on the Boards,” but few things are. And as Swish looks less and less likely to materialize by year’s end, King Push provides us something more tangible to look forward to — with equal anticipation.
Chris Stanton is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at cms459@cornell.edu.](https://snworksceo.imgix.net/cds/aeb1b641-2c4d-4a30-8341-41536aaccdfd.sized-1000x1000.?w=1000&dpr=2)
LINSEY | Isolation, National Recognition and Cornell Hockey
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