Re: Yale Hockey 2010-2011 thread
Brenthoven and brianvf: I'm pretty sure I'm not one of the trash talkers you refer to, but I don't think there are any Yale fans who aren't happy to be called Cinderella. I'm pretty sure that's all any of us ever wanted. Since, by your logic, it will be fifteen years or so before anybody from Yale will be able to call their program a quality program (and even then, highly doubtful given the incredibly difficult time one has buiding and keeping a strong program) I suppose you think we should just sit here quietly and not speculate about our team's future -- since that's all it is... speculation. And other fans of ECAC teams can speculate about their teams' future, and we can jointly speculate about how well the ECAC might do this year in the tournament. And history is a very important part of the data one requires to carry out informed speculation -- but it surely isn't the only data one needs or Michigan Tech would still be an important part of the conversation. Hey, Yale has history too.... we'd have whipped UND's *** in 1896 when we started, since UND didn't have a team. So what? We'd have lost for most of the next 110 years. Maybe every **** time for all I know. (OK... not last year.) But I know that has nothing to do with who's good this year (though last year has some meaning, given the player/coaching overlap). And yet, what's fascinating about all the speculation is that nothing is guaranteed. Number one seeds in the tournaments win only a little more than twice as often as the average entrant, because the skill differences aren't that profound. So I definitely don't predict that Yale will win the tournament (nor has anyone, to the best of my knowledge), and I definitely don't predict an ECAC team in the Frozen Four (nor has anyone, to the best of my knowledge), but I don't think that UND's or Denver's or Michigan's or any other school's illustrious history will have anything to do with it. And if Yale wins the next ten championships in a row, I won't think Yale's history has anything to do with it ten years after that when all those players are long gone. In a perfect world, the trash talkers would only talk to the trash talkers, and the people who wanted to talk hockey would just talk hockey. But we don't live in that world. We gladly put up with the "Ylae"s and the asterisks and the cupcakes and the EZAC's because Cinderella is just happy to be discussed. To pick on our traditional rivals, the Harvard thread makes pretty grim reading now, and yes, they "skated circles around us" for most of the past thirty years (that's as far back as I go, but I'm sure it's even worse than that if you go farther back.) And the interesting thing is that they're a program at the moment caught in the reverence of their illustrious past, as they don't have the heart to disown their past in the slightest degree to disrepect Teddy Donato -- that's not my opinion; it's one side of the agonized debate going on at their thread.
So we're happy to be Cinderella if you're happy being the Wicked Stepsister. And if the Prince's Carriage doesn't find our house, well, there's always next year. But don't tell us we can't be happy about going to the Ball for the third year in a row. And don't tell us we might not be able to stay longer than we stayed last year because our pedigree is suspect. Because we're really good looking.
Brenthoven and brianvf: I'm pretty sure I'm not one of the trash talkers you refer to, but I don't think there are any Yale fans who aren't happy to be called Cinderella. I'm pretty sure that's all any of us ever wanted. Since, by your logic, it will be fifteen years or so before anybody from Yale will be able to call their program a quality program (and even then, highly doubtful given the incredibly difficult time one has buiding and keeping a strong program) I suppose you think we should just sit here quietly and not speculate about our team's future -- since that's all it is... speculation. And other fans of ECAC teams can speculate about their teams' future, and we can jointly speculate about how well the ECAC might do this year in the tournament. And history is a very important part of the data one requires to carry out informed speculation -- but it surely isn't the only data one needs or Michigan Tech would still be an important part of the conversation. Hey, Yale has history too.... we'd have whipped UND's *** in 1896 when we started, since UND didn't have a team. So what? We'd have lost for most of the next 110 years. Maybe every **** time for all I know. (OK... not last year.) But I know that has nothing to do with who's good this year (though last year has some meaning, given the player/coaching overlap). And yet, what's fascinating about all the speculation is that nothing is guaranteed. Number one seeds in the tournaments win only a little more than twice as often as the average entrant, because the skill differences aren't that profound. So I definitely don't predict that Yale will win the tournament (nor has anyone, to the best of my knowledge), and I definitely don't predict an ECAC team in the Frozen Four (nor has anyone, to the best of my knowledge), but I don't think that UND's or Denver's or Michigan's or any other school's illustrious history will have anything to do with it. And if Yale wins the next ten championships in a row, I won't think Yale's history has anything to do with it ten years after that when all those players are long gone. In a perfect world, the trash talkers would only talk to the trash talkers, and the people who wanted to talk hockey would just talk hockey. But we don't live in that world. We gladly put up with the "Ylae"s and the asterisks and the cupcakes and the EZAC's because Cinderella is just happy to be discussed. To pick on our traditional rivals, the Harvard thread makes pretty grim reading now, and yes, they "skated circles around us" for most of the past thirty years (that's as far back as I go, but I'm sure it's even worse than that if you go farther back.) And the interesting thing is that they're a program at the moment caught in the reverence of their illustrious past, as they don't have the heart to disown their past in the slightest degree to disrepect Teddy Donato -- that's not my opinion; it's one side of the agonized debate going on at their thread.
So we're happy to be Cinderella if you're happy being the Wicked Stepsister. And if the Prince's Carriage doesn't find our house, well, there's always next year. But don't tell us we can't be happy about going to the Ball for the third year in a row. And don't tell us we might not be able to stay longer than we stayed last year because our pedigree is suspect. Because we're really good looking.
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