Of course, the ECAC leads the nation with teams in the "Also Receiving Votes" category--Brown had 17, Princeton five, Vermont two, even one for Harvard. This is all subject to change, mind you, as none--zero--of those five teams managed a two-win weekend.
All of which means, don't plop down your life savings into an ECAC account in Vegas or with Ladbrokes. There really is no way of telling what's next...
...especially with Noeth and Kelly in the house, again at Clarkson your friendly referees. (Poster children for Instant Replay in the ECAC? As the zebras themselves love to say, "You make the call.")
Suffice it to say that Cory Gustafson looked clearly offsides on the Konik goal which evened the game at 3-3. Cohagan mentioned that Kelly and Noeth "came into the dressing room before the game and clarified a couple of rules for us, and one of them was that if you are dragged into an offside position, they won't call that anymore."
This Gustafson was, perhaps, but 'twas a dodgy call nonetheless that kept Konik chugging up the right wing for a goal which might rank alongside Farrell's from last year in terms of potential future impact.
Especially after another Frozen North overtime goal for Perry "I Love This Road Trip" Cohagan, Harvard could again be on the road to normalcy atop the ECAC standings. Harvard did very well to outshoot the Golden Knights 43-30, and when Tomassoni spoke of the "grit" and "determination" that his troops showed on the Cheel Arena ice, you knew Konik was right:
"Breaks come and go," he said. "But we definitely deserved this one."
***
My father shot himself in the head on Friday afternoon. I didn't find out about it until Friday evening, when I called my family from the pay phone in the lobby of the hotel in Canton, N.Y., in which we were staying between games, along with the Harvard and Brown hockey parties.
I staggered out of the phone booth, and standing in the hallway were Tomassoni and Brown coach Bob Gaudet, the first people I blundered into--irony of ironies, for those of you who know me, that in an hour of need I blundered into a couple of hockey guys for whom I have tremendous amounts of respect.
Tomassoni was great to me that night--really, a class gentleman. He took me into his room and was a source of strength and comfort for me for several hours, along with Harvard trainer Dick Emerson and WHRB cronies Eric Adelson and Jim Cowie.
Thanks guys, especially Coach Tomassoni. Nice guys don't always have to finish last, and if the Man Upstairs had anything to do with the questionable call that led to Konik's equalizer against Clarkson, so be it. Tomassoni certainly earned it the night before, at least in my book.