By Ian Prescott; Northeastern University
Dragons Trying to Paint The Town Red
Cortland's 2009-2010 followed the cliche of close and no cigar, often this Red Dragon team found itself neck and neck with most teams late into 3rd period but more often than not a blown lead or an early deficit made it impossible for this young Cortland team to defeat the top tier DIII teams when it mattered. However with an incoming class the Dragons will be looking to fly high again in 2010-2011
The Good
Team President Tommy Farr had a productive season that led to his nomination to the DIII all-star game, his 9 goals and 4 assists in 10 games was enough to lead his team, however the SUNY squad had no shortage of scorers with Chris Poplarski and Brendan Joyce who both also had over 10 points in 10 games. A balance necessary to build upon if they are to jump up the standings this fall.
The Bad
The top three aforementioned scorers seemed to be the only goal scoring that Cortland was able to muster; beyond the 25 goals from the top 3 scorers the rest of the team was only able to produce 15 goals, bringing the total goals for output to 40 goals, which was second to last only 10 goals more than last place Ithaca. The incoming class of players will need to have a real knack for scoring to assist with Cortland's triumvirate of Poplarski, Joyce and Farr
The Ugly
Three goaltenders played games for Cortland last season splitting 17 games between Ross Midgen, Lou Vetri, and Bryan Bulchalski. In those 17 games the majority of the work went to Midgen and Bulchalski who both had goals against averages very close to 6.00 and save percentages lower than .810 which is not good enough for a team averaging about 3.33 goals a game.
The Outlook
"We definitely need to step up in our leadership. Also we need to find lines that click, we didn't find the right combination of players that played well together until the time playoffs rolled around. We will certainly be practicing more come next season. We have some great talent coming in as well." -Tommy Farr
To see this article please go to http://ecrha.net/article.php?article_id=54453 . Thanks to Ian Prescott of Northeastern University for a job well done on our season recap as well as all the other ECRHA teams.
