The Cornell mens hockey team started the 2008-2009 season with 8 defensemen on the roster. Five of them were fairly regular starters. The sixth spot rotated between Taylor Davenport and Jordan Berk. Sean Whitney, the eighth defenseman, saw almost no ice time in the first half of the season. Midway through, Berk left the team, leaving only 7 defensemen. Even so, Whitney did not see much ice time until the postseason, when injuries forced Schafer to put him into the lineup. He ended the season appearing in only 5 regular-season league games and 9 more nonconference.
This season, Whitney has already played 5 ECAC games, and 6 total, and there is no reason to believe Schafer is going to sit him any time soon. He has been on the game-starting pair with senior Brendan Nash for most games, and has seen powerplay, penalty kill, and 3-on-5 penalty kill ice time. Keir Ross, who played 32-of-36 games last season as one of the top-5 defensemen, has been in his suit instead of his skates every game this year.
The question is, why the change? Ross, a freshman last year, showed fairly consistent improvement in his play over the course of the year. He was not a flashy defenseman, but he was solid, and more than reliable in his own end. So reliable, in fact, that some considered him to be one of our team’s top-3 defensive defensemen. He was poised to become one of the anchors of our blueline.
Whitney plays a different role than Ross. In our first significant look at him in Albany last season, he looked like he had the potential to be a very creative, smooth-skating offensive-minded defenseman. He has been called on to fill in this role this season as well, quarterbacking the first powerplay unit. However, he has also been used in a top defensive role, a choice that is just baffling. Justin Kreuger, Brendan Nash, and Mike Devin are all better defensive players than Whitney. The freshmen Birch and D’Agostino, both NHL draftees, have not shown enough with our team to know how they compare to Whitney defensively, but have shown nothing to indicate they are any worse. Despite this, Schafer continues to go to Whitney in all situations, including crucial defensive ones. While it is reasonable to keep an offensive-minded player on the roster, playing your worst defensive player on the 5-on-3 penalty kill unit is simply inexplicable.
Meanwhile, the 2009-2010 season has been a very atypical one for the Cornell team. The team is racking up the goals, but is struggling defensively, very seriously struggling. Cornell’s offense is coming from the first line, from the 4th line, from the freshmen defensemen…basically everywhere except from Sean Whitney. In the mean time, he has struggled. In Saturday’s 3-2 loss to Quinnipiac, Whitney took a needless penalty to give Q the early momentum, singlehandedly killed off a Cornell powerplay by trying to dance through the neutral zone and repeatedly giving up the puck, and turned over the puck directly in front of Scrivens by trying to clear his own zone in front of the net instead of two the sides, leading to a Quinnipiac scoring chance. And this was all in the first 10 minutes of the game, before the entire team’s play deteriorated.
To be fair, Sean Whitney brings an element to our powerplay that it has not seen in years. He is a creative and mobile defenseman, and has the offensive vision to “quarterback” the powerplay like many NHL powerplay specialists do. However, he is still getting used to this role, and occasionally tries to do too much, resulting in a turnover or a missed opportunity.
In the mean time, Cornell is doing fine in the goals department without Whitney, and is struggling defensively because of him. A solid defensive defenseman in Ross is riding the bench in order to give Whitney his chance. Perhaps Ross is injured, or there is some other reason to keep him out of the game, but as far as we know, he is good to go. We have the goal scoring to get far in the NCAA postseason this spring, but we will not be able to compete unless our defense tightens up. With that in mind, maybe it is time to stop forcing Whitney to be a player that he’s not, and to put Ross back in the lineup.
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