CORNELL 3, @Yale 0
We are glad to be playing at home this weekend after eight straight, grueling road games. The end results have been great; we rebounded from losses at Arizona to win three straight games, including Saturday night at Yale. It’s been a tough week, schedule-wise. We were supposed to play Yale Friday and Brown Saturday night but by week’s end the Brown game was postponed and Yale was moved to Saturday evening.
On a side note, don’t get COVID, it’s not a fun game! Protect yourself as much as possible.
Ben Syer and our staff did another fantastic job at Yale. We limited them to 18 shots on goal and Freshman goaltender Ian Shane stopped them all for his first collegiate shutout. We fired 28 shots on their goal.
We opened the scoring at 5:27 with our latest pair of twins scoring. Junior forward Ben Tupker retrieved a puck off his brother’s stick and fired it past the Yale goalie on the glove side. Junior defenseman Travis Mitchell received the second assist. We then killed off two successive penalties.
About 10 minutes after the Ben Tupker goal, Sophomore forward Kyle Penney made it 2-0. Penney took a pass from Junior forward Jack Malone in the slot, chipped the puck off a defender’s thigh and followed the puck into the crease. Penney drew the goalie to the ice and shot the puck under the goaltender’s outstretched right pad. Senior forward Kyle Betts was awarded the second assist.
At 5:36 of the second period, we upped the margin to 3-0. Malone fired a shot over the goaltender’s shoulder with an assist to Freshman defenseman Hank Kempf. Neither team scored during the rest of the game though we had a 5-on-3 advantage for about a minute at the end of the second period.
Shane made 8 of his 18 saves in the third period, while we killed off two more Yale power plays. A two-time ECAC Goalie of the Week, Shane is now 3-0 with a .960 save percentage through his first four collegiate appearances.
We were 0-for-3 on the power play and Yale was 0-for-4. I was a little concerned how we would approach the game at Yale (with no fans!) after playing in front of 11,000 fans in two games at North Dakota in one of the best collegiate hockey facilities in the nation but we did well. The win over Yale puts us in first place in the ECAC Hockey standings with 21 points, one point ahead of Quinnipiac and Harvard. We are now 12-3-1 overall and 7-1-1 in the league.
In the national polls, we have moved up to No. 8. This brings us into an extremely important weekend at Lynah Rink. On Friday night, Princeton comes to town and we must take care of them first. On Saturday evening, #1 Quinnipiac brings their team to Lynah Rink with a defense allowing just 1.1 goals per game. We are happy to be playing in front of the Lynah Faithful again and appreciate all your support!
Mike Schafer
607-327-1069