#12 CORNELL 3, Brown 0 … Box Score | Game Recap | Video Highlights
#12 CORNELL 1, Yale 1 [SOW] … Box Score | Game Recap | Video Highlights
It certainly was a weekend for “celebration” winning our 26th Ivy League championship. But, we still want to celebrate more victories, and that starts with the annual North Country trip to Clarkson and St. Lawrence this coming weekend. We are in second place in the ECAC, but we need more wins to increase our Pairwise ranking above 14th.
On Friday night, we faced Brown, a good rush team whose defense will get up ice and involved. We did a good job staying above them throughout the game; exactly what a Cornell team should do.
In the opening six minutes, we had three shots ring off the goal-post as we created a lot of offense. At 6:44, we took a 1-0 lead on a goal by freshman forward Ryan Walsh with assists to sophomore forward Dalton Bancroft and junior forward Ondrej Psenicka. This line was outstanding the entire game. Walsh, who hit two posts, scored on an unbelievable bad angle shot.
Late in the second period, freshman defenseman Hoyt Stanley fired a wrist shot from the right faceoff circle that went off the right goal post and into the net. Walsh and Bancroft were credited with assists on the Stanley goal. The final goal (18:27 third period) was into an empty net by junior captain Kyle Penney, with junior defenseman Tim Rego and senior forward Gabe Seger adding the assists.
Junior goaltender Ian Shane had an easy night stopping 10 shots recording his 11th career shutout, while the Brown goalie made 30 saves. This was the lowest number of shots-on-goal given up this year. We were 0-for-1 and Brown was 0-for-0 on the power play.
Saturday night was a different story. The team had their worst performance this season. We were not dialed in. We lacked intensity awareness and detailed effort. Yale took a 1-0 lead at 16:09 on a goal by Will Richter (Mike’s son) coming off a rebound. Richter pounced on the loose puck and deposited it into the net. We tied the score at 17:15 of the first period. Hoyt Stanley took a shot on a 3-on-1 break, but the puck banged off the right post. Freshman forward Tyler Catalano, crashing toward the right post, chipped the rebound past the Yale netminder to tie the score at 1-1. And that was all the scoring for the rest of the game and the 5-minute overtime. We had one power play opportunity in OT, but all three of our shots were blocked.
In the shootout, each of the first three shooters scored by clinking pucks off the post; Bancroft and Seger scored for us. The goaltenders shut out the next three shooters and we earned the two points (tie and shoot-out-win). Shane made just 16 saves, and the Yale goaltender stopped 22 shots. We were 0-for-4 on the power play, and the Bulldogs were 0-for-3.
Our current unbeaten streak increased to a Division I best 14 games, the longest streak since Quinnipiac was 16-0-1 in 2023. We stopped their streak at Lynah Rink on January 20th with a 4-0 Big Red win.
One might ask how I could be upset after a great night when the Ivy League trophy was presented? The answer is, if we are to be an excellent team, we will review every game as who we are and what we want to be. Therefore, every game is a check point along the way and not to be ignored because of success. We will be better in the future. Hope we see you this weekend in the North Country.