@Dartmouth 4, CORNELL 3 … Box Score | Game Recap | Video Highlights
CORNELL 2, @Harvard 2 [SOW] … Box Score | Game Recap | Video Highlights
As always, this was a tough road trip, and with several injured players, and doing things that hurt us, we still came out of the weekend with a couple of points.
On Friday night at Dartmouth, it was a good game ruined by a few self-inflicted errors. Long live the saying: “don’t beat yourself,” and this was exactly what we did. Turnovers that led to Dartmouth goals, poor power-play that did not connect, and penalty killing with mental lapses. All occurred on Friday and wasted some strong play to get back in the game. The first period was scoreless as senior goaltender Ian Shane made great saves, but that did not last long. Dartmouth scored first just 2:56 into the middle period with nine seconds left on a power play. Ten minutes later, senior captain Kyle Penney tied the score, 1-1. Kyle made a couple of great hockey plays to move the puck to the far post, and he roofed it for a goal. Thirty-three seconds later, the Big Green scored another power-play goal, with one second left on the extra-man situation. Our special teams were not up to par. Dartmouth had to kill off a 5-minute major penalty, but we could not find the back of the net.
At 1:20 into the third period, senior forward Penney tied the score, 2-2, when he redirected a shot from sophomore defenseman Hoyt Stanley for the goal. Ten minutes later, John Fusco, yes, another Fusco, made it 3-2 in the home team’s favor. With 5:10 remaining in regulation, sophomore forward Tyler Catalano alertly found a loose puck in front of the Dartmouth net after a point shot from sophomore defenseman Ben Robertson and deposited it into the back of the net for a 3-3 tie. We had a power play opportunity in the last 1:47 of the game and made four shots (two on goal) but no score.
Shane made nineteen saves and the Dartmouth netminder made twenty-nine stops. We were 0-for-3 on the power play, and the Big Green capitalized on their chances, 2-for-2.
Saturday night at Harvard is always a tough game. A couple of bad bounces over defensemen’s sticks at the offensive blue line had us on our heels, and at around eight minutes, one of our defensemen had a medical issue on the bench and we had to temporarily stop the game. On top of this, Dalton Bancroft left the game with a major penalty and game misconduct for a hit, and things looked bleak.
The first period was scoreless but with 58 seconds remaining, Harvard took a 1-0 lead, scoring two seconds after we had killed off a penalty. We tied the score at 5:06 of the second period, on senior defenseman Tim Rego’s wrist shot from the slot. Assists went to junior forward Nick DeSantis and Ian Shane. The Shane assist was the first point scored by a Cornell goaltender since Matthew Galajda assisted on a power-play goal by Morgan Barron. Less than four minutes later, Harvard went back on top (2-1) on a goal that just missed the left post.
At 13:15 of the third period, sophomore forward Ryan Walsh tied the score, 2-2 on our fourth power-play attempt of the game. Walsh tipped in a terrific pass from first year forward Charlie Major to send the game into overtime. In overtime, we out-shot Harvard, 3-0 without scoring. In the shootout, Shane stopped both Harvard shots. Senior defenseman Michael Suda scored first with a backhand shot and Ben Robertson sealed the deal to earn us the extra point.
Shane had a busy night with thirty-two saves, while the Harvard goaltender recorded twenty-four stops. We were 1-for-4 on the power play, and the Crimson were 0-for-4.
Given the injuries in our lineup (Sullivan Mack, George Fegaras, Ondrej Psenicka, Winter Wallace, and Luke Devlin), our 3-1-2 record is not that bad. The rest of the team has stepped up!
We are back at Lynah this weekend for games against #18 Quinnipiac on Friday night and Princeton on Saturday. Looking forward to returning to Lynah Rink. It will be rocking!