The journey is much shorter, and the crowd won’t be nearly as raucous, but Cornell hits the road looking for another successful weekend away from Lynah Rink.
The Big Red swept North Dakota last weekend at Ralph Engelstad Arena, in the process becoming the first ECAC Hockey team ever to accomplish that feat.
Cornell will look to keep that momentum going this weekend when it travels to Brown on Saturday after Friday’s game against Yale was postponed due to COVID-19 protocol in the Bulldogs program. There is a possibility the game will get rescheduled for a different point in the weekend.
But while the sweep at North Dakota was nice, the most important thing for Cornell is that it’s finally over a COVD-19 outbreak of its own. The Big Red were hit with a rash of cases in late December and had limited practices over the holiday break. It showed, as Cornell opened the second half by getting swept at Arizona State.
“We’re just slowly starting to get back into game shape,” Cornell coach Mike Schafer said.
While the Big Red have fourteen underclassmen on their roster, Schafer said that inexperience hasn’t been an issue.
“The new guys have been playing pretty solid,” Schaefer said. “It’s the fact that we didn’t get to practice a whole lot. We got a feel for what other teams went through last year.”
One of those younger players who has made an impact recently is freshman goalie Ian Shane, who started both games against the Fighting Hawks after not making an appearance in the first half of the season. Freshman Joe Howe and senior Nate McDonald handled the goaltending duties during that time, but the Big Red went with Shane in net last weekend after he was flawless in relief in a 3-2 loss at Arizona State on Jan. 2
“We’ve had some inconsistency from the other two guys,” Schafer said. “With Ian, he’s shown flashes in practice and has been really good. He came in and played with confidence and did a great job.”
Schafer said the goaltending situation is “week to week.”
Shane isn’t the only newcomer making an impact.
Freshman Ondrej Psenicka is second on the team with seven goals, while classmate Justin Ertel is riding a four-game point streak.
While the Big Red have gotten contributions from their younger players, a trio of veterans has been playing well for Cornell lately.
Captains Brenden Locke, Cody Haiskanen, and Kyle Betts all returned for a fifth year after the Ivy League cancelled last season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The trio has continued to get stronger as the season has progressed.
Schafer said Betts has been great on the penalty kill and has been a leader on his line. Locke is “playing his best hockey,” while Haiskanen is playing stronger and with more pace.
“Those guys were struggling to get their game back a little more than in the past,” Schafer said, something that isn’t unexpected given that the trio went nearly a year and a half without playing in a competitive game.
The two wins at North Dakota bumped Cornell from 26th in the PairWise to 16th – right on the cusp of an at-large bid in the NCAA tournament. Part of the reason for that lower ranking despite the nation’s fourth best winning percentage is that the Big Red have three overtime wins, which only count for 55 percent of a win under the revised PairWise rules.
But Schafer isn’t concerned about Cornell’s position in the PairWise rankings, especially with so much time left in the season.
“The PairWise works its way out by the last game of the year; we were fortunate enough to get the two wins [last weekend]. “There’s lots of hockey to be played; we’ve just got to focus on playing the games in front of us.”
