A year after winning the ECACHL regular-season and tournament championships and then losing in overtime at the NCAA West Regional to Minnesota, Cornell returns the two best players from last year’s squad — senior forward Matt Moulson and junior netminder David McKee — to take another shot at a national title.<\/p>\n
McKee was a Hat Trick finalist for the 2005 Hobey Baker Memorial Award after posting a 1.24 goals against average and a .947 save percentage last season; both of those marks were the third highest in history.<\/p>\n
The team’s senior captain, Matt Moulson, scored 22 goals and added 20 assists a year ago, including 12 power-play goals and four game-winners. Both he and McKee were unanimous selections for the preseason All-ECACHL team.<\/p>\n
One of the keys to Cornell’s success, year in and year out, is the ability of its special teams, and McKee and Moulson play critical roles on both units.<\/p>\n
On opposite ends of the ice, McKee and Moulson led the best power play (24.3% efficiency) and the stingiest penalty-killing squad (89.2%) in the nation, in addition to a defense that allowed an average of 1.29 goals per game, best in the nation.<\/p>\n
“We take a lot of pride in our special teams, and we practice them a lot,” said Cornell coach Mike Schafer. “I think it’s always been a key to our success.<\/p>\n
“Goaltending obviously always helps your penalty kill,” he added. “Without great goaltending you’re not going to have a high penalty-killing percentage.”<\/p>\n
With McKee in net, great goaltending is almost assured. But of almost equal importance to Cornell’s success, both in the league and in the national title hunt, will be overcoming a brutal six-game stretch at the start of the season.<\/p>\n
First up for the Big Red: two games at Lynah Rink against the Michigan State Spartans.<\/p>\n
“Michigan State will be a real test for us because we’ll have like five practices under our belts and that’ll be practically their seventh and eighth games,” Schafer said.<\/p>\n
“And then going on the road to play four road games right after that at Dartmouth and Harvard and Yale and Brown — I think our first three weekends could be our toughest three weekends of the year.<\/p>\n
“That’s probably the toughest start we’ve had since I’ve been at Cornell.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A year after winning the ECACHL regular-season and tournament championships and then losing in overtime at the NCAA West Regional to Minnesota, Cornell returns the two best players from last year’s squad — senior forward Matt Moulson and junior netminder David McKee — to take another shot at a national title. McKee was a Hat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[322],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n