Game notes (PDF)

ITHACA, N.Y. -- With a pair of exhibition victories under its belt, the Big Red turns its attention to the start of the regualr on Saturday, Oct. 29 against visiting Mercyhurst. Cornell defeated Guelph, 3-2, and Carleton, 5-1, last weekend in its two-game exhibition season. Thirteen players registered points on the weekend, led by sophmore Armand de Swardt's three assists. Junior forward John Esposito and freshman forward Cole Bardreau had a goal apiece in each game, and Nick D'Agostino, Keir Ross, Erik Axell, Sean Collins and Joel Lowry also had two points apiece. Sophomore Andy Iles earned both victories in goal.

ABOUT THE BIG RED
Cornell enters the season with a streak of three consecutive appearances in the ECAC Hockey championship game. The Big Red finished last season with a 16-15-3 mark after experiencing some growing pains in the early going. Only seven of the squad's 21 games after New Year's Day resulted in losses. Forward Greg Miller was the leading scorer as a sophomore, highlighting a deep pool of talented returning players. Six of the seven defensemen on the roster at the end of the 2010-11 campaign also return, including senior captain Keir Ross and a pair of minute-eating juniors in Braden Birch and alternate captain Nick D'Agostino. Ithaca native Andy Iles, who was named to the ECAC Hockey All-Rookie Team, will have the opporunity to grab the starting job in goal after his platoonmate
graduated and signed on with a professional team during the offseason. Cornell is the penultimate Div. I team to start its season (Harvard starts Nov. 4).

ABOUT MERCYHURST
The Lakers have lost four straight to start the season, not including their home opener against RIT the night before their scheduled visit to Lynah Rink. The defense has been off to a particularly slow starts, yielding 18 goals in four games (4.5 per game), though the offense has only produced six goals (1.5 per game) in the same span. Senior center Derek Elliott has two of those goals after posting just four in 37 games last season. Junior center Grant Blakey and freshman winger Daniel Bahntge are the only other players on the team with multiple points, posting a goal and an assist apiece. Senior Max Strang has had the crease to himself so far, posting an 0-4 record with a 4.27 goals-against average and .890 save percentage in the early going. He had just seven career starts heading into this season.

THE SERIES WITH MERCYHURST
The Lakers and Big Red have clashed just once in their programs' histories, skating to a 3-3 tie on Nov. 29, 2003 at Lynah Rink. Cornell had 47 shots in the game, but surrendered the tying extra-attacker goal with 5.5 seconds remaining in the third period.

NEW SUPPORT STAFF
Mike Schafer returns for his 17th season as the Cornell head coach, but he has two new assistants this year — three, if you include volunteer assistant coach Kris Mayotte. While the new assistant coaches will be new faces in their position behind the bench, their faces will still be familiar. Ben Syer joins the Big Red after eight seasons as an assistant coach for ECAC Hockey opponent Quinnipiac, and Topher Scott returns to East Hill just 3½ years since he last competed for the Big Red as a senior co-captain who eclipsed 100 career points.

PRACTICE-GAME PROWESS
Just because exhibition games don't count in the standings doesn't mean the Big Red takes a soft approach to them. Cornell has posted a 15-1-2 record in exhibitions since 2000, and even that one loss came at the hands of a future Big Red player. Andy Iles made 39 saves for the U.S. Under-18 team in a 3-2 victory over the Big Red at Lynah on Oct. 24, 2009. The average margin of victory for Cornell's 13 wins is a whopping 5.15 goals.

STRONG STARTERS
Cornell has an all-time record of 55-33-6 in season openers and 10-5-1 mark in season debuts under current head coach Mike Schafer. The Big Red had an uncharacteristically bad start to last season, dropping three in a row off the bat for the first time since the 1979-80 campaign.

CLASS-Y KEIR
Captain Keir Ross is one of 20 national candidates for the Lowe's Senior CLASS Award. To be eligible for the award, a student-athlete must be classified as an NCAA Division I senior and have notable achievements in four areas of excellence — community, classroom, character and competition. Ross posted a plus-12 rating last season, good for second on the team, and was penalized the least of any defenseman despite frequently being matched up against some of the opposition's best forward combinations. Outside of the rink, Ross is a two-time selection to the ECAC Hockey Academic All-League team and was the Big Red's Hockey Scholar Athlete last season. He was also named to the College of Human Ecology Dean's List in 2010, carrying a 3.57 grade point average in Human Biology, Health and
Society.

CLIMBING THE CHARTS
Cornell head coach Mike Schafer is quickly moving up the ranks of the coaching fraternity in his win totals. Now in his 17th season, Schafer has 313 career victories, ranking him third in ECAC Hockey, but with the shortest tenure of the two ahead of him in the rankings. Schafer trails only Quinnipiac's Rand Pecknold by four, with St. Lawrence's Joe Marsh well ahead with 468 career wins. Schafer is tops among Ivy League coaches, with Dartmouth's Bob Gaudet entering this season just shy of a milestone with 299 career victories.

THE OFFENSIVE DEFENSE
The Big Red scored four short-handed goals last
season after going without a goal on the penalty kill since
Dec. 28, 2008. Senior forward Sean Collins had two of those short-handed goals, becoming the first Cornell player with multiple shorties since both Cam Abbott and Mark McCutcheon had a pair of them in the 2005-06 season.

HOWDY PARTNER
Mike Garman and Andy Iles started 17 games apiece last season, marking the first time two goalies have received for than 10 starts apiece in the same season since 2001-02 (Matt Underhill, David LeNeveu). Garman graduated last spring, leading Iles to battle with junior Omar Kanji and freshman Vincenzo Marozzi for playing time.

COLLECTING HARDWARE
Andy Iles became the first Cornell hockey player to earn a medal for the United States at the IIHF World Junior Championships when he was part of Team USA that claimed bronze at this year's tournament in Buffalo, N.Y. Iles is just the second Cornell player to be a member of the United States team, joining Jean-Marc Pelletier in 1998. The last Cornell player to earn a medal for any nation at the IIHF World Junior Championships was Sasha Pokulok, who claimed gold with Canada in 2006. The bronze medal won by Iles is the first bronze of the seven medals claimed by Cornellians at the world's most prestigious junior hockey tournament. Iles had an outstanding evaluation camp with the team this summer, setting himself up to compete again in the 2012 event in Edmonton, Alberta.

FEEL THE DRAFT?
Cornell has seven players on the roster who have been selected in the NHL Entry Draft, including three picks
in the fourth and fifth rounds last June. Freshmen
Brian Ferlin (Boston Bruins), Joel Lowry (Los Angeles Kings) and Philippe Hudon (Detroit Red Wings) were all selected in a span of 25 picks, giving the 2011-12 Big Red the program's highest number of draft picks on a single team since 2006-07. Other players whose NHL rights are already owned are senior Sean Collins (Columbus Blue Jackets), juniors Braden Birch (Chicago Blackhawks) and Nick D'Agostino (Pittsburgh Penguins) and sophomore Kirill Gotovets (Tampa Bay Lightning).

INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE
Andy Iles isn't the only Cornell player to experience international competition recently. Freshmen forward Brian Ferlin and defenseman Joakim Ryan were also at the Junior Evaluation Camp from Aug. 6-13 in Lake Placid, N.Y. Ferlin had a goal and three assists in five games with the United States and Ryan trolled the blue line for Sweden.

INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE, PART II
Sophomore Kirill Gotovets got a taste of the big time in May when he was selected to represent his native Belarus in the 2010 IIHF World Championships – not an age group World Championships (though he did play for Belarus at the U20 World Championship as well) – playing against some of the best players the world has to offer. He played in three of Belarus' eight games at the World Championships, recording two shots and two minutes in penalties, helping his nation to a 10th-place finish. Gotovets has been in the United States for the last two years while attending school at Shattuck-St. Mary's in Minnesota.

AMERICAN INFLUENCE
Seven of this season's 10 freshmen were born in the United States, giving the Big Red a more American feel than its seen in quite a while. Cornell has 12 players who were born in the United States, which is the most on a Mike Schafer-coached team at Cornell. The previous high was 10, which came in 1997-98.

SOUTHERN FLAIR
None of the other 57 schools in Division I men's hockey have as many players that call states bordering the Gulf of Mexico home as Cornell. The Big Red has four players that fit into that category — Florida native Brian Ferlin and the three Texans, Locke Jillson, Keir Ross and Armand de Swardt. Northern Michigan is the only other team in the country that has three players born in Texas.

CLOSER TO HOME
Hometown fans of the Big Red got a rare treat last season when goalie Andy Iles became the first Ithaca native to play for the team since Mark McCutcheon in 2006-07. But when freshman Kevin Cole makes his collegiate debut, it will be the first time in at least 50 years — and perhaps the first time in program history — that two Ithaca natives have played for the Big Red in the same season. Cole was born in Ithaca and raised in nearby Lansing before heading off to junior programs in Syracuse and Cornwall, Ontario. His father, Dave, lettered for the Big Red in the 1981-82 season.

FIRST 1,000 DOWN
The Big Red's 2-1 win over Quinnipiac in game one of the ECAC Hockey quarterfinals last season marked the 1,000th victory all-time for the Cornell men's hockey program. Cornell became the 17th program to reach that milestone.

BLANK YOU VERY MUCH
It came down to the wire last season, but the Big Red was able to keep alive its streak of recording at least one shutout in a season. With a 3-0 victory over Dartmouth in the ECAC Hockey Championship semifinals — which turned out to be the team's penultimate game — Cornell has at least one blanking of an opponent during each of the last 16 seasons. The last time Cornell went a full schedule without posting a shutout came during the 1994-95 season under former coach Brian McCutcheon, as Cornell finished that year 11-15-4. The following year marked the first season for current head coach Mike Schafer, and his clubs have never gone a full year without recording a shutout.

ANOTHER MILESTONE AWAITS
After celebrating Mike Schafer's 300th victory as a head coach and then the program's 1,000th all-time win later last season, Cornell is primed to eclipse another notable plateau in 2011-12. The Big Red enters the season with a record of 497-181-52 at Lynah Rink, meaning the team can claim its 500th all-time victory at the storied venue as early as Nov. 19.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED
The Big Red will make its first trip to the Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado Springs, Colo. since Dec. 28-29, 1980, when victories over Air Force and Colorado College gave Cornell the Broadmoor Classic championship.
The program's only other tip to the venue was for the NCAA semifinal (4-3 win over Michigan Tech) and
championship (4-3 loss to Denver) in March 1969. The loss to Denver was the Big Red's last loss for more than 20 months. In between losses: Cornell's 29-0 season and NCAA title in 1970.

UP NEXT
Cornell jumps right into ECAC Hockey play over the next three weekends, including a demanding two road trips at the front end. The Big Red plays at defending champion Yale on Friday, Nov. 4, then visits Brown the next night. The following weekend features another trip to New England with stops at Harvard and Dartmouth.