Box Score (PDF)
 
PRINCETON, N.J. — The Cornell men's hockey team dominated Princeton territorially for most of Friday night's game, but the Tigers got an early power-play goal against the run of play and rode goaltender Colton Phinney and his 40 saves to a 2-1 victory in the teams' ECAC Hockey and Ivy League openers at Hobey Baker Rink.
 
Aaron Ave scored the difference-maker 3:14 into the game on a power play for Princeton (1-1-1, 1-0 ECAC Hockey). Cornell (0-2-1, 0-1) pulled its goalie in the final minute, with the Tigers' Garrett Skrbich scoring on an unassisted 95-foot roller with 43 seconds to play. That turned out to be the winner after Big Red sophomore defenseman Patrick McCarron broke Phinney's shutout bid with an extra-attacker goal with 16 seconds left.
 
Senior defenseman Jacob MacDonald started the play with a shot from the right point that hit senior forward John McCarron in the midsection at the top of the crease. As John McCarron controlled the puck to Phinney's left, he whipped a pass across the crease to Patrick McCarron on the weak side. He had an easy conversion from the bottom of the left circle into the wide side of the net. But the Big Red wouldn't threaten in the final 16 seconds.
 
Ave's goal came after an attempted shot from the top of the right circle was blocked away, with the Big Red gaining possession in the corner and working the puck off the wall to look for a clear. But the puck came off the boards bouncing and Princeton was able to regain control. As the Tigers worked the puck around the perimeter and eventually up and down the left wall, a couple of Big Red penalty killers collided in the left circle. That allowed Ave space to fire a seeing-eye slapped from 50 feet through traffic and past the blocker of Cornell goalie Mitch Gillam (18 saves).
 
The Big Red killed off the next power play of the game, then started to take over territorially with a crunching forecheck producing plenty of turnovers in the Tigers' zone. In all, Cornell attempted 40 shots in the first period to Princeton's 9 – but only 16 of those Big Red shots were on target, and all of them were turned away by Phinney.
 
With 10:40 to play in the opening frame, an attempted Princeton breakout up the right wall bounced off traffic and straight to junior defenseman Reece Willcox at the center point. He skated into the space ahead of him, then dished off to senior forward Joel Lowry cutting in from the left circle. Lowry deked Phinney to the ice with a move to the backhand, but Phinney recovered with a swim move of his glove to pluck the shot off the ice a foot in front of the goal line.
 
That was the beginning of Cornell's dominance, with three solid shifts following and five consecutive power plays as the score remained 1-0 heading into the second period. Freshman forward Jared Fiegl found himself on a breakaway after a Tigers turnover in the neutral zone, but Phinney stood tall to the shot with 12:13 remaining in the stanza. MacDonald then took an open shot from the top of the slot 11 seconds later, but Phinney snagged it with his glove.
 
Gillam kept the Big Red close with some big saves in the third period. He stopped Kyle Rankin's offering from the right circle on a two-on-one with 7:41 to play, then he made a nearly identical save on a nearly identical shot from Tucker Brockett on a transition chance with 5:01 left. Cornell then made another big push with Phinney making another huge sequence of saves. A turnover led to Lowry's breakaway with 3:40, but Phinney turned the shot away with his blocker. Fifteen seconds later, Phinney slid across to make a save on Patrick McCarron's one-timer from the bottom of the left circle.
 
Cornell returns to action at 7 p.m. Saturday against Quinnipiac (4-2-1, 1-0 ECAC Hockey).