ITHACA, N.Y. — One of the hottest teams in the country, the Cornell men's hockey team will take on Ivy League and ECAC Hockey rival Harvard tonight in a highly anticipated matchup of nationally ranked teams. The game will be broadcast on the subscription-based Ivy League Digital Network. Jason Weinstein will have the play-by-play and Tony Eisenhut will provide color commentary. Their call can also be heard in the Ithaca area on WHCU (870 AM, 95.9 FM) and accessed worldwide here.

GAME #19: #9/9 HARVARD at #14/14 CORNELL
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATES: Friday, Jan. 27, 2017
PLACE: Lynah Rink · Ithaca, N.Y.
CORNELL: 12-4-2 overall, 7-2-2 ECAC Hockey, 4-1-1 Ivy League
HARVARD: 12-5-2 overall, 8-4-2 ECAC Hockey, 4-1-1 Ivy League
RADIO: WHCU-AM (95.9 FM, 870 AM)
WEBCAST: Ivy League Digital Network
LIVE STATS: CornellBigRed.com

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Harvard game notes (PDF)

Big Red Rewind:
•  Cornell remains one of the hottest teams in the country, now 10-1-1 in its last 12 games following a three-point weekend against Clarkson and St. Lawrence.
•  Junior forward Trevor Yates factored into all three of the Big Red's goals in a 3-3 tie with Clarkson.
•  After assisting on sophomore forward Anthony Angello's goal in the first, Yates scored the final two goals of the game to help Cornell salvage a point.
•  Sophomore defenseman Brendan Smith's first collegiate goal late in the second led the Big Red to a 3-2 win over St. Lawrence on Saturday.
•  Junior forward Jared Fiegl and senior defenseman Patrick McCarron gave the Big Red a 2-0 after 20 minutes against the Saints.

Highlights From The 3-3 Tie With Clarkson:


Highlights From The 3-2 Win Over St. Lawrence:


Ivy League Implications:
•  Cornell and Harvard are currently tied atop the Ivy League standings with nine points apiece on matching 4-1-1 records. Both teams will have just three games remaining against Ancient Eight opponents after tonight. Cornell's last Ivy League title came in 2014.

The Hot Hands:
•  Senior defenseman Patrick McCarron (3-13–16) ranks second in team scoring and seventh nationally in points per game for blueliners (0.89). He had an eight-game points streak earlier this season, which was the first for a Cornellian since Greg Miller from Oct. 29 to Nov. 22, 2011, and the first for a Big Red defenseman since Mark McRae from Jan. 25 to Feb. 21, 2003.
•  Senior Mitch Gillam (12-3-2, 2.05, .919, SO) has the nation's longest active unbeaten streak for goaltenders, having backstopped the Big Red to a 10-0-1 record in his last 11 starts. He has a 1.63 goals against average and .931 save percentage over that span.
•  Senior forward Matt Buckles (3-5–8) has a three-game points streak, all on assists. He has six points in seven games since returning from an injury-related absence to close out the first semester.

Who's Who at CU:
•  Senior forward Jeff Kubiak (2-3–5) — the Big Red's leading scorer last season — returned for the Florida College Hockey Classic on Dec. 28 after a 10-game absence due to injury. He's been reunited with sophomore wingers Mitch Vanderlaan (9-8–17) and Anthony Angello (5-5–10) to reprise the vaunted 'JAM' line, which produced the team's top three scorers last season.
•  Vanderlaan leads the team in goals and in overall scoring, and he's fifth in ECAC Hockey for goals per game in league play (0.64). He has points in 13 of the Big Red's 18 games.
•  Junior forward Trevor Yates (8-5–13) leads the team with five power-play goals and ranks third on the team in overall scoring after his first career three-point game last Friday vs. Clarkson.
•  Freshman forward Jeff Malott (3-3–6) scored his first three collegiate goals in a span of 8 minutes, 44 seconds during the first period to power the Big Red past Princeton on Jan. 13. He was subsequently named ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Week, but he has yet to play since that game due to injury. He's the first Cornell freshman with a hat trick since current NHLer Matt Moulson on Feb. 7, 2003.

Road Warriors:
•  Cornell has played just six home games to date, which is the lowest total in the country (Brown and Boston College have played the next-fewest home games with eight). The Big Red is now in the midst of playing nine of its final 13 regular-season games at home, all within ECAC Hockey play.

The Sum of Intangibles Is Tangible:
•  A quick glance at Cornell's traditional statistics illustrates some of the team's storylines, though several others fly beneath the radar.
•  Through 18 games, the Big Red has already accumulated 82 man-games lost to injury — which includes lengthy absences from the team's leading scorer last year (Jeff Kubiak, 10 games) and a top-four defenseman (Ryan Bliss, 18 games).
•  With Kubiak out of the lineup for so long, senior Jake Weidner took on an even bigger role as the Big Red's leading faceoff man. He is ranked sixth in the nation in average faceoffs per game (24.3), and his 68.2 winning percentage in December was tops among those taking at least 50 draws.
•  By a wide margin, Weidner is also the nation's top shot-blocker among forwards (2.22 per game). Sophomore defenseman Alec McCrea currently ranks 15th in the nation among all shot-blockers (2.28 per game).

Anniversary Season:
•  This weekend marks a reunion for the 50th anniversary of Cornell's first national championship team in 1967. There are festivities throughout Friday and Saturday, highlighted by a special ceremony to honor the returning members of the team during the first intermission of Saturday's game against Dartmouth.
•  This is also the 60th year of hockey in Lynah Rink. The facility was dedicated April 6, 1957, a few weeks after it hosted an exhibition between the New York Rangers and the Rochester Americans (AHL).

Killin' It:
•  The Big Red penalty kill ranks second in the nation with a 88.2 percent success rate. Cornell's penalty kill has been especially good of late, surviving 45 of its opponents' last 49 power plays (91.8%).

First Ivy League Coach To 400:
•  Already the winningest coach in program history and in Ivy League history, Mike Schafer has eclipsed another milestone in his career with his 400th victory. He ranks 10th in victories among active Division I coaches and is Cornell's fifth-winningest coach across all sports — second among current coaches, behind just Dave Eldredge (men's and women's polo).

What, Me Worry?:
•  Entering the weekend, five of Cornell's 12 victories so far this season had come in games in which the Big Red has surrendered the first goal.
•  The Big Red's resilience from an early deficit has become somewhat of a trend, with the team sporting a very respectable 10-11-4 record when conceding the game's first strike since the beginning of the 2015-16 campaign. That's a stark turnaround from the team's 14-34-5 record when yielding the game's first goal from the previous three seasons (2012-15).

The Streak Is Over!
•  Junior forward Alex Rauter's penalty-shot goal in The Frozen Apple on Nov. 26 ended a remarkable string of futility on such plays for the Big Red. Rauter became the first Cornellian to score on a penalty shot since Feb. 27, 1987 — 949 games since Joe Nieuwendyk scored on a penalty shot against Rensselaer.

Turning The Trick:
•  Mitch Vanderlaan's hat trick Nov. 12 at Yale was Cornell's first since Jan. 22, 2011, when Tyler Roeszler scored three times against Colgate. Subsequently, Vanderlaan was named the ECAC Hockey Player of the Week on Nov. 15.
•  The Big Red's leading goal-scorer to date potted a couple more goals Nov. 19 against Princeton to become the first player from Cornell with seven goals in the first seven games of the season since Blake Gallagher did so at the start of the 2009-10 campaign.

Gillam's Groove:
•  Senior goaltender Mitch Gillam posted the third-longest shutout streak in program history last season, spanning 213 minutes, 17 seconds over four games in November 2015 — including consecutive shutouts at Yale and Brown. That marked the Big Red's first back-to-back shutouts since Andy Iles did so Dec. 2-3, 2011 against St. Lawrence and Clarkson, and it was the Big Red's first consecutive road shutouts since Ben Scrivens blanked Princeton and Quinnipiac from Nov. 7-8, 2008.
•  An odd twist on Gillam's nine career shutouts is that he's only won seven of them — Dec. 28, 2014 against Lake Superior State and Nov. 20, 2015 against Yale were both scoreless ties.

Never Too Close For Comfort:
•  Cornell's 1-0 win Jan. 7 at Merrimack was hardly new territory for the team. The Big Red had four 1-0 victories last season for the first time in program history. Cornell also set a team record by going to overtime in 14 of its 34 games last year. The previous record was 12, set in 1985-86, then matched in 2010-11 and 2011-12.
•  Cornell went to overtime in seven of its final 15 games last year, with a 4-3-7 record in those games.

Helping Out:
Members and friends of the Cornell men's hockey program embarked on another mission trip to the Dominican Republic through the Portal de Belén Foundation over the summer. It was the fourth time the program has participated, following trips in 2009, 2012 and 2014. Current members of the team Ryan Bliss, Alec McCrea, Anthony Angello, Dan Wedman, Alex Rauter, Hayden Stewart, Trent Shore, Jared Fiegl and Dwyer Tschantz were on this year's trip, as well as Mike Schafer, the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey.
  

About Harvard:
•  The Crimson is currently 13th in the Pairwise Rankings and ninth in both the USCHO.com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine polls.
•  Harvard was ranked #2/3 and receiving first-place votes just two weeks ago, but a shocking 4-0 loss at three-win Rensselaer on Jan. 13 started a three-game losing streak. The Crimson surrendered 14 goals over the setbacks to RPI, Union and Dartmouth.
•  Harvard rebounded with three points at home last weekend against Brown (3-0 win) and Yale (1-1 tie). The Crimson is now in third place in the ECAC Hockey standings with 18 points, two ahead of the Big Red — though Cornell has three games in hand.
•  Senior center Alexander Kerfoot (8-18–26) leads the team in scoring, typically centering a line with sophomores Ryan Donato (10-9–19) and Lewis Zerter-Gossage (7-5–12) on the wings.
•  Donato is tied with senior forwards Tyler Moy (10-13–23) and Sean Malone (10-12–22) for the team lead in goals.
•  The Crimson owns the nation's best power play with a 28.6 percent conversion rate. Kerfoot is tied with freshman forward Nathan Krusko (6-3–9) for the team lead with five power-play goals.
•  Harvard has received a boost from two freshman defensemen this year. Adam Fox (2-20–22) is the nation's leading scorer among blueliners (1.22 points/game) and John Marino (1-5–6) has a team-best plus-13 rating.
•  Junior Merrick Madsen (12-5-2, 2.34, .913, 2 SO) has started all 19 of Harvard's games in goal.

The Series Against Harvard:
•  Cornell has been battling with ancient rival Harvard since 1910, and they have matched up 148 times with the Big Red holding a 74-63-11 lead in the series.
•  The Big Red has gotten the better of Harvard in the past seven years, with the Crimson winning just five times during the last 18 matchups. One of those victories came on Nov. 5, when Lewis Zerter-Gossage scored three goals for the host Crimson in a 4-3 win.
•  Cornell head coach Mike Schafer is 34-16-6 in 55 games against Harvard. 

Freshman Force:
•  The jump to college hockey can be a big one for newcomers, but forward Anthony Angello — a 2014 draft pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins — clearly felt right at home as a freshman last season. Angello was the Big Red's first player to have points in his first four collegiate games since Ryan Moynihan from Nov. 8-16, 1996 — which was Mike Schafer's second season as head coach of his alma mater.
•  Angello then scored the overtime winner Nov. 14, 2015 at Colgate and was named ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Week twice (Jan. 12 and March 1) on his way to posting a team-high 11 goals.

Feel The Draft?:
•  Cornell has five players on the roster who have been selected in the NHL Entry Draft, including four from 2014. Sophomore forward Beau Starrett (Chicago Blackhawks) was selected earliest in the group, having been taken in the third round with the 88th overall pick. Classmate Anthony Angello, also a forward, was selected in the fifth round by the Pittsburgh Penguins. Junior forwards Jared Fiegl (Arizona Coyotes) and Dwyer Tschantz (St. Louis Blues) were then picked in the seventh round. Senior forward Matt Buckles was taken by the Florida Panthers in the fourth round of the 2013 draft.

Apple Harvest:
•  Freshman Yanni Kaldis (0-7–7) ranks third on the team in assists. His passes set up the shots resulting in all three of the Big Red's power-play goals Nov. 5 at Harvard, making him the first Big Red player to record three power-play assists in a single game since Byron Bitz on Jan. 7, 2006. Subsequently, Kaldis was named the ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Week on Nov. 8.

Binational Interests:
•  Cornell has the unique distinction of having exactly 14 players hailing from both the U.S. and Canada. The Big Red joins just two other teams — Robert Morris and Michigan Tech — with an even split on their respective rosters.

An Empire State of Mind:
•  The Big Red's stars in the Nov. 26 win over New Hampshire at The Frozen Apple at Madison Square Garden all had ties to New York. Junior forward Alex Rauter, who scored on a penalty shot in the third period, is from nearby Chatham, N.J., participated in the New York Rangers prospect development camp in 2012, and once played youth hockey on MSG ice in between periods of a Rangers game. Freshman forward Noah Bauld, who scored the game-winner, was actually born in New York before moving to his hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia when he was a toddler, and senior goaltender Mitch Gillam once attended the New York Islanders' prospect camp.

Leftovers:
•  There's been a total margin of just seven goals in Cornell's six home games, yet at least one team has held a two-goal lead in each of those contests. Against Princeton on Nov. 19, both teams had two-goal leads (Cornell won, 4-2).
•  St. Lawrence surrendered just 10 first-period goals in its first 25 games this season, but Cornell scored twice in the opening 20 minutes last Saturday.
•  Mitch Gillam leads the nation's goaltenders in career points. His quick outlet pass Saturday against St. Lawrence set up the line rush leading to Patrick McCarron's goal, giving Gillam five career points on one goal and four assists.

Up Next:
•  Cornell concludes a four-game home stand at 7 p.m. Saturday, when it takes on Dartmouth. The Big Red then opens the final month of the regular season by traveling to New York's Capital District. The Big Red will oppose ECAC Hockey-leading Union at 8:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3 in a game televised on TSN2 (other channels TBD). The trip concludes at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4 with a game at Rensselaer.