ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell men's hockey team will look to shake off a tough loss to a rival tonight when it hosts Dartmouth to close out a four-game homestand. 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 #20: DARTMOUTH at #14/14 CORNELL
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATES: Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017
PLACE: Lynah Rink · Ithaca, N.Y.
CORNELL: 12-5-2 overall, 7-3-2 ECAC Hockey, 4-2-1 Ivy League
DARTMOUTH: 7-11-2 overall, 4-8-2 ECAC Hockey, 2-2-2 Ivy League
RADIO: WHCU-AM (95.9 FM, 870 AM)
WEBCAST: Ivy League Digital Network
LIVE STATS: CornellBigRed.com

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Dartmouth game notes (PDF)

Big Red Rewind:
•  Cornell lost a game in which it held the lead for the first time this season, suffering a 4-1 setback to Harvard last night.
•  Junior forward Alex Rauter potted the Big Red's tally in the second period and  the home side was largely in control after 40 minutes, having yielded to Harvard just a couple scoring chances and 10 shots on goal.
•  Cornell also took just one penalty, effectively killing off the one opportunity provided to the nation's most prolific power play.
•  Harvard's tying and winning goals both came on off-speed shots from the points. Jake Horton jammed in a rebound after Wiley Sherman's stick snapped in a half on a shot from the left point, then the Crimson took the lead when Clay Anderson's offering from the right point hit one Cornell player's stick and another skate before going in.
•  About a minute after Harvard took the lead, Rauter nearly knotted the score again when his shot from the left circle hit the inside of the far post.
•  Cornell is 10-2-1 over its last 13 games. The Big Red earned three points at home last weekend with a 3-3 tie vs. Clarkson and 3-2 win vs. St. Lawrence.

Highlights From The 4-1 Loss to #9/9 Harvard:


The Hot Hands:
•  Senior defenseman Patrick McCarron (3-13–16) ranks second in team scoring and 11th nationally in points per game for blueliners (0.84). 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 (12-4-2, 2.11, .917, SO) had the nation's longest active unbeaten streak for goaltenders snapped last night, having backstopped the Big Red to a 10-0-1 record over 11 starts. He had a 1.63 goals against average and .931 save percentage over that span.
•  Senior forward Matt Buckles (3-5–8) has three assists over his last four games. He now has six points in eight 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 (0.58). He has points in 13 of the Big Red's 19 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 seven home games to date, which is the lowest total in the country (five teams have played the next-fewest home games with nine). 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 19 games, the Big Red has already accumulated 83 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, 19 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 entered the weekend 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 (2.26 per game). Sophomore defenseman Alec McCrea also ranks 16th in the nation among all shot-blockers (2.21 per game).

Anniversary Season:
•  This weekend marks a reunion for the 50th anniversary of Cornell's first national championship team in 1967. There were festivities throughout Friday and Saturday, highlighted by a special ceremony to honor the returning members of the team during the first intermission of tonight's game.
•  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 third in the nation with a 88.4 percent success rate. Cornell's penalty kill has been especially good of late, surviving 46 of its opponents' last 50 power plays (92.0%).

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 Dartmouth:
•  The Big Green is currently 40th in the Pairwise Rankings after a 2-1 loss last night at Colgate. The Raiders scored the game's first two goals before Kevin Neiley (2-0–2) got the Big Green on the board in the third.
•  Dartmouth raised eyebrows with an 8-4 victory over visiting Harvard on Jan. 17, but the team then dropped a pair of home games last weekend to Yale (7-0) and Brown (4-3, in overtime) in addition to last night's loss.
•  Senior forward Troy Crema (12-7–19, 5 PPGs, 4 GWGs) leads the team in scoring. He was named ECAC Hockey Player of the Week on Tuesday after posting four goals and an assist in Dartmouth's three games last week.
•  Junior forward Corey Kalk (5-8–13) is second in team scoring, though he did not play in last night's game at Colgate.
•  Three goaltenders have seen action this year for the Big Green, with junior Devin Buffalo (6-9-3, 2.83, .906, 2 SO) starting 19 of 21 games to date.
•  Dartmouth's combined special teams rank last in the nation at 42.1
percent. But the Big Green's power play has drastically improved of late,
converting at a 25.6 percent clip in the team's last 11 games (10 PPGs in
39 opportunities).
•  The Big Green has yielded four or more goals in nine of its 21 games.

The Series Against Dartmouth:
•  Cornell and Dartmouth have met on 133 occasions since 1909, with the Big Red holding a wide margin in the series with a 80-47-6 advantage.
•  The Big Green, however, extended an unbeaten streak in the series to six games (4-0-2) with a 1-1 tie when the teams opened their ECAC Hockey schedules in a Nov. 4 game in Hanover, N.H. Mitch Vanderlaan scored an
unassisted, shorthanded goal for Cornell.
•  Since taking over the reigns as Cornell head coach, Mike Schafer is 23-20-6 against Dartmouth. Saturday's game will be his 50th against the Big Green.

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:
•  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.
•  Harvard's final goal last night was the first empty-netter surrendered by the Big Red this year.

Up Next:
•  Cornell opens the final month of the regular season by traveling to New York's Capital District. The Big Red will take on 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.