ITHACA, N.Y. — Ranked in the USCHO.com poll for the first time this season, the #19 Cornell men's hockey team will return to ECAC Hockey play for the final 15 games of its regular season, starting with Friday's game at Princeton and Saturday's game at #15/15 Quinnipiac. Friday's game against the Tigers will be broadcast on subscription-based Ivy League Digital Network. Saturday's tilt will be shown on QuinnipiacBobcats.com. Jason Weinstein will provide play-by-play for both games, which can be heard in the Ithaca area on WHCU (870 AM, 95.9 FM). His call can also be accessed worldwide here.

GAME #15: #19 CORNELL at PRINCETON
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATES: Friday, Jan. 13, 2017
PLACE: Hobey Baker Rink · Princeton, N.J.
RECORDS: Cornell 9-4-1, 4-2-1 ECAC Hockey, 3-1-1 Ivy League · Princeton 7-10-1, 3-8-1 ECAC Hockey, 0-4-1 Ivy League
RADIO: WHCU-AM (95.9 FM, 870 AM)
WEBCAST: Ivy League Digital Network
LIVE STATS: GoPrincetonTigers.com
TICKETS: Sold Out

GAME #16: #19 CORNELL at #15/15 QUINNIPIAC
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATES: Saturday, Jan. 14, 2017
PLACE: High Points Solutions Arena · Hamden, Conn.
RECORDS: Cornell 9-4-1, 4-2-1 ECAC Hockey, 3-1-1 Ivy League · Quinnipiac 12-9-2, 7-5-1 ECAC Hockey
RADIO: WHCU-AM (95.9 FM, 870 AM)
WEBCAST: QuinnipiacBobcats.com
LIVE STATS: QuinnipiacBobcats.com
TICKETS: QuinnipiacBobcats.com

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Princeton game notes (coming soon)
Quinnipiac game notes (PDF)

Big Red Rewind:
•  Cornell has won seven of its last eight games, including last Saturday's 1-0 victory at Merrimack in the teams' non-league finale at Lawler Rink.
•  Senior forward Matt Buckles scored the game's only goal on a rebound of a one-timer from senior forward Jeff Kubiak, shortly after a power play had ended. Sophomore forward Mitch Vanderlaan had the secondary assist.
•  Of Buckles' three goals this season, two have come in the Big Red's two games at Merrimack.
•  Senior goalie Mitch Gillam made 18 saves for his first shutout of the season and the ninth of his career. It was a redeeming effort for Gillam, who was pulled after surrendering three goals in 31 minutes during the teams' first meeting of the season in October.

Highlights from last Saturday's 1-0 win at Merrimack:


Milestone Watch:
•  Already the winningest coach in program history and in Ivy League history, Mike Schafer is closing in on another milestone. Schafer is now just one victory short of 400 over his career. He became the 35th coach all-time to rack up 350 victories across all NCAA divisions, and he is also just the third coach to pass 350 victories with Ivy League tenure, joining Ned Harkness (Cornell, Union and Rensselaer) and Tim Taylor (Yale).

The Hot Hands:
•  Senior defenseman Patrick McCarron (2-12–14) has surged to a tie for the team lead in scoring and now ranks fourth nationally in points per game for blueliners (1.00). 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 forward Eric Freschi (1-6–7) has six points in his last six games after posting 17 points in his first 99 collegiate games. He scored the winning goal Nov. 29 against Colgate.
•  Senior Mitch Gillam (9-3-1, 2.16, .918, SO) has the nation's longest active winning streak for goaltenders, having backstopped the Big Red to victories in his last seven starts. He has a 1.58 goals against average and .934 save percentage over that span.

Who's Who at CU:
•  Senior forward Jeff Kubiak (1-2–3) — 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 (8-6–14) and Anthony Angello (4-5–9) to reprise the vaunted 'JAM' line, which produced the team's top three scorers last season. Vanderlaan leads the team in goals, is tied for the team lead in scoring, and ranks fourth in ECAC Hockey for goals per game in league play (0.86).
•  Junior forward Trevor Yates (6-3–9) leads the team with four power-play goals and is tied with Angello for third in team scoring.

Killin' It:
•  The Big Red penalty kill ranks fifth in the nation with a 88.4 percent success rate. Cornell's penalty kill has been especially good of late, surviving 31 of its opponents' last 33 power plays (93.9%). The Big Red took a season-low two penalties last Saturday at Merrimack, killing off both Warriors power plays.

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 14 games, the Big Red has already accumulated 61 man-games lost to injury — which includes lengthy absences from the team's leading scorer last year (Jeff Kubiak, 10 games), its leading producer of power-play goals from each of the last two years (Matt Buckles, six games) and a top-four defenseman (Ryan Bliss, 14 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 currently ranked sixth in the nation in average faceoffs per game (24.4), and his 68.2 winning percentage in December was tops among forwards taking at least 50 draws.
•  Weidner is also the nation's top shot-blocker among forwards (1.71 per game). Sophomore defenseman Alec McCrea currently ranks tied for sixth in the nation among all shot-blockers (2.50 per game).

What, Me Worry?:
•  Five of Cornell's nine victories so far this season have come in games in which the Big Red has surrendered the first goal. Entering the weekend, just one other team in Division I has more than half of its wins in games where its opponent scores first — Sacred Heart (six of seven).
•  The Big Red's resilience from an early deficit has become somewhat of a trend, with the team sporting a very respectable 10-11-3 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.

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.

Apple Harvest:
•  Freshman Yanni Kaldis (0-6–6) is tied for second 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. He enters this weekend ranked second in the league in scoring for freshman defensemen (0.86 points/game).

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. He scored his team-leading eighth goal Dec. 28 vs. Northern Michigan.

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.

Road Warriors:
•  Cornell has played just four home games to date, which is the lowest total in the country. The history of Cornell hockey dates all the way back to 1900-01, but this year was the first time the Big Red has ever started its season with five consecutive road games. Cornell traversed approximately 2,450 miles over a 17-day span (Oct. 27 to Nov. 13), amounting to about 44 hours on the bus.

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 Princeton:
•  As of Monday, Princeton is 37th in the Pairwise Rankings.
•  After posting a combined nine wins over the last two seasons, the Tigers broke out for seven wins in an eight-game span following their loss to the Big Red on Nov. 19.
•  Princeton swept two-game series against nationally ranked Bemidji State and Quinnipiac and also earned a home split with Minnesota State before the holiday break. The Tigers then returned to action last weekend with losses at Dartmouth (5-0 on Friday) and at Harvard (5-2 on Saturday).
•  Sophomore forward Max Véronneau (6-16–22; 4 PPGs) is the team's leading scorer and was named the national player of the month for December. He typically plays on the opposite wing of leading goal scorer and classmate Ryan Kuffner (10-8–18; 3 PPGs).
•  Freshman center Jackson Cressey (4-12–16; plus-1) is the reigning ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Month and the team's only player with a positive rating.
•  Senior Colton Phinney (6-10-1, 3.59, .895) is in his fourth season as the Tigers' primary starting goaltender.

The Series Against Princeton:
•  Cornell has been dominant against the Tigers, holding a 89-51-8 lead all-time after a 4-2 victory Nov. 19 at Lynah Rink.
•  The Tigers took a 2-0 lead after 20 minutes in that game, but the Big Red pulled even on goals by Jared Fiegl and Beau Starrett before Mitch Vanderlaan scored twice in the final seven minutes to cap the comeback.
•  The Big Red swept a pair of one-goal games last year, with the first meeting decided in exciting fashion when Jeff Kubiak scored with 49 seconds left in the third period to vault Cornell to a 4-3 win on Nov. 6, 2015 at Lynah Rink. The Big Red then used John Knisley's goal and Mitch GIllam's 32 saves to record a 1-0 shutout Feb. 6, 2016 at Hobey Baker Rink in Princeton, N.J.

Highlights From Cornell's 4-2 Win Over Princeton on Nov. 19:


About Quinnipiac:
•  The Bobcats are currently 18th in the Pairwise Rankings, 15th in the USCHO.com poll and tied for 15th in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll.
•  Quinnipiac was predicted to repeat as ECAC Hockey champions this year in both the coaches and media preseason polls, and the Bobcats looked to be on that path after a 9-3-1 start the season. But Quinnipiac has gone 3-6-1 in its last 10 games.
•  The Bobcats split a pair of league games last weekend, falling 4-1 at Harvard on Friday after conceding three power-play goals in a span of 44 seconds in the second period. Quinnipiac rebounded with a 4-2 win Saturday at Dartmouth.
•  Junior forward Landon Smith (5-12–17) leads the team in scoring by one point over a trio of players, including the leading goal-scorer in senior forward Tim Clifton (10-6–6; 5 PPGs).
•  The Bobcats get a lot of offensive contribution from defensemen, including freshman Brogan Rafferty (2-14–16) and sophomore Chase Priskie (2-12–14). Freshman Karlis Čukste (4-5–9) recently competed with Latvia at the IIHF World Junior Championship.
•  Junior Chris Truehl (9-7-2, 2.61, .903, SO) has started 18 of the team's 23 games in goal, but freshman Andrew Shortridge (3-2, 2.35, .912) has has replaced him in five games and earned the victory Saturday at Dartmouth in his fifth start of the season.

The Series Against Quinnipiac:
•  Cornell leads the all-time series against Quinnipiac, 17-16-4, though the Bobcats earned a 3-1 victory on Nov. 18 at Lynah Rink. Anthony Angello scored the Big Red's goal in the game.
•  The teams engaged in an entertaining three-game ECAC Hockey Championship quarterfinal series last year with Cornell's 5-4 victory in Game 2 bookended by losses of 5-2 in Game 1 and 6-3 in Game 3.
•  Cornell earned a 2-2 tie in last year's regular-season visit to Quinnipiac with Mitch Vanderlaan knotting the score with a four-on-four goal late in the third period.

Highlights From Cornell's 3-1 Loss to Quinnipiac on Nov. 18:


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 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.

Never Too Close For Comfort:
•  Cornell's 1-0 win last Saturday 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.

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.

Anniversary Season:
•  There are some significant milestones in Cornell hockey history that have happened in years ending with a '7', so this season will feature a couple noteworthy anniversaries. This is the 60th year of hockey in Lynah Rink, since the facility was dedicated April 6, 1957.
•  This season also marks the 50th anniversary of Cornell's first national championship team in 1967. There will be a special ceremony to honor that team Jan. 27-28 during home games against Dartmouth and Harvard.

Up Next:
•  Cornell will play its final 13 games of the regular season in New York state, including nine of those contests at the friendly confines of Lynah Rink. The Big Red kicks off a four-game home stand Friday, Jan. 20 against Clarkson before taking on St. Lawrence on Saturday, Jan. 21. Cornell then hosts Ivy League rivals Harvard (Jan. 27) and Dartmouth (Jan. 28) the following weekend.