NEW YORK — Armed with the nation's best winning percentage and a national ranking of seventh in both major polls, the Cornell men's hockey team will take to the big stage tonight at Red Hot Hockey — a game against Boston University at Madison Square Garden. Faceoff is set for shortly after 8 p.m., and the game will be streamed on the Ivy League Network. Jason Weinstein will provide play-by-play. His call can be heard in the Ithaca area on WHCU (870 AM, 95.9 FM) and worldwide via their website here.

Game 10: #7/7 CORNELL vs. #19 BOSTON UNIVERSITY
TIME: 8 p.m.
DATE: Saturday, Nov. 25, 2017
PLACE: Madison Square Garden  •  New York, N.Y.
RECORDS: Cornell 8-1, 5-1 ECAC Hockey; Boston University 6-7-1, 4-4-1 Hockey East
VIDEO: Ivy League Network
RADIO : WHCU (870 AM, 95.9 FM)
LIVE STATS: CornellBigRed.com

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Boston University game notes (PDF)

About Red Hot Hockey:
•  Cornell and Boston University will play the sixth edition of the biennial Red Hot Hockey series tonight. The games have been mostly sellouts at The World's Most Famous Arena.
•  Cornell has also started The Frozen Apple series in even-numbered years, having defeated Michigan in 2012, Penn State in 2014 and New Hampshire in 2016.

Big Red Rewind:
•  Off to the program's best start since a 2002-03 campaign in which it ultimately advanced to the Frozen Four, Cornell boasts an 8-1 record after Tuesday's wild 5-4 victory over Niagara in Ithaca.
•  The Big Red scored four third-period goals against the Purple Eagles to erase a pair of two-goal deficits and escape with a non-league victory. Junior defenseman Matt Nuttle had three assists, the last coming on senior forward Trevor Yates' winning goal with 2:49 to play.
•  Cornell effectively rebounded from its first loss of the season, when #5/5 Clarkson left Lynah Rink with a 4-0 victory. The defeat ended the Big Red's season-starting win streak at seven games — the longest the program had seen since 1971-72 season.
•  The Big Red was the last team in the nation to suffer its first loss. The only other team to win its first seven games this season was St. Cloud State.

Highlights From Tuesday's Game vs. Niagara:


Big Red By The Numbers:
•  Despite surrendering four goals Tuesday, Cornell still ranks second in the nation in team defense (1.89 goals against per game).
•  The Big Red penalty kill ranks seventh in the nation with a 88.4 percent success rate, though three of its opponents' power-play goals have come in the last two games. (Of note: Those opponents — Clarkson and Niagara — ranked #1 and #2 in the nation in combined special teams at the time).
•  Cornell also boasts one of the nation's top offenses in the early going, ranking ninth in the nation at 3.56 goals per game. The Big Red has scored five or more goals in four of its first nine games for just the third time in the tenure of 23rd-year head coach Mike Schafer, with the other occurrences being in 2002-03 and 2009-10 — both ECAC Hockey Championship seasons.

Forward Thinking:
•  Senior forward Trevor Yates (6-4–10; 3 PPG) leads the team in scoring and is the team's leader among forwards with a plus-8 rating.
•  Junior forward Jeff Malott (3-5–8) is second in team scoring with three multi-point effort in the first six games. He was the Big Red's leading goal-scorer among freshmen last season.
•  A pair of NHL draft picks are third in team scoring — freshman forward Morgan Barron (3-4–7; New York Rangers) and junior forward Anthony Angello (2-5–7; Pittsburgh Penguins). Angello leads the team with 24 shots on goal.

The Offensive Defense:
•  Cornell got a total of 13 goals from its defensemen in each of the last two seasons, but it already has 10 from its blueliners in just nine games this year.
•  Juniors Alec McCrea (3-1–4; 3 PPGs) and Brendan Smith (3-2–5), who typically play on the same pairing, are tied for a five-way tie for second on the team in goal-scoring. Smith also leads the team with a plus-9 rating.
•  Junior Matt Nuttle (1-3–4) had his first career three-point night on Tuesday with three assists against Niagara. Freshman Alex Green (1-2–3) also scored his first collegiate goal in the game.
•  Defensemen have scoring Cornell's first goal of a game more times (five) than forwards (three).

A New 'Tender's Turn:
•  The Big Red graduated three-year starting goaltender Mitch Gillam '17 after last season, but the team hasn't yet missed a beat. Freshman Matthew Galajda (7-1, 1.92, .913, 2 SO) has started all nine games to date, and he was named the ECAC Hockey Goaltender of the Week earlier this month. Galajda now ranks 10th in the country in goals against average.
•  Galajda's two shutouts are tied for the second-most in program history for a freshman goaltender. Only All-American David McKee had more (five; 2003-04), and Galajda joins senior Hayden Stewart (2014-15) and Brian Hayward (1978-79) as the only others with two.

Polls Prose:
•  After suffering its first loss of the season last Saturday, the Big Red dipped to seventh in the USCHO.com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine polls.
•  Cornell's ranking last week of fifth the USA poll was its highest since Feb. 1, 2010, and its ranking of sixth in the USCHO.com poll was its highest since March 22, 2010.
•  Though extremely early, the Big Red sits in fourth in the Pairwise Rankings, which are used to determine the at-large berths for the NCAA tournament.

Fresh Faces:
•  The Big Red boasts one of the largest freshman classes in the country, with seven of the team's 10 newcomers appearing in the season opener — a first at Cornell since 1997. All eight freshman skaters have now debuted.
•  Forwards Morgan Barron (3-4–7) and Cam Donaldson (0-4–4) are the top scorers among newcomers. Barron is the first freshman in program history to record a point in each of his first seven collegiate games.
•  Forward Brenden Locke (1-2–3) scored the winning goal during the third period Nov. 4 at Princeton, and defenseman Alex Green (1-2–3) has stepped into a top-four role and scored all three of his first collegiate points over the last three games.

Empire State of Mind:
•  Sophomore forward Alex Rauter is from northern New Jersey and grew up a fan of the New York Rangers. He was born three days after the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994 and was named after the team's wunderkind, Alexei Kovalev. Rauter also participated in a New York Rangers prospect camp in 2012.
•  While his hometown is in Halifax, Nova Scotia, sophomore forward Noah Bauld was actually born in New York before moving when he was a baby. Bauld scored the game-winning goal in last year's Frozen Apple game against New Hampshire at Madison Square Garden.
•  Freshman forward Morgan Barron was a sixth-round draft pick of the New York Rangers in last summer's NHL Entry Draft. Barron then attended the Rangers' prospect camp shortly thereafter. He is Cornell's first Rangers draft pick since 1983 (Pete Marcov).

Feel The Draft?:
•  Cornell has six players on the roster who have been selected in the NHL Entry Draft, including four from 2014. Junior forward Beau Starrett (Chicago Blackhawks) was selected earliest in that 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.
•  Two newcomers are also NHL draft picks — forward Morgan Barron (N.Y. Rangers in 2017) and defenseman Matt Cairns (Edmonton Oilers in 2016).

First Ivy League Coach To 400:
•  Already the winningest coach in program history and in Ivy League history, Mike Schafer eclipsed another milestone in his career with his 400th victory last January.
•  Schafer 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?:
•  Cornell has trailed in four of its nine games so far, and it's actually faced deficits of at least two goals on all of those occasions — yet the Big Red has rallied to win via three unanswered goals in three of those four games. Cornell erased a 4-2 deficit Nov. 4 at Princeton to win 5-4, then shook off a 2-0 hole against Harvard to win 3-2 on Nov. 11, and most recently scored three goals in the final 15 minutes of Tuesday's 5-4 win over Niagara.
•  The Big Red's resilience from an early deficit has become somewhat of a trend, with the team sporting a very respectable 14-15-4 record when yielding the game's first strike over the last two-plus years. 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).

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 in the summer of 2016. 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, Alex Rauter, Hayden Stewart, Trent Shore, Jared Fiegl and Dwyer Tschantz were among current team members on the trip, as well as Mike Schafer, the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey.


About Boston University:
•  The Terriers split a Hockey East series last weekend at Maine, rebounding from a 5-2 loss on Friday in Orono with a 7-0 victory Saturday in Portland.
•  BU's youthful roster features 12 NHL draft picks, with sophomore forward Patrick Harper (5-9–14) holding the scoring lead. Junior forward Bobo Carpenter (8-4–12; 4 PPGs) leads in goals, and Harper and sophomore defenseman Chad Krys (2-9–11) are tied for the team lead in assists.
•  Sophomore Jake Oettinger (5-6-1, 2.67, .912, 2 SO), a first-round draft pick of the Dallas Stars, is the team's primary goaltender — though he has split starts with junior Max Prawdzik (1-1, 2.40, .914, SO) over the last two weeks.
•  Senior forward Drew Melanson (0-2–2) is a post-graduate transfer from Rensselaer.
•  Ten of the Terriers' 14 games have been decided by three or more goals.

The Series Against Boston University:
•  Two longtime rivals, Cornell and Boston University have met 45 times, with the Big Red holding a 23-19-3 lead in the all-time series.
•  The two programs have combined to win seven NCAA championships, with the Big Red defeating the Terriers for the title in 1967, Cornell's first national championship.
•  Boston University has won three of the first five versions of Red Hot Hockey, with the 2009 and 2015 meetings ending in 3-3 ties. The Terriers went on to win a shootout in 2015, retaining the Kelley-Harkness Cup.
•  Under Cornell head coach Mike Schafer, the Big Red is 3-5-2 against BU.

Up Next:
•  Cornell will conclude the fall semester portion of its schedule Dec. 1-2 with a two-game series at Miami.
•  After a four-week hiatus for final exams and the holiday, the Big Red will reconvene in preparation for its non-league finale, a Dec. 30 home game against Canisius.