POTSDAM, N.Y. — The men's hockey team plays its final true road game of the season tonight, when it faces Clarkson on Senior Night at Cheel Arena. Riding a six-game unbeaten streak, Cornell will have an opportunity to sweep the annual road trip to Clarkson and St. Lawrence for the first time since the 2004-05 season. Tonight's game will be broadcast through ClarksonAthletics.tv. Jason Weinstein will provide play-by-play that can be heard in the Ithaca area on WHCU (870 AM, 95.9 FM) and accessed worldwide here.

GAME #27: #12/13 CORNELL at CLARKSON
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATE: Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017
PLACE: Cheel Arena · Potsdam, N.Y.
CORNELL: 17-6-3 overall, 13-4-3 ECAC Hockey
CLARKSON: 14-13-4 overall, 9-8-2 ECAC Hockey
TV: None
RADIO: WHCU (870 AM, 95.9 FM)
VIDEO: ClarksonAthletics.tv
LIVE STATS: ClarksonAthletics.com

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Clarkson game notes (PDF)

Big Red Rewind:
•  Cornell moved into sole possession of third place in ECAC Hockey by completing a season sweep of St. Lawrence with a 4-2 victory last night in Canton.
•  The Big Red scored three goals in the first period against a ranked team for the second time in two weeks, then Jake Weidner scored a key goal early in the third period to restore Cornell's two-goal lead after SLU found life with two goals in the second period.
•  With the win, the Big Red pushed its unbeaten streak to six games (5-0-1). Cornell earned nine out of a possible 10 ECAC Hockey point in five games over a 10-day span to start the month. That included a victory on the road against league-leading Union on Feb. 3.
•  Last Sunday, the Big Red defeated Brown, 5-3. Anthony Angello scored twice and Mitch Vanderlaan had a goal and an assist in a game that was pushed back a day due to weather-related travel concerns for the weekend's visitors.
•  Jeff Kubiak and Anthony Angello each had a goal and an assist, but the Big Red couldn't hold on to a two-goal lead in last Saturday's 2-2 tie with Yale. Mitch Gillam made 35 saves — his second-highest total for a single game this season.
•  Mitch Gillam made 28 saves in a 4-0 win over Colgate on Feb. 7 to record the 10th shutout of his career. The Big Red had four different goal-scorers. Matt Nuttle had pair of assists on first-period goals for his first multiple-point game.

Highlights From The 5-3 Win Over Brown:


Highlights From The 2-2 Tie With Yale:


Who's Who at CU:
•  Sophomore forward Mitch Vanderlaan (11-10–21) regained the team goal-scoring lead by potting the game-winner with 3.6 seconds left in the first period last night. He is now tied for the team lead in overall scoring.
•  Senior defenseman Patrick McCarron (4-17–21) moved into a tie for the team's overall scoring lead after doling out a pair of first-period assists last night. He averages the fourth-most points per game for ECAC Hockey blueliners (0.81) and had an eight-game points streak earlier this season —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.
•  Junior forward Trevor Yates (10-10–20) leads the team with six power-play goals and 11 power-play points, and his assist on last night's first goal gives him seven points in his last six games.
•  Senior forward Matt Buckles (8-6–14), who typically plays on Yates' right wing, opened the scoring last night with his fifth goal in the last seven games.
•  The line of senior forward Jeff Kubiak (3-10–13), and sophomore forwards Anthony Angello (10-6–16) and Beau Starrett (3-8–11) has a combined 13 points over the last three games. Angello has five goals in his last six games.
•  Senior Mitch Gillam (17-5-3, 2.15, .918, 2 SO) had the nation's longest active unbeaten streak for goaltenders snapped Jan. 27, having backstopped the Big Red to a 10-0-1 record over 11 starts. The Big Red's lone nominee for the Hobey Baker Memorial Award had a 1.63 goals against average and .931 save percentage over that span.

Road Warriors:
•  Cornell has played just 11 home games this season, which is tied with Harvard for the lowest total in the country. The Big Red has a better winning percentage on the road (.792) than it does at home (.636).
•  Cornell's wins at Union and Rensselaer to start the month marked the first time the Big Red has swept the Capital District road weekend since Jan. 16-17, 2009.
•  This year marks the first time since 2004-05 that the Big Red has swept three ECAC Hockey road weekends in a single season. Since the league started its travel partner system in 1984-85, Cornell has never had four road sweeps in the same season — something it would accomplish with a win tonight.

A Little Perspective:
•  Cornell can clinch one of ECAC Hockey's coveted first-round byes with a win or tie tonight and/or a Quinnipiac tie or loss at Rensselaer. The Big Red is currently in third place, one point behind Harvard and two behind Union.
•  Cornell jumped up three spots to 10th in the Pairwise Rankings after last night's results. If the season ended today, the Big Red would be in line for an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament.

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 26 games, the Big Red has already accumulated 103 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, 26).
•  Senior Jake Weidner has the massive task of being the Big Red's leading faceoff man. He entered the weekend sixth in the nation in average faceoffs per game (24.4), and his 60.6 winning percentage since Dec. 1 is third-best among those taking at least 100 draws over that span.
•  By a wide margin, Weidner is also far and away the nation's top shot-blocker among forwards (2.38 per game) and tied for sixth overall. Sophomore defenseman Alec McCrea is also 20th in the nation in shot-blocking (2.12 per game).

What, Me Worry?:
•  Seven of Cornell's 17 victories so far this season have 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 12-11-4 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).

Blip On The Radar:
•  The Big Red has killed off 17 of its opponents' last 18 power plays after an ultra rare stretch of teams scoring multiple power-play goals against Cornell in three straight games. Before that slump, the Big Red had the third-best penalty kill in the nation on Jan. 29.
•  Cornell's Jan. 28 loss to Dartmouth marked the first time the Big Red has lost a game in which it held a two-goal lead since Nov. 7, 2015 (a 5-4 overtime loss to Quinnipiac). The Big Red watched another two-goal lead evaporate last Friday at Union only to surge ahead with two late goals to salvage a 5-3 victory, then it yielded the final two goals of last Saturday's 2-2 tie with Yale.

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 in January. 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).

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.
•  Vanderlaan 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.
•  Freshman forward Jeff Malott (4-3–7) then 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 after becoming the first Cornell freshman with a hat trick since current NHLer Matt Moulson on Feb. 7, 2003.

Gillam's Groove:
•  Senior goaltender Mitch Gillam moved up to a tie for fourth on the program's all-time list for career shutouts after a Feb. 7 against Colgate. By stopping all 28 shots from Colgate, Gillam earned his 10th career clean sheet.
•  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 10 career shutouts is that he's only won eight 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 Clarkson:
•  The Golden Knights are currently 25th in the Pairwise Rankings.
•  Junior forward Sam Vigneault (11-21–32), the team's leading scorer, scored all three goals in Clarkson's 3-0 blanking of Colgate last night. The Golden Knights split a pair of games last weekend, rallying to defeat Quinnipiac, 4-2, before suffering an overtime loss to Princeton the following night.
•  Freshman Jake Kielly (13-12-4, 2.56, .916, 3 SO) made 23 saves to record the shutout last night.
•  Clarkson had an eight-game unbeaten streak from early November to early December, but it has been 5-8-1 since Dec. 3.
•  Senior forward Jordan Boucher (10-13–23) is second on the team in scoring, though he has not played in the team's last three games. Senior forward Troy Josephs (11-9–20) leads the team in goals.
•  Senior defenseman James de Haas (5-11–16) leads the team with four power-play goals. Clarkson has nine players with at least two goals on the man advantage.

The Series Against Clarkson:
•  Saturday's meeting will mark the 133rd game between the two programs that have been battling since the 1922-23 season.
•  The Big Red owns a 64-53-15 record against the Golden Knights after the teams battled to a 3-3 tie on Jan. 20 at Lynah Rink.
•  Clarkson stormed out to a 3-1 lead by the midway point of the game, but Cornell rallied to earn a point with a pair of goals from Trevor Yates. The Big Red held the Golden Knights to just 16 shots on goal.
•  Terrance Amorosa scored a power-play goal in overtime to give Clarkson a 2-1 victory on Jan. 29, 2016 in Cornell's last visit to Cheel Arena.

Apple Harvest:
•  Freshman Yanni Kaldis (1-10–11) ranks 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.

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.

Anniversary Season:
•  The Jan. 27-28 weekend marked a reunion for the 50th anniversary of Cornell's first national championship team in 1967. There were festivities throughout, highlighted by a special ceremony to honor the returning
members of the team during the first intermission of the second 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).

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.

The Offensive Defense:
•  Mitch Gillam leads the nation's goaltenders in career points. His quick outlet pass Jan. 21 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.

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.

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.

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.

Up Next:
•  Cornell returns home to face Rensselaer on Friday, Feb. 24 and Union on Saturday, Feb. 25 to close out the regular season. The game against the Dutchmen will serve as Senior Night.