SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — The 16th-ranked Cornell men's hockey team opens the final month of the regular season tonight with a trip to #4/5 Union, ECAC Hockey's top team in the Pairwise Rankings. The game against the Dutchmen features a special 8:30 p.m. start time and will be televised by American Sports Network and TSN2 among many other channels, and it can also be streamed through the TSN GO app. 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 #21: #16 CORNELL at #4/5 UNION
TIME: 8:30 p.m.
DATE: Friday, Feb. 3, 2017
PLACE: Messa Rink · Schenectady, N.Y.
CORNELL: 12-6-2 overall, 7-4-2 ECAC Hockey
UNION: 18-6-2 overall, 11-2-1 ECAC Hockey
TV: TSN2 and ASN among numerous channels
RADIO: WHCU-AM (95.9 FM, 870 AM)
WEBCAST: www.unionathletics.tv
LIVE STATS: www.unionathletics.com

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Union game notes (PDF)

Big Red Rewind:
•  Cornell is coming off its first consecutive losses in 52 weeks, losing leads in both setbacks to Harvard last Friday (4-1) and Dartmouth last Saturday (4-2). The Big Red yielded four unanswered goals in both games.
•  Junior forward Alex Rauter scored the Big Red's goal against Harvard and Cornell was largely in control after two periods, having limited the Crimson to just a couple scoring chances and 10 shots on goal. Harvard then scored four times in the third period, including an empty-netter.
•  Sophomore defenseman Matt Nuttle's first collegiate goal and senior forward Matt Buckles' power-play goal gave Cornell an early 2-0 lead on Dartmouth. The Big Green stormed back on three power-play goals, scoring the winner on a lengthy two-man advantage in the latter half of the third period.
Highlights From Saturday's 4-2 Loss to Dartmouth:


Highlights From Friday's 4-1 Loss to Harvard:


Who's Who at CU:
•  Senior defenseman Patrick McCarron (3-13–16) ranks second in team scoring and his 0.80 points per game is the third-highest total among ECAC Hockey blueliners. 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 (12-5-2, 2.16, .915, SO) had the nation's longest active unbeaten streak for goaltenders snapped last Friday, 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 (4-5–9) has seven points in nine games since returning from an injury-related absence to close out the first semester.
•  Sophomore forward Mitch Vanderlaan (9-8–17) leads the team in goals and in overall scoring. He has been held without points in three straight games for the first time this season.
•  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 Jan. 20 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 eight home games to date, which is the lowest total in the country (Brown, Harvard and Bentley 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 and all within New York state.

That Was Unexpected:
•  Before being swept last weekend, Cornell was one of the hottest teams in the nation with a 10-1-1 record over its previous 12 games.
•  The Big Red also entered last Saturday's game against Dartmouth with the third-best penalty kill in the nation after killing 46 of its opponents' previous 50 power plays (92.0%), but the Big Green gouged the Big Red for three goals on the man advantage.
•  Cornell's loss to Dartmouth last Saturday 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). Cornell followed up that setback by going 6-0-2 over its next eight games, including an OT win over then-No. 1 Providence.

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 20 games, the Big Red has already accumulated 88 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, 20 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 enters this weekend ranked seventh in the nation in average faceoffs per game (24.2), and his 61.3 winning percentage since Dec. 1 is fifth-best among those taking at least 100 draws over that span.
•  By a wide margin, Weidner is also the nation's top shot-blocker among forwards (2.30 per game). Sophomore defenseman Alec McCrea also ranks 18th in the nation among all shot-blockers (2.20 per game).

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.

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?:
•  Five of Cornell's 12 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 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.

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.

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 Union:
•  The Dutchmen are currently ranked fourth in the USCHO.com poll, fifth in the USA TODAY/USA Hockey Magazine poll and sixth in the Pairwise Rankings.
•  Union split its games last weekend in the North Country, sailing past
Clarkson, 6-2, before conceding the final three goals in a 4-3 loss Saturday at St. Lawrence. The loss leaves the Dutchmen in second place in ECAC Hockey.
•  Union brandishes the nation's two leading scorers in senior center Mike Vecchione (19-25–44; 5 PPGs, 3 SHGs) and junior left wing Spencer Foo (16-27–43; 5 PPGs). Sophomore Sebastian Vidmar (11-17–28) typically plays on the line's right wing.
•  Senior Alex Sakellaropoulos (17-4-1, 2.44, .921) has started 22 of Union's 26 games in goal, including all 14 league games.
•  The Dutchmen have outscored opponents 39-17 in the second period of games this season. They're 10-0 when leading after two periods in ECAC Hockey play.

The Series Against Union:
•  Cornell holds a 36-20-8 lead in the all-time series after a two-game sweep of the Dutchmen in the first round of the ECAC Hockey Championships last year. The Big Red never trailed in the series.
•  Holden Anderson scored off a faceoff win by Jeff Kubiak with 6:12 left in the third period to power the Big Red to a 1-0 victory in Game 1. Matt Buckles then beat his defender off the back boards and jammed a shot past Alex Sakellaropoulos 3:18 into overtime for a 2-1 victory in Game 2.
•  In the Big Red's last visit to Messa Rink on Jan. 16, 2016, Cornell scored three power-play goals — two in the first period from Matt Buckles — but Union scored twice in the final four minutes of the third period to salvage a 3-3 tie.

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.

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

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.

Leftovers:
•  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.
•  Cornell surrendered empty-net goals in each of last weekend's games, which were the first it's allowed this year.

Up Next:
•  Cornell heads east on Route 7 for a 7 p.m. Saturday game at Rensselaer before returning home for five of its final seven games, starting with three games next week at Lynah Rink. The Big Red takes on regional rival Colgate at 7 p.m. Tuesday, then closes out the Ivy League portion of its schedule at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10 vs. Yale and 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11 vs. Brown.