ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell men's hockey team starts a busy week of home games at 7 p.m. tonight with the third annual Courage Classic against regional rival Colgate. The game will be broadcast on the subscription-based Ivy League Digital Network and, for the third time this season, simulcast on ESPN3. Jason Weinstein will have the play-by-play and Tony Eisenhut will provide color commentary.

GAME #23: COLGATE at #12/15 CORNELL
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATE: Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017
PLACE: Lynah Rink · Ithaca, N.Y.
CORNELL: 14-6-2 overall, 9-4-2 ECAC Hockey
COLGATE: 6-16-5 overall, 4-9-2 ECAC Hockey
TV: ESPN3
RADIO: None
VIDEO: Ivy League Digital Network
LIVE STATS: CornellBigRed.com

Cornell game notes (PDF)
Colgate game notes (PDF)

Big Red Rewind:
•  Cornell is coming off a road sweep of ECAC Hockey's Capital District teams, scoring the winning goals in the final stages of the third period on both nights.
•  Jake Weidner scored a power-play goal from a tight angle with 4:09 left in the third, then Anthony Angello scored his second goal of the night on a breakaway 39 seconds later to propel the Big Red to a 5-3 victory at Union last Friday.
•  The victory against #4/5 Union represents the highest-ranked team the Big Red has defeated this season. Cornell defeated a #1 team twice last year.
•  The Big Red then trailed three times last Saturday at Rensselaer, but Yanni Kaldis scored his first collegiate goal with 24.6 seconds left for the winner.
•  Cornell generated 45 shots on goal and earned nine power plays on the night, scoring three goals on the man advantage for the second time this season.

Highlights From Friday's 5-3 Win at #4/5 Union:


Courage Classic:
•  Tonight's event is dedicated to the children of Camp Good Days, which has assigned two honorary coaches for both Cornell and Colgate.
•  This is the third consecutive season in which the Big Red's annual home game against the Raiders has served as the Courage Classic.
•  The honorary coaches will take part in a ceremonial puck drop at center ice tonight.

Who's Who at CU:
•  Senior defenseman Patrick McCarron (4-13–17) is part of a three-way tie for the team scoring lead. His 0.77 points per game is the fifth-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.
•  Sophomore forward Mitch Vanderlaan (9-8–17) leads the team in goals and is still in a tie for overall scoring despite being held without points over the last five games.
•  Junior forward Trevor Yates (8-9–17) leads the team with five power-play goals and 10 power-play points. He moved into a tie for the overall scoring lead after his four assists over last weekend's two games.
•  Junior forward Alex Rauter (8-4–12) is tied with Yates for the second-most goals on the team, and he enters tonight's game with points in his last five games and seven of the last eight.
•  Senior forward Matt Buckles (5-6–11) has nine points in 11 games since returning from an injury-related absence to close out the first semester.
•  Senior Mitch Gillam (14-5-2, 2.24, .913, 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.

That Was Unexpected:
•  The Big Red had the third-best penalty kill in the nation on Jan. 29 after killing 46 of its opponents' previous 50 power plays (92.0%). But over the last three games, Cornell has been just 12-for-19 on the penalty kill and is now ranked 25th nationally.
•  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). Oddly enough, 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.

A Little Perspective:
•  Cornell is fifth in the ECAC Hockey standings, but it has the fourth-best winning percentage in league games and has two games in hand on three of the four teams ahead of it.
•  The Big Red moved up four positions in the Pairwise Rankings this week and now sits 13th, which — if the season ended today — would earn Cornell an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament.

Road Warriors:
•  Cornell's wins at Union and Rensselaer last weekend 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.
•  The game against Colgate will be just the Big Red's ninth home game, which is the lowest total in the country (Boston College, Harvard, Ohio State and Princeton have all played 10). The Big Red will now play five of its final seven regular-season games at home.

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 22 games, the Big Red has already accumulated 92 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, 22 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 ranked sixth in the nation in average faceoffs per game (24.2), and his 60.1 winning percentage since Dec. 1 is sixth-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 (2.36 per game) and eighth overall. Sophomore defenseman Alec McCrea is also tied for 13th in the nation in shot-blocking (2.27 per game).

What, Me Worry?:
•  Six of Cornell's 14 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 11-11-4 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).

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).

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.
•  Freshman forward Jeff Malott (3-3–6) 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 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.

Apple Harvest:
•  Freshman Yanni Kaldis (1-9–10) 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.

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 Colgate:
•  The Raiders dropped three spots to 49th in the Pairwise Rankings after road losses to Rensselaer, 5-2 on Friday, and Union, 3-1 on Saturday.
•  Colgate, which ranks last in ECAC Hockey with an average of 1.87 goals per game, has a pair of senior defensemen leading the team in scoring in Brett Corkey (5-10–15; 3 PPGs) and captain Jake Kulevich (3-12–15).
•  Senior forward Tim Harrison (8-5–13) leads the team in goals, and junior forward Evan Peterson (5-2–7) scored the two goals against Rensselaer.
•  Senior Charlie Finn (5-11-4, 3.08, .905) is in his fourth season as the Raiders' starter, and he recently set a program record for most career saves.
•  Colgate's power play has been effective 21.2% of the time in ECAC Hockey play. Sophomore center Adam Dauda (5-7–12) leads the team in power-play goals with four and he's an ace on faceoffs (67.4%), but he has not played since Dec. 31.
•  The Raiders are undefeated when leading after any period (3-0-4 after the first or second).
•  Don Vaughan is in his 24th season as the head coach.

The Series Against Colgate:
•  Cornell holds a 80-57-15 lead in the all-time series, which dates back to 1921, after recording a 3-2 victory on Nov. 29 at Colgate.
•  Patrick McCarron scored a pair of power-play goals to give the Big Red the lead early in the third period, then Eric Freschi scored the eventual game-winner with 12:34 remaining on the rush off a highlight reel pass from Jeff Malott — the freshman's first collegiate point.
•  The Big Red has now lost only four times in the last 30 meetings between the teams.
 
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.
•  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.

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 remains home this weekend, when it closes out the Ivy League portion of its season at 7 p.m. Friday vs. Yale and 7 p.m. Saturday vs. Brown.