HAMDEN, Conn. – Cam Donaldson and Morgan Barron each scored their team-leading sixth goals of the season and Austin McGrath made 35 saves to anchor the Cornell men's hockey team to a 2-2 tie on Saturday night against Quinnipiac, which entered the weekend ranked in the top five of both major national polls.
 
With the tie coming on the heels of a 3-2 victory over Princeton the night prior, Cornell (7-5-1, 5-2-1 ECAC Hockey) took three of an available four points on the weekend road trip. That leaves the Big Red with 11 points and in third place in the ECAC Hockey standings, though with fewer games played than first-place partners Yale and Quinnipiac (13 points).
 
"If you look at both nights we had spurts where we weren't at our best, but I think we're happy with the resiliency we showed," senior forward and second-year captain Mitch Vanderlaan said. "We were really happy with how we came back after a really flat first period. There are good signs, and hopefully we'll progress moving forward."
 
Quinnipiac (15-4-1, 6-3-1 ECAC Hockey), tabbed third in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll and fifth in the USCHO.com poll but coming off a disappointing overtime loss to Colgate the night before, came out blazing. Goals by Ethan de Jong and Peter DiLiberatore gave the hosts a 2-0 lead inside of 15 minutes.
 
"We didn't start the game like we wanted to," said Associate Head Coach Ben Syer, who filled in as acting head coach for a second straight night with Mike Schafer '86 – the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey – recovering from an illness. "We didn't play with enough poise and we dug ourselves in a pretty good hole."
 
But less than a minute later, 20th-ranked Cornell drew a penalty. The weekend's first power play delivered in the form of Donaldson's strike, and the Big Red carried the momentum into the intermission.
 
"The power-play goal with the way it went in with a greasy mentality, that certainly helped and gave us some life to go from there," Syer said.
 
Barron then equalized in the middle of the second period on an unassisted goal, aided by Donaldson's speed up the middle to create a two-on-one break.
 
The teams played relatively evenly the rest of the way, though Cornell challenged several times against Andrew Shortridge – who entered the night the national lead in goals against average and save percentage. Donaldson weaved his way through the enter Quinnipiac defense with 14:02 left in the third, only to be thwarted by Shortridge's left pad. Beau Starrett then steered Matt Nuttle's pass on target from the slot with 9:38 left and Vanderlaan swooped in on a jam attempt from the bottom of the right circle with 1:26 on the clock, but Shortridge stood tall.
 
McGrath matched him save-for-save for a career-high 35 stops in his fourth consecutive start with 2018 All-American Matthew Galajda shelved with an injury.
 
"I think he's done a great job. … He competes every day in practice, our guys love him and love being around him. And he competes and he battles, and I thought you saw that today," said Syer, who is now 7-0-4 in his career as an acting head coach. "Quinnipiac does a great job of creating chaos around the net. They throw pucks on the net and he stayed with it. Being in the hole 2-0, he didn't quit."
 

The Big Red's Lineup:

How The Goals Were Scored:

Quinnipiac's 1st Goal
1st period, 8:33  •  de Jong 5 (Bongiovanni)  •  Quinnipiac 1, Cornell 0
• With three members of both teams engaged in a battle along the right half wall in the Cornell zone, Quinnipiac fished the puck free and quickly set up a shot by Bongiovanni. McGrath made the save, but it produced a long rebound toward the right circle, where de Jong beat two Cornell backcheckers to the puck and lifted a shot high into the net.
 
Quinnipiac's 2nd Goal
1st period, 14:19  •  DiLiberatore 2 (Martin, Fallstrom) (pp)  •  Quinnipiac 2, Cornell 0
• Fallstrom won faceoff on second effort to McGrath's right to set up one last gasp in the waning moments of a power play. DiLiberatore faked a would-be shot blocker to the ice at the center point, then maneuvered to his left before wristing the puck down toward goal. The shot sailed past a screen of multiple players and pinged into the net off the far post.
 
Cornell's 1st Goal
1st period, 15:57  •  Donaldson 6 (Mullin, Barron) (pp)  •  Quinnipiac 2, Cornell 1
• Barron took a shot from the top of the right circle that was blocked, but it maintained enough velocity to kick off the back boards and toward the near post. Mullin won a battle with his defender there, redirecting the puck back up an open slot to Donaldson. He was able to shovel a quick backhand on target, where it slipped under Shortridge and inside the far post.
 
Cornell's 2nd Goal
2nd period, 7:07  •  Barron 6  •  Cornell 2, Quinnipiac 2
• Quinnipiac sped away on a three-on-two with Joe O'Connor's shot from the inside of the right circle whistling wide of the far post. That sent the puck bounding up the boards and Quinnipiac's crashing defender opted to try to one-time it back toward goal. Instead, the puck bounced over his stick and sent Barron away on what appeared to be a one-on-one situation. But Donaldson beat everyone else up the ice in the middle leading to a two-on-one and forcing Quinnipiac's defender to back off. Barron entered the right circle and rifled a shot over Shortridge's left shoulder.
 

Up Next:

•  The Big Red returns to Ithaca for its next four games, starting with the final non-league games of the regular season Jan. 11-12 against Arizona State.