CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Playing against the nation's top-scoring team in first periods, the Cornell men's hockey team flipped the switch Friday night on Harvard. The Big Red used a dominating opening 20 minutes to jump ahead and eventually ride out a 3-1 victory in a match-up of previously-undefeated ECAC Hockey teams at Bright-Landry Hockey Center.
 
Right from junior forward Kyle Betts' win of the opening faceoff, second-ranked Cornell (10-0, 7-0 ECAC Hockey) took it straight to 12th-ranked Harvard (6-3, 6-1) with relentless early pressure. Senior forward Jeff Malott scored in the sixth minute to mark the ninth straight time the Big Red potted a game's first goal, and Cornell had 10 shots on Harvard goaltender Mitchell Gibson before the hosts forced Big Red junior Matthew Galajda into action.
 
Junior forward Brenden Locke then doubled the lead just before the first intermission. The Big Red strikes marked just the fifth and sixth first-period goals surrendered by the slick-starting Crimson in its nine games to date.
 
By the time freshman defenseman Travis Mitchell scored on a one-timer at the 5:07 mark of the second period, Cornell held an astounding 22-4 lead in shots on goal.
 
"It was pretty ideal, the first 20 minutes," said junior forward Morgan Barron, one of the team's tri-captains. "There were a few mental lapses, but other than that it was a good start for us. We fell asleep for a bit there in the second and third. So it's going to be about trying to figure out how to play that way for the full 60 (minutes)."
 
Harvard took its timeout after Mitchell's goal and regrouped, then it countered with a power-play strike from Nick Abruzzese a little more than two minutes later. The Crimson instantly gained momentum and tapped into its home crowd, which up until that point had been silenced by both the Big Red's big lead and its own fan base's predictably big presence in a facility affectionately referred to as "Lynah East".
 
Three minutes later, Harvard's Jack Rathbone rang the crossbar with a shot from 40 feet. Then a bad turnover in front of Cornell's net led to an open shot from Wyllum Deveaux from the slow slot, but Galajda got a piece of it with his catching glove to force it to the back glass.
 
"They took the timeout and I think they started to do some things differently, and I don't think we reacted very well to it," said Mike Schafer '86, the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey at Cornell. "Their forwards, I thought, did a better job of anticipating (the play) and jumping out of the zone on us. I think our guys wanted the fourth goal rather then paying attention to what was going on. Once that starts to happen, it's tough to reel it back in."
 
Yet the Big Red, for the most part, did. When it didn't, Galajda was his usual steady self to keep Cornell on top. He made 15 of his 23 saves in the third period. While a handful of Harvard's remaining chances were of the Grade-B variety, there weren't any Grade-A chances to be found.
 
"I thought we got it going again in the third and started to control some things," Schafer said. "We had some long shifts in our own zone, but I thought we made them go back out to the perimeter and out to the blue line."
 
Both of the Big Red's players with multiple points were freshmen who accomplished the feat for the first time in their collegiate careers. Mitchell assisted Malott's goal before scoring himself in the second period. Freshman forward Jack Malone had the primary assists on both of those goals.
 
The win not only pushes Cornell into sole possession of first place in ECAC Hockey with 14 points, it also pushed the Big Red's remarkable start to the season to 10 straight victories. The last Cornell won 10 straight off the bat, it never lost. That came during the memorable 1969-70 season that ended in 29 straight victories and the program's second national title.
 
As the nation's last undefeated team, Cornell closes out the fall semester portion of its schedule with another challenging ECAC Hockey and Ivy League game at 7 p.m. Saturday against Dartmouth at Thompson Arena in Hanover, New Hampshire.
 
"We're over the tipping point in a sense of … the winning streak and all of that stuff, I think our guys are over that now," Schafer said. "Now they're just kind of hunkered in and are just playing. … Right now, I think they just want to get into Hanover, get the job done, and get into exams, honestly."

The Big Red's Lineup:

How The Goals Were Scored:

Cornell's 1st Goal
1st period, 5:18  •  Malott 3 (Malone, Mitchell)  •  Cornell 1, Harvard 0
•  Mitchell entered the Crimson zone through the middle and snapped a shot from distance that was steered to the left corner by Gibson. Mitchell was then the first to track down the puck in the corner, sliding it to the back wall for Malone. He fed the puck into the path of both Zach Tupker and Malott crashing the crease from the left circle. Malott's initial shot was stopped by Gibson, but he whirled around to blindly throw the backhanded rebound under Harvard's goalie to give Cornell the lead.
 
Cornell's 2nd Goal
1st period, 18:06  •  Locke 5 (Mullin, Bauld)  •  Cornell 2, Harvard 0
•  A battle along the left half wall in the Harvard zone appeared to end when Bauld was checked to the ice from behind and the puck went to a Crimson player's stick – but Bauld poked the puck away as he was sprawled to the ice, giving Mullin possession behind the Harvard goal line. With a defender on his back, Mullin's attempt to stuff the puck at the near post was thwarted, but he kept churning around the net and wrapped it around the far post. That sent the puck to the top of the crease, where Locke was posted up to slam it past Gibson.
 
Cornell's 3rd Goal
2nd period, 5:07  •  Mitchell 2 (Malone, Haiskanen)  •  Cornell 3, Harvard 0
•  The Big Red held possession in the Crimson zone for an extended period of time, eventually leading to Tupker coming up the outside of the left circle to feed Haiskanen rolling down from the blue line. Haiskanen passed to Malone just below the goal line to Gibson's right, then he cut back into the circle. With all four Harvard defenders on that side of the ice focused on Malone, he found a passing lane to a wide-open Mitchell at the bottom of the right circle for a one-timer slammed past a sprawling Gibson.
 
Harvard's 1st Goal
2nd period, 7:18 (pp)  •  Abruzzese 3 (Rathbone, Drury)  •  Cornell 3, Harvard 1
•  On the man advantage, Rathbone took a shot from the center point that was blocked into the corner to Galajda's right. The Crimson won the battle to regain possession and fed Rathbone back at the left point. With the Big Red defense scrambling to get back into position, Rathbone faked a shot before continuing on to the bottom of the circle. That created a seam across the ice that he threaded perfectly into Abruzzese's wheelhouse for a one-timer into a wide-open net.