ITHACA, N.Y. – Just as you would expect from the Cornell men's hockey team, the Big Red's penalty kill leads the nation with a 100% success rate entering this weekend's games against Dartmouth and Harvard.
 
Well, sort of.
 
It's true that one of reasons the Big Red won last weekend's series against Northern Michigan was a strong 7-for-7 effort on the penalty kill that included two majors. But it's also true that Cornell is technically a very mundane 76.4% for the entire season. The team is just choosing to acknowledge one of those facts and not the other.
 
On Jan. 11, after Cornell mustered just a 3-3 tie at Union, the team's focus was immediately drawn to its shockingly poor performance to that point on the penalty kill – a facet of the game that is usually a hallmark for Cornell hockey.
 
"I think that's something that we've taken pride in, in the past," senior defenseman Yanni Kaldis said last week. "As a good defensive team, we should be great on the penalty kill, too. It's not a matter of guys sacrificing their body – we have a lot of guys who are willing to do. It's just the detail right now. I just think we don't have the confidence in our PK that we (normally) do."
 
In its lone loss of the season to date was a microcosm of the penalty kill's year. On Dec. 7 at Dartmouth, Cornell was whistled for a penalty just 19 seconds into the game. The Big Green scored with 17:40 on the clock – which, in theory, is one second after the penalty should have expired. But 1 second still remained on the penalty clock on the scoreboard at Thompson Arena. No, this wasn't shady score-keeping – it's an anomaly created by fractions of a second in both the penalty clock and game clock that aren't seen on the scoreboard. But it also illustrated what was already known – Cornell's penalty kill couldn't catch a break.
 
But in terms of how coaches think the game, any goal scored against you is caused by a defensive shortcoming of some sort. That's particularly true on the penalty kill, which has some very specific tactics employed. So at the precise moments on Monday, Jan. 13 when the Cornell hockey community was circling the wagons to celebrate the team's ascension to #1 in both national polls, the team and its staff were hunkered down, hard at work on dissecting exactly why the penalty kill has struggled.
 
"Lot of video. And pretty interactive video sessions, as well," junior forward Morgan Barron said. "A lot of times it's (the coaches) showing and us learning, but I feel like this time around it's been more of 'why do we as players feel like we're making mistakes and how can we correct it?' What's going through our heads in this situation?"
 
Added Kaldis: "We obviously addressed it a lot in practice. So we're sort of starting with a blank slate right now. It's a fresh start on our PK, starting at 0%."
 
Plus, there was a twist. Some personnel changes were made ahead of the weekend's games, but then two players who regularly kill penalties suffered injuries and were unavailable to play Saturday night. That led to Cornell adding new forwards to the mix. Freshman Matt Stienburg started killing penalties a couple weeks ago, and more recent additions to the rotation are juniors Brenden Locke and Tristan Mullin, and sophomore Michael Regush. The result against Northern Michigan was nothing short of impressive.
 
"I thought our guys that don't kill a whole lot, they had stronger hands and cleared pucks, they were in lanes, they knew the scouting report," Schafer said. "And then our best penalty-killer, (junior goaltender) Matt Galajda, was there when we needed some big saves."

Around The League

•  Keep tabs on the inaugural Connecticut Ice event this weekend. For starters, it's an event that is aimed at involving all levels of hockey in the Nutmeg State, so it will have more of a celebratory feel than other in-season tournaments around college hockey.
 
But another reason is, of course, the hockey itself. Two of the four teams in Connecticut are in ECAC Hockey, and both of those teams – Yale and Quinnipiac – are running hot right now. The Bulldogs are 7-2 in their last nine games, and the Bobcats are 7-1 in their last eight.
 
"I firmly believe that we're better than our record right now. I think we've got a good team," Yale head coach Keith Allain told the Hartford Courant. "I think we're a developing team. We've had lots of injuries here in the first half of the year, but we're getting healthy. I think you'll see a team that plays hard. I think you'll see a team that plays together."
 
•  Appleton Arena reopens to game action this weekend when the St. Lawrence women's team hosts Clarkson on Saturday. It's been a long wait for the Saints' teams as the $17 million upgrade of their home facility has forced them to play home games at cross-town SUNY Canton for the first half of this year.
 
While the Saints' men's team won't get to play a game at Appleton for another two weeks, even returning just for practice has made an impression.
 
"It's great. The energy level is high with the guys. It's been a couple months over at SUNY Canton and we've done a good job focusing over there, but it's nice to get into our official home," St. Lawrence head coach Brent Brekke told the Watertown Daily Times. "It's brighter, but it seems more open. The ceiling is showing off more a little bit because of the lighting. It gives it kind of a larger stadium feel."

It will be a while until Cornell fans can see their teams in Appleton, though. Neither the men's nor women's programs are scheduled to play at St. Lawrence until January 2021.

Alumni Update

•  While not named to the official ECHL all-star teams, Beau Starrett '19 and Mitch Gillam '18 both participated in the ECHL All-Star Classic on Wednesday night. The format of the event included four teams – the two all-star teams and two teams comprised of the host Wichita Thunder. The event was broadcast on NHL Network.
 
Always light-hearted, Gillam was a natural fit for the fun event. At one point during the 3-on-3 competitions, he massaged the post with his glove to show his appreciation for the iron's thwarting one chance, and Gillam wasn't shy about playing the puck when afforded the opportunity.
 
It's debatable who had the last laugh between the two former and current teammates. While Starrett did score a goal in the only head-to-head competition between the two, Gillam also stopped Starrett on a clean breakaway.
 
•  The AHL All-Star Classic is slated for Sunday and Monday in Ontario, California. It will serve as a homecoming of sorts for Matt Moulson '06, who has been named a playing captain for the Atlantic Division's team. Moulson cut his teeth with the Los Angeles Kings organization early in his career, and then he spent the bulk of the last two years with the AHL team in Ontario. It's the first all-star nod at any professional level for the 36-year-old Moulson, who has played 650 NHL games in his career.

Pairwise Watch

•  If you're looking for something other than bracketology to analyze the Pairwise Comparison Ratings, check out Jim Dahl's work at College Hockey Ranked. A former collegiate and professional player and former collegiate assistant coach in Alaska, Dahl's site stands out because it has less to do with "if the season ended today" and more to do with the hard math that puts future possibilities in black and white.
 
Specifically, there's Dahl's Pairwise by Wins forecast. This is a feature that shows exactly the scope of possible finishes in the Pairwise based on number of victories over the remainder of the regular season.
 
A quick look at the numbers this week continues to show that of the three-headed monster atop the Pairwise – Cornell, North Dakota and Minnesota State – the Big Red is the one that has the toughest road left. This is due to the relative weakness of ECAC Hockey this season. League games this time of year are a grind no matter who the opponent is, and teams have a tendency to bring their best efforts for highly-ranked teams.
 
"I always say it's going to make you better by the end of the year. You're not going to get a soft night," Schafer said. "I think for those guys, that's why they came to Cornell in the first place, because we're a team that wins. Hockey's important to the campus the student body, and we've always had success. So going into that, you expect that. That's been going for a long time, but yeah, it gets amped up with the (#1) ranking."
 
Still, it leads us to a point that a lot of pundits appear to be missing when criticizing Cornell's strength of schedule this season – the Big Red leads the nation in Quality Win Bonus, which is basically a formula to boost a team's Rating Percentage Index because of its results against other top-tier teams. That's the sort of thing you'd think would be lauded, no?
 
Off The Crossbar is a weekly-ish notebook about the Cornell men's hockey team written by assistant director of athletic communications Brandon Thomas, who is in his ninth season as his office's primary contact for the team following a stint of a few years as the team's beat writer at The Ithaca Journal and a few years as an observer from Section D. He can be reached at brandon@cornell.edu.