LAS VEGAS – Weeks of preparation can be unraveled by a single simple thing sometimes. For the Cornell men's hockey team, that potential moment came a few hours before Friday's antipcated match-up against Ohio State in a match-up of teams nationally ranked in the top 10. But from that one wrong came two rights.
 
As Providence and Army West Point competed on the T-Mobile Arena ice during the first of Friday's two Fortress Invitational semifinals, Cornell's already-submitted lineup was redacted when sophomore forward Max Andreev became too ill to suit up.
 
It seemed a cruel twist of fate for a team that had spent so much time and effort over the intersession hiatus on revamping its power play, which had suddenly proved unsuccessful in 18 consecutive opportunities to wrap up the unofficial first half. The Big Red rolled into Vegas with some personnel changes, shifting a couple players from one power-play unit to the other. The best-laid plans were in place – only to have one of the 10 players involved prove unavailable at the 11th hour.
 
So what happened? Cornell was a sterling 2-for-2 on the power play, of course. It marked just third time in the last 10 years that the Big Red had multiple power-play goals in a game without having a single unsuccessful chance on the man advantage.
 
"It's kind of ironic that we worked on our power play a lot, and then Max got sick when he woke up this afternoon after a pre-game nap," said Mike Schafer '86, the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey. "He couldn't make it, so we ended up making a couple of adjustments and scoring two goals. It's just a testament to those guys on our special teams. I thought they did a good job tonight."
 
The other effect of Andreev's late scratch was that it necessitated someone else to jump into the lineup. That addition was none other than freshman forward Matt Stienburg, who then went on to score his first collegiate goal in the 5-2 victory.

Berard Back In Full Force

•  Book-ending Stienburg's goal in the victory over the Buckeyes were a pair of strikes by one of his freshman classmates – Ben Berard.
 
It was a nice bounce-back effort for Berard, who was a healthy scratch in the Big Red's last game before the semester break, Dec. 7 at Dartmouth. Schafer said he and the rest of the coaching staff were looking to tease out more consistency from Berard.
 
"Benny's a great player and has a great stick and a great hockey mind," Schafer said. "But I think part of our program is that you've got to be consistent in your work ethic at all times, and that's north and south. He knew it, and I thought he came back and was good after break."
 
Having found a home on the left wing of a potent line centered by junior Brenden Locke and flanked on the opposite wing by junior Cam Donaldson, Berard has emerged as one of the top-scoring freshmen in the nation over the last couple of months. Since Nov. 15, he has three goals and five assists for eight points in eight games, which makes him the only rookie in ECAC Hockey to average at least a point per game over that stretch.

The First Foray Into 3-on-3

•  It was bizarre to see a team that fought back against improbable odds to earn a tie against a nationally-ranked team be a little downtrodden on Saturday, but that's what the new wave of hockey's tie-breaking techniques created.
 
Cornell and Providence fought tooth-and-nail for 65 minutes of generally suffocating hockey only to have a victor determined by a different set of rules. When the Friars prevailed in a three-round shootout after five scoreless minutes of three-on-three overtime (the first such scenario in Big Red program history), it led to an on-ice celebration, a tournament trophy presentation, an MVP trophy presentation and two on-ice interviews piped through T-Mobile Arena's thunderous public address system.
 
To the victor go the spoils. And really, that's how it should be. This is high-level athletics we're talking about, so of course an opportunity to celebrate a championship – any championship, right down to a random competition with two arbitrary intrasquad teams at the end of practice – won't be passed up. But you could tell by the Big Red players' faces Saturday night that it was a harsh way to end a weekend in which it did nothing to disprove its standing as one of the nation's top teams.
 
The NCAA mandates a five-minute overtime session with teams playing five-on-five before a game is officially recognized as a tie – but several college and professional leagues now incorporate three-on-three overtime sessions. Such was the case over the weekend, when Cornell played three-on-three at full strength for the first time in program history.
 
The unfamiliarity with the format showed. Cornell and Providence suffocated each other for 65 minutes, which made a transition to a run-and-gun format tough to stomach. What transpired was akin to an indoor cat escaping through the front door, only to be so completely frozen with unfamiliar freedom that it never leaves the porch. That left the tournament's fate in the lap of a shootout – which, while perfectly familiar, is little more than a spin of a roulette wheel befitting of a match-up featuring teams donning red and black in this particular affair.
 
'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas' was once a very popular slogan for the city's commerical interests. Schafer hopes that includes these sorts of tie-breaking formats.
 
"It was a tough game. It was a strong game. But this is why I'm against three-on-three and shootouts," Schafer said afterward.
 
Of course, this was an in-season tournament – and a victor needed to be declared in one way or another. That's widely accepted, something Schafer acknowledged. Ideally, full overtimes would be utilized (like in the postseason), but that's simply not feasible. As it was, the consolation game of this weekend's tournament didn't start until after 9 p.m. local time on Saturday – which made Army West Point's flight out of Las Vegas in the 6 o'clock hour on Sunday borderline inhumane.
 
Still, this isn't the wave of the future, it's current events. Four of Division I's six leagues use the exact overtime format seen in the Fortress Invitational to settle league games. It just so happens that the lone holdouts are ECAC Hockey and Hockey East – the two leagues represented by Cornell and Providence. Adaptation is a matter of survival, so not everyone is against the format.
 
"It was interesting, and something we'll have to work on moving forward," junior forward Morgan Barron said. "It's fun to learn, and obviously you'll see it at the pro level a lot, so it's nice to get used to a little bit."

Around The League

•  While the Big Red was tending to non-league contests last weekend, eight ECAC Hockey teams were playing league games. The only one of the four road teams to earn a four-point sweep also happens to be Cornell's next opponent – Rensselaer.
 
After winning just six games in Dave Smith's first year as head coach of the Engineers, the team had 10 wins last year. With its first two-game league weekend on the road since Feb. 8-9, 2013, RPI is now up to eight wins through just roughly half the season.
 
"What excites me is the challenge to get this group all the way over the hump," Smith told the Times Union last week. "We've come so far. I get to look at all of the numbers and we're good, but sometimes good isn't enough. In the ECAC, you've got to be better than good to win more often than not."

 
One thing Smith has been looking for is improved play for his trio of goaltenders – all of which have started at least two games. Junior Linden Marshall backstopped RPI with 32 saves in a 3-1 upset of nationally-ranked Clarkson, then sophomore Owen Savory posted a 25-save shutout in a 3-0 blanking of St. Lawrence the next night. 

Alumni Update

•  Anthony Angello (2015-18) has ignited offensively over the last month or so after a slow scoring start the season. By scoring 10 goals and adding six assists for 16 points over his last 16 games with the AHL's Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, Angello is already just three goals shy of matching his scoring output from his first professional season – and he's only played 36 so far this year.
 
"(Angello's) moving his feet, and that line's playing really well and moving the puck east to west," WBS head coach Mike Vellucci told the Citizens' Voice. "He's finding that soft area where he's getting his shot off. So, kudos to him for moving his feet and playing the game the way he's supposed to play."
 
•  Brendan Smith '19 has retired from professional hockey after just a couple months. The swift-skating defenseman was putting up solid numbers with the ECHL's Wichita Thunder, scoring twice and adding six assists for eight points in just 11 games. But Smith said he then suffered a concussion (not his first) and wasn't comfortable with how he felt during recovery, so he decided not to come back at all.

Numbers Game

•  For about 8½ hours on Saturday, the Big Red ascended back to #1 in the Pairwise Comparison Ratings. Cornell narrowly trailed North Dakota for the top spot when it woke up that day, but it moved ahead after Maine defeated Omaha in a game that started at noon Eastern time.
 
The Big Red still ended the day back at # 2, though. North Dakota finished up a sweep of Alabama Huntsville around the same time that Cornell was rallying to salvage a tie against Providence. According to College Hockey News' Pairwise customization tool, the Big Red would still be # 2 even if it had lost – but who knows how that difference between tie and loss against a quality opponent will be a factor at season's end.
 
•  The Big Red remained #2 in both the USCHO.com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine polls this week. One of the two teams to move back into the USCHO top 20 is Northern Michigan, which is noteworthy. The Wildcats have ascended to 19th in the Pairwise after an impressive two-game road sweep of Bowling Green, which figures to help set up a key two-game series Jan. 17-18 at Cornell.
 
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 as the team's beat writer at The Ithaca Journal. He can be reached at brandon@cornell.edu.