ITHACA, N.Y. – Every year, the Cornell men's hockey team chooses a motto for the long, six-month road ahead. This season, that motto is 'Finish It'. It's a phrase undoubtedly aimed at winning an ECAC Hockey championship and a berth in the Frozen Four that the Big Red has come so close to in recent years, but it also has with it some ambiguity that can be used elsewhere. Turns out, one of those applications is to games in which Cornell has a big lead.
 
Fresh off a two-game sweep of Colgate and back into a tie for first place in ECAC Hockey, the Cornell men's hockey team had a lot to be happy about on Sunday. But as is often the case for the Big Red, the end doesn't always justify the means.
 
"I'm pretty disappointed," were the first words said by Mike Schafer '86, the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey, to the media on Sunday. "It's good to get the win, but I'm really disappointed in how we finished the game out."
 
Specifically, a 5-1 advantage in the third period turned sour by a pair of Colgate power-play goals inside the final 10 minutes. The game never reached white-knuckle status, but it took a lot of starch out of what was otherwise an utterly dominating weekend over a team that sits in a tie for fifth place in the league standings.
 
In Saturday's opener in Hamilton, the Big Red turned in a defensive gem. Though the Raiders got a power-play goal in the first period, the hosts generated next-to-nothing at even strength for the entire game. The end result was yielding just nine shots on goal for the entire game – a first for the program since March 14, 2009 – and a convincing 4-1 victory.
 
Less than 24 hours later in Ithaca, it took fewer than 18 minutes to recreate that same score. But instead of locking down Colgate for a second straight day, Cornell wavered. To the Raiders' credit, they competed hard despite the sizable deficit, but the Big Red didn't look the same down the stretch. Over the final two periods, Colgate had a 22-15 advantage in shots on goal and the only two actual goals.
 
"I don't know if it was just because we were at home or what, but we got cute with the puck in the second period. Tried to do way too much," Schafer said.
 
There's a saying that a two-goal lead (or three-goal lead, depending on which circle you believe) is the worst lead in hockey. It isn't, of course – that would be a one-goal lead – but it alludes to the problematic complacency that bigger leads often create.
 
"I don't want to say your mindset changes, because I don't think it does. But that does seem to be an occurrence in hockey," sophomore forward Michael Regush said after Sunday's game. "I think it might just be that you don't have quite as much of a killer instinct. But moving forward, that's something we need to be aware of.… It can be tough, but it's something that shouldn't be tough."
 
In the end, the only collateral damage from Sunday was a few more gray hairs and higher blood pressure for those closest to the program. But putting the proverbial hammer down is the sort of emerging skill a team with national aspirations will likely need to survive down the line. That, and improving a penalty kill that's been touched up for five goals in its last 10 opportunities.
 
"It's just something that we get resolved, and then we got everything back that we had resolved a couple weeks ago, and now we're right back to making the same stupid blunders we made previous to this," Schafer said. 

Around The League

•  With its win over Colgate on Sunday, Cornell clinched home ice for its first series of the ECAC Hockey playoffs – but it has its sights on far loftier goals. First, there's locking up a first-round bye. That could happen as soon as Saturday if the Big Red sweeps Union and Rensselaer this weekend (or myriad other possibilities). And the higher Cornell ultimately finishes in the standings, the narrower the scope of possible first playoff opponents for the Big Red.
 
Interestingly enough, three of the teams nearest the crosshair right now are among Cornell's next four opponents – Union, Yale and Brown. While currently sitting in ninth, the Bears are starting to find some traction with a 3-1-1 mark in their last five games. It's the sort of stretch that Brown enjoyed last year en route to a run into the ECAC Hockey semifinal.
 
"I think there is somewhat of a blueprint as to how Brown can be successful, in terms of style of play, in terms of systematic structure and how we approach an opponent on a certain weekend. Some of that does carry over," Bears head coach Brendan Whittet told Mark Divver of USCHO.com.

•  Harvard is coming off two losses in the Beanpot, including a 7-2 shellacking at the hands of Boston College on Monday. The Crimson, which was without key defenseman Reilly Walsh, now turns its attention back to trying to secure a first-round bye in the ECAC Hockey playoffs.
 
"Everything is still right in front of us," head coach Ted Donato told Spencer R. Morris of The Crimson. "We still have a lot to play for. As a group, we've shown flashes of the type of team we can be…. We have been inconsistent, and we'll have to improve on that as we play down the stretch, but I really enjoy this group."

Alumni Update

•  Cole Bardreau '15 has been recalled to the NHL by the New York Islanders in advance of the team's four-game road trip. The Isles play tonight in Nashville before a jaunt out west. It's likely Bardreau will remain with the team for at least the duration of the trip.
 
Bardreau became a bit of a folk hero to Islanders fans after scoring his first NHL goal on a penalty shot on Nov. 5, during the team's 10-game winning streak. ​​​​Bardreau gives the Big Red four program alumni currently playing in the NHL, with Anthony Angello (2014-17) joining stalwarts Riley Nash (2007-10) and Joakim Ryan '15 as the others.
 
•  Two other players joined Bardreau on the move this week. Beau Starrett '19 was returned to ECHL's Wichita Thunder after making one appearance on recall to the AHL's Bakersfield Condors last week.
 
Mitch Vanderlaan '19 has new home ice with the ECHL's Kansas City Mavericks after being traded away by the South Carolina Stingrays. It's a tough break for Vanderlaan in the sense that the Stingrays are in first place in their division and the Mavericks are in last in theirs. But the move should lead to more opportunity to play a pivotal role, as he had only dressed for 32 of South Carolina's 45 games.

Pairwise Watch

•  Even with just six weeks left before the NCAA Selection Show, it's still too early to start putting stock in the various projected NCAA brackets out there. Even merely following along just to find trends is somewhat fruitless at this point, because the regular pundits can't seem to agree on how the selection committee will ultimately handle an issue that seems likely to be relevant this year – how much protection will top seeds get from being assigned to regionals hosted by other qualifying teams (Denver and Penn State). Let's take a look at that – but in the interest of brevity, we'll do it next week.
 
•  This week, the newest tool in the Pairwise garage is the Pairwise Probability Matrix. This is a tool provided by College Hockey News that simulates the rest of the season using the Monte Carlo method – which, in layman's terms, is a way of combining the data we already know about teams (in this case, the KRACH rating system) with the randomness that makes sports so exciting. Put much more simply, the matrix predicts the rest of the season.
 
Anyways, CHN runs these simulations are great number of times (20,000 this week) to essentially cover all plausible solutions, then it shows every team's likelihood of finishing in specific Pairwise positions. For Cornell, the matrix shows a 67% chance of the Big Red remaining exactly where it is – third – at the time of NCAA selection. No big surprise there.
 
But the matrix can show things that maybe aren't so obvious on the surface. For example, the Big Red is deemed to only have a 1% chance of ascending to the #1 overall seed. That's it. Seems pretty crazy that #3 is so unlikely to move up just two spots in over a month.
 
In reality, what this illuminates is Cornell's remaining regular-season schedule. When you consider all of the Big Red's next five opponents are 39th or lower in the Pairwise (RPI 39th; Yale 41st; Union 53rd; Brown 54th; St. Lawrence 59th), it makes sense that there isn't a whole to gain over the stretch – just some ground to potentially lose. That would be the bad news. The good news is that the matrix sees less than a 0.2% chance of the Big Red falling below the band of #2 seeds (that's 5 through 8 overall), and it did see a single solution in 20,000 simulations of Cornell missing the NCAA tournament altogether.
 
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. Follow him on Twitter (@BT_unassisted).