ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell men's hockey team takes a five-game winning streak to the Big Apple on Saturday, when it will battle with Boston University on the ice at famed Madison Square Garden in the eighth rendition of Red Hot Hockey.

Red Hot Hockey Information:

#10 Cornell at Boston University
SITE: Lynah Rink — Ithaca, N.Y. 
TIME: 8 p.m. Saturday, November 27
BROADCAST: ESPN+
RADIO: WHCU (870 AM, 97.7 FM)
TICKETS: Madison Square Garden
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
GAME NOTES (PDF): Cornell

How To Watch:

•  The game will be broadcast on ESPN+ in the U.S. (with an option for international viewers also available through Stretch Internet).
•  Red Hot Hockey can also be heard on WHCU (870 AM, 97.7 FM) with Jason Weinstein in his 17th season on play-by-play and Tony Eisenhut '88 providing color commentary.

About Red Hot Hockey:

•  Cornell and Boston University will play the eighth edition of the biennial Red Hot Hockey series on Saturday. The games have been mostly sellouts, starting the rebirth of college hockey at The World's Most Famous Arena. 
•  Cornell has also started The Frozen Apple series in even-numbered years, having defeated Michigan in 2012, Penn State in 2014 and New Hampshire in 2016 before a loss in 2018 against Harvard.
•  To the winner of Red Hot Hockey goes the Kelley-Harkness Cup, which Cornell will be looking to again retain this year after victories over BU in 2017 and 2019.

Big Red Rewind:

•  Cornell enters the weekend with the best winning percentage in the country (.875), pushing its record to 7-1 after Ivy League victories over Brown and Yale last weekend to close a four-game home stand at Lynah Rink.
•  Junior forward Matt Stienburg book-ended the scoring in Friday's 3-2 victory over the Bears, including the game-winner in overtime. Cornell improved to 3-0 in overtime, with Stienburg having now scored two of those winners.
•  Senior forward Liam Motley sparked the Big Red after the team's stagnant start to a 3-0 blanking of Yale on Saturday. He scored his first career goal in front of the Lynah Faithful off a set play on a faceoff, drawing a penalty in the process. Ondrej Psenicka scored 35 seconds into the ensuing power play. Travis Mitchell added another power-play goal, and the Big Red clamped down to yield just three shots on goal in the third.
•  Senior Nate McDonald was named the ECAC Hockey MAC Goaltending Goalie of the Week on Monday after earning the decision in both games, improving to 4-0 for the year. He made a career-high 30 saves against Brown, then stopped all 14 shots he saw against Yale for his first collegiate shutout.

Friday's Highlights:

Saturday's Highlights:

By The Numbers:

•  Senior forward Max Andreev (#15, 4-8–12, plus-10) and junior forward Matt Stienburg (#20, 5-7–12, plus-10) share the team lead in scoring and rating. The duo has played on the same line in every game to date, with freshman forward Ondrej Psenicka (#26, 4-1–5, plus-9) joining them for the last several games.
•  Stienburg enters Red Hot Hockey on a seven-game scoring streak, having racked up all 12 of his points over that span. With a point against BU on Saturday, he would become the first member of the Big Red to have at least point in eight straight games since defenseman Patrick McCarron '17 from Nov. 5-Dec. 2, 2016. 
•  Powered by a hat trick Nov. 6 at Dartmouth, junior forward Ben Berard (#29, 4-3–7) ranks third in team scoring and is tied with Andreev and Psenicka for the second-most goals on the team.
•  Sophomore Tim Rego (#12, 2-4–6) leads the team's blueliners in scoring, with both of his goals coming Nov. 13 against Rensselaer. Supplemented by an assist in between those strikes, the performance earned Rego ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Week honors two days later.
•  Cornell has deployed 21 different players among its 19 skaters on any given night. Twenty of those 21 players have recorded at least one point.

No Experience Required:

•  Freshman Joe Howe (#34, 3-1, 1.75, .922, SO) and senior Nate McDonald (#33, 4-0, 1.98 .907) have split starts in the team's first eight games, with McDonald backstopping both of the Big Red's efforts last weekend.
•  By making 20 saves Oct. 30 against Alaska, Howe became the first Cornell freshman goaltender to earn a shutout in his collegiate debut since the aforementioned 1983-84 season, when Don Fawcett '87 blanked Wilfrid Laurier (while Mike Schafer '86 was a sophomore on the blue line).
•  McDonald — the lone incumbent among the Big Red's goaltending trio who backed up All-American Matthew Galajda '21 and All-Ivy League first-teamer Austin McGrath '21 for his first two seasons at Cornell — became the first goaltender in modern program history to make his collegiate debut as a senior, making 21 saves to earn the overtime victory over Alaska on Oct. 29.
•  The Big Red entered the season with zero varsity collegiate experience within its goaltending corps for the first time since the 1983-84 season.

Empire State of Mind:

•  Freshman defenseman Hank Kempf was a seventh-round draft pick of the New York Rangers in last summer's NHL Entry Draft. Kempf keeps the connection between the Big Red and Broadway Blueshirts alive after Morgan Barron '20 graduated from Cornell and signed with the Rangers (as of Tuesday, he was competing with the Hartford Wolf Pack — the team's AHL affiliate).
•  Cornell has three New York natives on its roster, with sophomore forward Jack O'Leary hailing from St. James on Long Island. Freshmen defenseman Jimmy Rayhill (New Hartford; near Utica) and Michael Suda (Cheektowaga; near Buffalo) also give the Big Red talent from within its home state.
•  Junior forward Jack Malone's home in Madison, New Jersey is less than 25 miles from Red Hot Hockey's venue in Manhattan. Though originally from California, Malone moved to The Garden State when he was 6.

A Night To Remember:

•  Last Saturday's 11-3 victory over Rensselaer created a long list of occurrences that had not been achieved by the Big Red in a long time. Among them:
    »    Cornell scored at least 10 goals for the first time since Nov. 20, 1999 (10-4 vs. Clarkson).
    »    Cornell scored 11 goals for the first time since Feb. 21, 1979 (11-3 vs. Harvard).
    »    Andreev's six points were the most for a Big Red player in a single game since Ryan Vesce '04 had seven on Nov. 8, 2003 (7-0 at Princeton).
    »    Andreev's four goals were the most for a Big Red player in a single game since Ryan Hughes '93 on Jan. 29, 1991 (5-4 loss vs. Boston College).
    »    Cornell scored at least 15 goals in a two-game span for the first time since March 8-9, 1996 (both games vs. Colgate, 8-3 and 8-1).
    »    Cornell scored at least 11 goals in a single game against Rensselaer for the second time in 115 all-time meetings (the other was 13-1 on Feb. 16, 1924).

The League Within The League:

•  Last Saturday's win over Yale not only moved Cornell into solo possession of first place in ECAC Hockey, it also moved the Big Red atop the Ivy League standings. Cornell is 27-4-4 in its last 34 Ivy League contests, and — despite the early end to the 2019-20 season — it had already laid claim to its third straight and 20th overall Ivy League title.

Deep Up The Middle:

•  The Big Red rebounded from a rough opening weekend on draws, having won 60.7% of faceoffs over the last six games. That pulls Cornell up to third in the country with a 56.7% success rate on the season.
•  That number exceeds what Cornell posted in 2019-20, when it was tied for 13th in the nation and third among ECAC Hockey programs at 52.5%. While that was two seasons ago, the Big Red has returned three of its top four centers from then.

Flair For The Dramatic:

•  No one on the Big Red's roster had won a collegiate game in overtime before Oct. 29-30, but they were all been a part of two such victories in a span of just around 24 hours. 
•  With the caveat that college hockey's modified overtime rules encourage more scoring, Cornell's sweep of Alaska last weekend marks the program's first consecutive extra-session victories since March 10-11, 2006 — a pair of double-overtime wins over Clarkson to earn a sweep in an ECAC Hockey Championship quarterfinal series.

Paring Down The Pairwise:

•  If not for the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cornell was a shoo-in to earn a berth to the NCAA tournament for a fourth consecutive season in 2019-20. That feat has only happened once in program history — a stretch from 1967 to 1970 that was book-ended by a pair of national championships.
•  The numbers bear out Cornell's standing as one of the nation's elite programs. The Big Red's season-ending average Pairwise Ratings Index scores over its last three seasons is 5.7. For comparison, that numbers ranks: 
    »    second in the country (trailing just Minnesota State, 3.7)
    »    first among ECAC Hockey programs (Clarkson 8.0, Quinnipiac 18.3, etc.)
    »    first among Ivy League programs (Harvard 22.7, Yale 36.0, etc.)

The First Ivy League Coach to 400 Wins:

•  Already the winningest coach in program history and in Ivy League history, Mike Schafer '86 ranks fifth among active coaches with 488 victories at the Division I level. He also leads all active coaches of Cornell's 37 varsity teams in career victories.

The Twin Tradition:

•  Juniors Ben and Zach Tupker give the Big Red its fourth pair of twins in Mike Schafer's 27-year tenure as the program's head coach. The others were the Devins (Joe and Mike, 2007-11), the Abbotts (Chris and Cam, 2001-06), and the McRaes (Mark and Matt, 1999-2003).

Feel The Draft?:

•  Cornell has four players on the roster who have been selected in the NHL Entry Draft, with the program laying claim to at least one selection in six of the last seven drafts. Freshman forward Matt Stienburg (Colorado Avalanche) was selected earliest in that group, having been taken in the third round with the 63rd overall pick in June.
•  Another St. Andrew's College product, freshman forward Justin Ertel, was also selected in the third round of the draft. The Dallas Stars selected the budding power forward with the 79th overall pick last summer.
•  Junior forward Jack Malone was taken by the Vancouver Canucks in the sixth round in 2019, and freshman defenseman Hank Kempf was taken in the seventh round last summer by the New York Rangers.

Rare Territory:

•  Freshman goaltender Joe Howe is doing something that no Cornell men's hockey player has ever done before — wearing #34. It is the 36th number to be worn by a member of the Big Red, and currently only the second to be worn by just one player (fellow goaltender Eddie Skazyk '96 is the only to have worn #39).
•  Junior forward Jack Malone is the first Cornell men's hockey player to wear #13 in more than 50 years. The perceived unluckiest of numbers has only been donned by five previous members of the Big Red, all in the first nine years of the program's resurrection in 1957. The last to wear #13 was James Wallace during the 1965-66 season.

About Boston University:

•  The Terriers stand at 4-8-2 overall after going to overtime in each of its last four games. Most recently, BU suffered a overtime loss to Northeastern on Friday before Saturday's rematch went one step further before the Huskies came out the victor in an eight-round shootout. 
•  Junior center Wilmer Skoog (#32, 5-6–11; 2 PPG) and junior winger Robert Mastrosimone (#16, 5-6–11; 2 PPG) are tied for the team lead in scoring. They frequently play on the same line, most recently with classmate Jay O'Brien (#18, 2-2–4) on the opposite wing.
•  BU boasts 14 NHL draft picks, including a pair of first-rounders in O'Brien (Philadelphia in 2018) and freshman forward Tyler Boucher (Ottawa in 2021). 
•  Junior Case McCarthy (#2, 4-3–7) has added a dose of offense from the blue line, having also accounted for the team's only three-on-three overtime winner to date.
•  Sophomore Drew Commesso (#29, 4-6-2, 2.87, .897) has started 13 of the team's 14 games. He suited up against Cornell as a member of the National Team Development Program in an exhibtion game at Lynah Rink in 2019, but did not play in the game.
•  Albie O'Connell is in his fourth season as head coach at BU after serving as an associate head coach for three years prior and assistant coach in 2014-15.

The Series With Boston University:

•  Two longtime rivals, Cornell and Boston University have met 48 times, with the Big Red holding a 25-20-3 lead in the all-time series. 
•  The last meeting between the two storied programs came in the 2019 chapter of Red Hot Hockey, when the Big Red used goals 20 seconds apart from Michael Regush and senior forward Brenden Locke in the second period to fuel a 2-0 victory. Matthew Galajda '21 made 28 saves to record the first shutout in Red Hot Hockey series history.
•  Cornell won the Kelley-Harkness Cup bestowed upon the Red Hot Hockey champion for the first time in 2017, scoring the first three goals of a 4-3 victory. Boston University won three of the first five versions of Red Hot Hockey, with the 2009 and 2015 meetings ending in 3-3 ties.
•  Cornell and BU have combined to win seven NCAA championships, with the Big Red defeating the Terriers for the title in 1967, Cornell's first national championship. 
•  Under Cornell head coach Mike Schafer, the Big Red is 5-6-2 against BU.

Looking Ahead:

•  Cornell will depart Manhattan with just a pair of key ECAC Hockey games between it and the semester break. The Big Red will hit the road for games against St. Lawrence at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 3 and Clarkson at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 4.