ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell men's hockey team rings in the new year with a four-game road trip, starting with the program's first two games at Arizona State.

Series Information:

#9 Cornell at Arizona State
SITE: Oceanside Arena — Tempe, Ariz. 
GAME 1: 7:05 p.m. MT  •  Saturday, January 1 
GAME 2: 7:05 p.m. MT  •  Sunday, January 2 
BROADCAST: ASU Live Stream
RADIO: WHCU (870 AM, 97.7 FM)
STATS: TheSunDevils.com
GAME NOTES (PDF): Cornell  |  Arizona State

How To Watch:

•  A broadcast of the games will be provided through ASU Live Stream, a service provided by the host school.
•  The games can also be heard on WHCU (870 AM, 97.7 FM) with Jason Weinstein in his 17th season on play-by-play.

Big Red Rewind:

•  For the third time over its last four seasons, Cornell leads the nation in winning percentage at the start of the new year. This season, that mark sits at .864 by way of a 9-1-1 record over the fall semester that concluded with the Big Red riding an eight-game unbeaten streak.
•  Helping the Big Red along the way has been a 3-0-1 record in its first foray into the three-on-three overtime format. The Big Red's lone deadlock to date came in its last time out on Dec. 4 at Clarkson. It was a bitter 4-4 tie after the Golden Knights finished erasing a four-goal deficit by scoring three extra-attacker goals in the last 2:53 of the third period — the last one with 1.2 seconds remaining.
•  Junior forward Matt Stienburg factored into all of Cornell's scoring the night prior in a 4-1 victory at St. Lawrence, assisting the first goal before rattling off a hat trick over an 18-minute span of the third period. It was the Big Red's third hat trick in just the first 10 games of the season.
•  After adding an assist against Clarkson, Stienburg extended his active scoring streak to 10 straight games — the longest for a Big Red player since Matt Moulson '06 had points in 10 straight from Nov. 5 to Dec. 27, 2005.
•  Senior forward Max Andreev scored Cornell's final two goals during the third period of the game at Clarkson, continuing a hot start that saw him named the ECAC Hockey Player of the Month for November.
•  Junior forward Jack Malone and junior defenseman Sam Malinski scored Cornell's first two goals against Clarkson.

By The Numbers:

•  Junior forward Matt Stienburg (#20, 8-10–18, plus-12) not only leads the team in scoring, but his average of 1.64 points per game leads the nation. The last time a Big Red player had more points through the first 11 games of a season was back in 1990-91, when Doug Derraugh '91 (current Everett Family Head Coach of Women's Hockey) had 19 points through 11 games.
•  Stienburg has regularly played on the wing of a line pivoted by senior forward Max Andreev (#15, 7-9–16). Like Stienburg, Andreev has enjoying a breakthrough season, leading the team in rating (plus-13) and faceoff winning percentage (59.8).
•  Joining Stienburg and Andreev in accounting for the Big Red's three hat tricks over its first 10 games is junior forward Ben Berard (#29, 6-4–10), who ranks tied for third in team scoring. Berard recorded his second collegiate three-goal effort Nov. 6 at Dartmouth.
•  Junior Sam Malinski (#24, 3-7–10) leads the team's blueliners in scoring.
•  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:

•  Senior Nate McDonald (#33, 5-0-1, 2.13 .910) and freshman Joe Howe (#34, 4-1, 2.20, .909, SO) have shared starts in the crease after the Big Red entered the season with zero varsity collegiate experience within its goaltending corps for the first time since the 1983-84 season.
•  Howe ranks second nationally in goals against average among freshmen goaltenders. 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 — has the unique distinction of becoming 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.
•  McDonald's .917 winning perctange leads the nation after he made a career-high 34 stops in the tie at Clarkson.

A Night To Remember:

•  An 11-3 victory over Rensselaer on Nov. 13 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:

•  With a Nov. 20 win over Yale, Cornell not only moved 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. Harvard has since moved into first in the Ivy League standings.

Deep Up The Middle:

•  The Big Red has moved up to third in the country with a 54.9% success rate on faceoffs this 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%. All five of Cornell's preferred options on draws are incumbents.

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 490 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 Arizona State:

•  The Sun Devils entered their holiday break with a road split Dec. 17-18 at Colorado College, one week after a pair of home victories against Clarkson.
•  Colin Theisen (#62, 12-12–24) and Matthew Kopperud (#28, 11-13–24) share the team lead in scoring. Theisen is one of seven players across the nation to have a pair of shorthanded goals, and Kopperud's eight power-play goals are second-most in the nation.
•  ASU has six players carrying a plus rating, with all three of the forwards in that group typically playing on the same line — freshman Josh Doan (#91, 5-15–20) centering Theisen and Demetrios Koumontzis (#27, 4-5–9, team-best plus-7).
•  Junior Ben Kraws (#33, 7-5, 3.40, .896) has started 12 games in goal, while sophomore Cole Brady (#34, 3-5, 4.11, .899) has started the other eight.

The Series With Arizona State:

•  Cornell is visiting Arizona State for the first time, reciprocating the Sun Devils' visit to Ithaca for two games Jan. 11-12, 2019. ASU entered those games as the national leader in wins, though the Big Red swept the series, 6-1 and 3-2, to make a big move up the Pairwise rankings. Both teams eventually qualified for at-large bids to the NCAA tournament.
•  Those games had temporarily reduced the number of current Division I teams that the Big Red hadn't yet played to four (Bentley, Connecticut, Holy Cross and recently-reinstated Alaska Anchorage), though St. Thomas has since joined the top tier of college hockey to push that number to five.

Looking Ahead:

•  Cornell shifts climates after the games in Arizona, flying up to North Dakota for its next two games Jan. 7-8 against the Fighting Hawks. 
•  The Big Red returns to the Northeast to wrap up its stretch of nine straight games away from home with an ECAC Hockey and Ivy League road trip Jan. 14-15 at Yale and Brown.