ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell men's hockey team has announced the schedule for its highly anticipated return to play in the 2021-22 season. The regular-season slate of 29 games is highlighted by a first-time visit from an opponent, a pair of lengthy non-league road trips and the perennial rigors of league play in ECAC Hockey.

Cornell Men's Hockey 2021-22 Schedule
 
In what will prove to be its first regular-season action in 608 days, Cornell returns to Lynah Rink ice Oct. 29-30 for a two-game visit from Alaska. The non-league contests will mark the first visit to Ithaca for the Nanooks, who will be competing as an independent team for the first time since the 1992-93 season. The programs' only previous meeting came on Jan. 3, 1987 in the championship game of the Phoenix Mutual Tournament in Hartford, Conn. – a 5-2 victory for the Big Red.
 
ECAC Hockey play commences the following week, with Cornell opening on the road against Ivy League opponents. Up first is a date with rival Harvard on Friday, Nov. 5, followed by a trip to Dartmouth on Saturday, Nov. 6 to conclude the team's lone road games for the entire month. Four consecutive league games at Lynah Rink ensue, with the first two featuring arrivals from the circuit's Capital District teams – Union on Friday, Nov. 12 and Rensselaer on Saturday, Nov. 13. Cornell then hosts its first two games within the Ivy subset Friday, Nov. 19 against Brown and Saturday, Nov. 20 against Yale.

The Big Red's third non-league game of the season will be a clash against Boston University on Saturday, Nov. 27. Details of the neutral-site contest are still being finalized.
 
The fall semester's portion of the schedule closes with the Big Red's first ECAC Hockey games against some of the four teams that competed during the abbreviated 2020-21 season. Cornell visits Clarkson on Friday, Dec. 3 before shuttling down Route 11 on Saturday, Dec. 4 to take on defending league tournament champion St. Lawrence.
 
After a four-week hiatus for final exams and the semester break, the Big Red will embark on the program's first trip to the Grand Canyon State for a pair of games Jan. 1-2 at Arizona State. The trip reciprocates a Sun Devils visit to Ithaca in January 2019 that resulted in victories of 6-1 and 3-2 for the hosts. Cornell's lengthy travels continue the following weekend at North Dakota, where the two teams atop the national rankings when the 2019-20 season abruptly concluded will square off in a pair of games Jan. 7-8.
 
Cornell's attention will then turn exclusively to ECAC Hockey play for the balance of the regular season. A stretch of eight straight road games comes to a close with a swing through New England to take on Yale on Friday, Jan. 14 and Brown on Saturday, Jan. 15.
 
A season-high five-game home stand awaits the Big Red as the undergraduate population returns to campus for the spring semester. The string starts Friday, Jan. 21 against Princeton and Saturday, Jan. 22 against Quinnipiac. The most anticipated home weekend of the season then starts with Dartmouth's arrival on Friday, Jan. 28 before the penultimate game of the Ivy League portion of the schedule sees Harvard in town on Saturday, Jan. 29.
 
The first weekend of February features the annual home-and-home series with Colgate. The teams meet in Ithaca on Friday, Feb. 4 before the stage shifts northeast to Hamilton for the rematch on Saturday, Feb. 5 to start a Cornell home stretch in which five of its final seven games are on the road. A visit to Rensselaer (Feb. 11) and Union (Feb. 12) follows.
 
The Big Red's final home weekend of the regular season features the same visitors it had to close out the 2019-20 campaign – ECAC Hockey's North Country foes. St. Lawrence arrives for a Friday, Feb. 18 date at Lynah before Cornell's annual Senior Night game on Saturday, Feb. 19 against Clarkson. The regular season then wraps up with a trip to Quinnipiac (Feb. 25) and Princeton (Feb. 26).
 
As usual, Cornell will tune up with the annual Red/White Game and a pair of exhibitions before the start of the regular season. Red/White is slated for Friday, Oct. 15, with an exhibition against the University of Ottawa shortly thereafter on Sunday, Oct. 17. The final tune-up comes against the U.S. National Team Development Program's Under-18 team on Saturday, Oct. 23.