ITHACA, N.Y. — For the first time in 62 days, the Cornell men's hockey team is scheduled to play a home game when it hosts Princeton at 7 p.m. Friday at Lynah Rink. The weekend concludes with a top-10 matchup at 7 p.m. Saturday against top-ranked Quinnipiac.

Game Information:

Princeton at #8 Cornell
SITE: Lynah Rink — Ithaca, N.Y. 
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATE: Friday, January 21, 2022 
BROADCAST (U.S.): ESPN+
BROADCAST (Int'l): Stretch Internet
RADIO: WHCU (870 AM, 97.7 FM)
STATS: CornellBigRed.com

#1 Quinnipiac at #8 Cornell
SITE: Lynah Rink — Ithaca, N.Y. 
TIME: 7 p.m.
DATE: Saturday, January 22, 2022 
BROADCAST (U.S.): ESPN+
BROADCAST (Int'l): Stretch Internet
RADIO: WHCU (870 AM, 97.7 FM)
STATS: CornellBigRed.com

How To Watch:

•  Both games will be broadcast on ESPN+ in the U.S. (with an option for international viewers also available through Stretch Internet). Grady Whittenburg will handle the play-by-play with color commentary from Tim Vanini '91.
•  The games 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 provided color commentary.

Big Red Rewind:

•  Cornell is up to a season-high #8 in the DCU/USCHO.com poll this week after blanking Yale, 3-0, on Saturday to win its third straight game while concurrently wrapping up a grueling two-month stretch away from home with an admirable mark of 5-2-1 over those eight games.
•  Junior forward Jack Malone paced the offense by assisting on sophomore forward Kyle Penney's goal late in the first period before adding his own goal to close out the scoring in the second period.
•  Junior forward Ben Tupker opened the scoring in the game's sixth minute. His twin brother, Zach Tupker, earned an assist to give him a point in each of his last three games.
•  Freshman goaltender Ian Shane continued a red-hot start to his collegiate career by stopping all 18 shots he saw from the Bulldogs to record his first shutout.
•  It proved to be the only game of the weekend for the Big Red, which saw a road game against Brown postponed until a yet-to-be-determined date. It marked the first time since Feb. 8, 2014 that Cornell played a weekend that consisted of just one ECAC Hockey game. (The games against Colgate were split between two Saturdays that year).

Saturday's Highlights at Yale:

By The Numbers:

•  Senior forward Max Andreev (#15, 8-11–19) is enjoying a breakthrough season, leading the team in and faceoff winning percentage (58.0), while also sharing the team lead in rating (plus-14) and the scoring lead with junior forward Matt Stienburg (#20, 8-11–19).
•  Andreev typically centers a line alongside Stienburg, who was named the ECAC Hockey Player of the Month for December — though Stienburg has missed the Big Red's last four games. As of Monday, Stienburg's 1.46 points per game rank second-highest in the nation.
•  Senior forward Brenden Locke (#28, 5-8–13) has seven points in his last six games, moving up to third in team scoring. Locke was second in scoring during the team's 2019-20 season while centering a line with All-American Morgan Barron '21 on the wing, and his 72 career points are highest among Cornell's 27 skaters coming into this weekend.
•  Junior Sam Malinski (#24, 4-8–12, plus-14) leads the team's blueliners in scoring after potting a power-play goal and adding an assist Jan. 7 at North Dakota. 
•  Forward Ondrej Psenicka (#26, 7-3–10, plus-12) enters the weekend ranked seventh among the nation's freshmen with an average of 0.44 goals per game.
•  Three of the seven hat tricks recorded by ECAC Hockey players this season have come from Cornell. Joining Stienburg and Andreev in that club is junior forward Ben Berard (#29, 6-4–10), who recorded his second collegiate three-goal effort Nov. 6 at Dartmouth.

No Experience Required:

•  Freshman Ian Shane (#30, 3-0, 1.10, .960, SO) has made the most of his window of opportunity, becoming the third Cornell goaltender to win his collegiate debut this season. Shane won consecutive ECAC Hockey MAC Goaltending Goalie of the Week honors (Jan. 3 and Jan. 10) before recording an 18-save shutout last Saturday at Yale.
•  Prior to Shane's starts at North Dakota, senior Nate McDonald (#33, 5-1-1, 2.49, .896) and freshman Joe Howe (#34, 4-2, 2.35, .905, SO) had 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.
•  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.
•  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.

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:

•  A win against Princeton on Friday (in regulation time, overtime or a shootout) would vault Cornell back into first place in the Ivy League standings. By defeating Yale on Saturday, Cornell improved to 28-4-4 in its last 35 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 currently ranks 10th in the country with a 52.8% success rate on draws. That number slightly 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 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 493 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 Princeton:

•  The Tigers were scheduled to play their first game in more than a month on Tuesday, traveling to Quinnipiac for an ECAC Hockey game. It would be Princeton's first competition since it wrapped up the 2021 portion of its schedule on an eight-game losing streak, concluding with Dec. 10-11 losses of 7-0 and 3-2 at Providence.
•  Senior right winger Corey Andonovski (#27, 6-3–9) lead the team in scoring, and with four power-play goals has more than half of the team's seven tallies on the man advantage. Another senior right wing, Finn Evans (#16, 4-4–8) has a team-high plus-7 rating and shares second in team scoring with sophomore center Ian Murphy (#12, 4-4–8).
•  Junior Pito Walton (#21, 2-5–7) and senior Mark Paolini (#5, 1-5–6) give Princeton two defensemen within its top five scorers. 
•  While the Tigers' special teams don't stand out, the penalty kill's 77.6% success rate is reinforced by its three shorthanded goals — tied for most in ECAC Hockey, despite only played 13 games so far (Clarkson also has three, but has played 22 times).
•  Junior Aidan Porter (#35, 2-5, 3.24, .881) and senior Jeremie Forget (#1, 1-3-1, 3.95, .872) have split the primary goaltending duties. Only Forget — a former junior teammate of Cornell's Ben and Zach Tupker with the CCHL's Carleton Place Canadians — has faced the Big Red before (0-1, 4.90, .868 in two games).

The Series With Princeton:

•  Cornell has been dominant against the Tigers, holding a 96-52-8 lead all-time with wins in 11 of the teams' last 12 meetings.
•  The Big Red has scored 40 goals in its last nine games against the Tigers (4.44 goals per game), while Princeton hasn't scored a goal at even strength against Cornell since Jan. 4, 2019 (a span of 128 minutes, 23 seconds — which doesn't include the Big Red's 5-0 victory over the Tigers in an exhibition game on Oct. 16).

About Quinnipiac:

•  The Bobcats ascended to No. 1 in both major national polls before its scheduled home game with Princeton on Tuesday, having won seven straight as part of a 15-game unbeaten streak (13-0-2) dating back to the team's lone loss so far — a 3-1 decision at home against North Dakota on Oct. 23.
•  Quinnipiac leads the nation in team defense (1.05 goals against per game), penalty killing (93.0%) and ranks second in faceoff win percentage (57.4%).
•  Freshman goaltender Yaniv Perets (#1, 10-0-2, 0.80, .950, 7 SO) leads the nation in goals-against average, ranks second in save percentage and third in shutouts.
•  The Bobcats have been heavy investors in the transfer market, adding six players that started their collegiate careers elsewhere. Leading scorer and graduate student Oliver Chau (#12, 7-13–20) is part of that group, playing in his first season with Quinnipiac after three seasons at UMass.
•  Senior winger Ethan de Jong (#10, 7-12–19) ranks second in team scoring, and senior defenseman Zach Metsa (#23, 2-16–18) leads in assist and rating (plus-19). Senior center Wyatt Bongiovanni (#11, 11-6–17) leads in overall goals, and sophomore winger Ty Smilanic (#96, 10-6–16) has a team-high three power-play goals.

The Series With Quinnipiac:

•  Cornell leads the all-time series against Quinnipiac, 23-18-4, including a 2-1 victory in the teams' last meeting at Lynah Rink on Nov. 22, 2019. Brenden Locke opened the scoring for the Big Red in the second period.
•  In the teams' most recent clash, the Big Red was the top-ranked team in the country before being dealt a 5-0 setback on Jan. 31, 2020. It proved to be the final loss of Cornell's season, which concluded with nine victories in February.

Looking Ahead:

•  The Big Red home stand continues with a pair of highly anticipated Ivy League games. Dartmouth comes to town for a game at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 28 before the annual showdown with rival Harvard at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29.