ITHACA, N.Y. — The postseason begins for the Cornell men's hockey team this weekend with a best-of-three quarterfinals series in the ECAC Hockey Championships against Colgate at Lynah Rink. The first two games of the series are scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday, with the if-necessary third game slated for 4 p.m. Sunday.

Series Information:

ECAC Hockey Championships, quarterfinal series (best of three)
Colgate at #18 Cornell
SITE: Lynah Rink — Ithaca, N.Y. 
GAME 1: 7 p.m.  •  Friday, March 11, 2022
GAME 2: 7 p.m.  •  Saturday, March 12, 2022
GAME 3 (if necessary): 4 p.m.  •  Sunday, March 13, 2022
BROADCAST (U.S.): Game 1  •  Game 2  •  Game 3
BROADCAST (Int'l): Stretch Internet
RADIO: WHCU (870 AM, 97.7 FM)
STATS: CornellBigRed.com
Cornell game notes (PDF)

How To Watch:

•  All of the series' games will be broadcast on ESPN+ in the U.S. (with an option for international viewers also available through Stretch Internet). Grady Whittenburg will have the call with color commentary from Tim Vanini '91.
•  Featuring play-by-play from Jason Weinstein and color commentary from Tony Eisenhut '88, the games can also be heard on WHCU (870 AM, 97.7 FM).

Big Red Rewind:

•  Cornell snapped out of a late-season slump at a pivotal time to grab 13 out of an available 15 points over its last five regular-season games to lock down fourth place in the final ECAC Hockey standings and claim a bye through the first round of the playoffs.
•  More impressively, the Big Red defeated both of the league's top two finishers in the regular-season standings to do so. After a restorative 6-2 win over Clarkson on Feb. 19, Cornell went on the road to take down Quinnipiac, 1-0, on Feb. 25. The Big Red now sports a 6-0-1 record against teams currently in the top 20 of the Pairwise rankings.
•  Even with those two marquee wins, the Big Red still needed a result in its regular-season finale Feb. 26 at Princeton to clinch the bye — and it got it in the form of a 4-0 victory, spurred by the first goals of the season from both Sullivan Mack and Sebastian Dirven.
•  Ian Shane enters the weekend on the heels of consecutive shutouts, stopping all 65 shots he saw in the victories against Quinnipiac and Princeton. His 42 saves against the Bobcats was the most by a Cornell goaltender since Dec. 28, 2013, when Andy Iles '14 made 44 saves in win over New Hampshire.
•  Kyle Betts has been named ECAC Hockey Player of the Month for February after posting nine points over the Big Red's final nine regular-season games. It marks the third time in four months that Cornell has laid claim to the honor.

By The Numbers:

•  Junior forward Matt Stienburg (#20, 11-15–26) leads the team in scoring, and his four power-play goals are tied for the team lead with junior forward Ben Berard (#29, 11-8–19). Berard's average of 0.48 goals per game is tied for highest among ECAC Hockey skaters with Harvard's Ian Laferriere.
•  Stienburg has spent the bulk of the season on a line centered by senior forward Max Andreev (#15, 9-13–22, plus-14), who is tied for second in team scoring despite being unable to play in 10 of the team's last 13 games.
•  Freshman forward Ondrej Psenicka (#26, 12-6–18) has taken over the team lead in goals, and his plus-19 rating is also highest on the team. Psenicka's average of 0.44 goals per game is fifth-highest among freshmen nationally.
•  Junior Sam Malinski (#24, 5-17–22, plus-17) is tied for second in team scoring while continuing to hold the team lead in power-play scoring (nine points). His 68 shots on goal are second-most on the team, trailing only Berard (69).
•  Senior Kyle Betts (#11, 6-12–18) has 10 points over his last 10 games after posting eight in the season's first 19 games. He has already eclipsed his career high for points in a single season.

No Experience Required:

•  Freshman Ian Shane (#30, 6-4-3, 1.58, .941, SO) has emerged as the team's primary goaltender since the start of the new year, becoming the third Cornell goaltender to win his first collegiate start this season on Jan. 7 at North Dakota. Shane comes into this weekend ranked third nationally in save percentage and fourth in goals against average. •  Shane has won ECAC Hockey MAC Goaltending Goalie of the Week honors three times (Jan. 3, Jan. 10 and Feb. 28) over the eight weeks in which he's played.
•  Senior Nate McDonald (#33, 7-1-1, 2.38, .904) and freshman Joe Howe (#34, 4-3, 2.59, .890, SO) have also factored into crease equation 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 has the unique distinction of becoming the first goaltender in modern program history to make his collegiate debut as a senior.

Milestone Watch:

•  Already the winningest coach in program history and in Ivy League history, Mike Schafer '86 ranks fifth among active coaches with 498 victories at the Division I level and a career winning percentage of .632. If the Big Red wins this weekend's series against Colgate, Schafer would become the 15th head coach in Division I men's hockey history to eclipse the 500-win total. 

The First Program to 100 ECAC Hockey Championship Wins:

•  The Big Red enters this weekend with 114 all-time ECAC Hockey Championship playoff victories, which leads the league.
•  Cornell has eight victories in the first round, 63 in the quarterfinals, one in the preliminary round of championship weekend, 23 in the semifinals, seven in consolation games and 12 championships (preliminaries and consolation games are no longer part of the ECAC Hockey playoff format).

Deep Up The Middle:

•  The Big Red currently ranks 10th in the country with a 53.0% 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%. The top five players taking draws for Cornell are all incumbents.

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.)

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.

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.

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 in October 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.
•  Cornell has enjoyed great success in overtime this season (4-1-4). While the Big Red was 0-4 in shootouts, there will not be any shootout scenarios in the postseason.

About Colgate:

•  The Raiders surged late in the season to a 6-2-2 record over their last 10 games to move up to fifth place in the final league standings. That earned them a first-round series at home against last-place Yale last weekend, which Colgate swept with a 3-2 win in overtime on Friday before a 5-1 victory on Saturday.
•  Josh McKechney scored the OT winner in Game 1 after the Bulldogs scored an extra-attacker goal with 7.1 seconds left in the third period to force the extra frame. Colton Young scored Colgate's first two goals. Griffin Lunn then had a goal and two assists in Game 2, and Mitch Benson made 60 saves across the two games.
•  As the Raiders have found their stride down the stretch, one common thread has been the uniting of all three of its leading scorer on the same line. Junior forward Colton Young (#12, 15-16–31) heads that list, playing on the left while his younger brother, sophomore Alex Young (#21, 9-19–28, 4 PPG), plays on the opposite wing with senior Josh McKechney (#7, 14-12–26, 4 PPG) at center.
•  Another common thread is senior goaltender Mitch Benson (#1, 8-5-3, 2.48, .917). After appearing in just two games before the new year, Benson has started all of Colgate's last 12 games and posted a 8-2-2 record over that stretch.
•  Matt Verboon (#13, 7-18–25) ranks fourth in the team in overall scoring, but he is the team's leader in power-play scoring with 11 points on four goals and seven assists. He typically plays on a power-play unit with McKechney, the Young brothers and sophomore defenseman Nick Anderson (#27, 1-15–16). 
•  Colgate ranks fifth nationally with a 54.3% success rate on faceoffs, led by senior Jeff Stewart (#23, 4-7–11) and his mark of 304-208 (59.4%).

The Series With Colgate:

•  Cornell holds an 86-59-16 lead in the all-time series, dating back to 1921. 
•  The Big Red has lost only six times in the last 41 meetings with the Raiders, though one of those setbacks came in the first clash between the teams this season on Feb. 4 at Class of 1965 Arena in Hamilton.
•  Ondrej Psenicka scored eight seconds into the second period and Kyle Penney scored 54 secodns into the third period for the Big Red, but the Raiders won the special-teams battle to the tune of two power-play goals — the last proving to be the winner by Ethan Manderville with 7:30 remaining.
•  Cornell got off to a much better start in the rematch the following night at Lynah, wit Jack Malone scoring 4:06 into the game. Matt Stienburg added a power-play goal 5:26 into the second, but Colgate battled back to force a 2-2 tie. 
•  The Big Red has scored at least two goals in its last 14 games against Colgate dating back to a 6-1 loss on Feb. 8, 2014.

The Postseason History With Colgate:

•  The Big Red is 8-1 all-time against the Raiders in postseason play, and this will mark the first time the teams will meet in an elimination round of the the ECAC Hockey Championships since 2006 — a 2-0 victory for the Big Red in the semifinals.
•  The most recent postseason meeting between the teams was the consolation game of the 2012 tournament at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. While the Big Red took a 3-0 decision for a third-place finish in the tournament, the victory was more important in that it vaulted Cornell into the field for the NCAA tournament.
•  Cornell and Colgate have clashed in a league quarterfinal series twice before, with both of those meetings coming in 1991 and 1996 at Lynah Rink. The Big Red swept both series by a cumulative score of 34-8.

Looking Ahead:

•  The winners of each quarterfinal series will advance to the league's championship weekend at Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid. The highest-remaining seed will take on the lowest-remaining seed at 4 p.m. Friday, March 18, then the other two semifinalists face off at 7:30 p.m. The championship game is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 19.