ITHACA, N.Y. — Last season,
Hoyt Stanley and
Jonathan Castagna shared a house in Ithaca. On Thursday night, the former Cornell roommates shared something else from nearly 1,800 miles apart: their NHL debuts, Stanley with the Ottawa Senators and Castagna with the Calgary Flames. It is the first time in program history that two Big Red alumni have debuted on the same day.
Stanley went first, skating on Ottawa's third defensive pairing with Nikolas Matinpalo in the Senators' home opener against the Philadelphia Flyers at Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata, Ontario. He blocked a shot in 10:21 of ice time across 14 shifts in Ottawa's 2-1 win.
Castagna followed two time zones away against the Colorado Avalanche at Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary, Alberta, and needed just five shifts to record his first NHL point. He won a battle along the wall to keep the play alive, and linemate Adam Klapka finished it with a silky toe-drag past Mackenzie Blackwood for the Flames' first goal of the night. Castagna became the 10th Cornell alum to record a point in his NHL debut and the first since Jacob MacDonald on Oct. 6, 2018.
"Obviously, I didn't have to do much for it," Castagna said of the assist. "To get that off my back is really cool. But kudos to him. That was unbelievable."
Castagna centered Calgary's fourth line and finished with an assist, three hits and a blocked shot in the Flames' 7-3 loss. He won 3-of-6 faceoffs in 9:09 of ice time across 14 shifts. Calgary recalled Castagna from the American Hockey League's Calgary Wranglers on Wednesday, along with Aydar Suniev, his former teammate at St. Andrew's College. Castagna centered Suniev, who made his season debut, and Klapka.
Both players left Cornell following their junior seasons and signed three-year entry-level contracts on March 30, three days after the Big Red's season ended against Denver in the NCAA Tournament's Loveland Regional. Their debuts came 195 days after that final game, putting them in a tie for the second-fastest turnaround from Cornell to the NHL in program history, trailing only Hockey Hall of Famer Joe Nieuwendyk, who debuted with Calgary 10 days after his last Cornell game in 1987. Stanley and Castagna are the 12th and 13th Big Red alumni to make their NHL debuts within a year of their final college game, and the first to debut since Travis Mitchell '23 did so with the New York Islanders on Nov. 28, 2025.
"Pretty wild, definitely a dream come true," Stanley said. "Just kind of found out this morning at 11 or 12 o'clock, so drove from Belleville and got a pregame meal at Metro and just tried to make it work. It was a lot of fun."
"Before the game, everyone was telling me to soak it in," Castagna said. "You can only do it once, and I try to do that as much as possible."
"Having Jonathan and Hoyt make their NHL debuts on the same night is something our program will remember for a long time," said Casey Jones '90, the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Cornell Men's Ice Hockey. "They were roommates, they came through our locker room together, and they signed together this spring. Now they get to share this. We are proud of them. Let's Go Red!"
Stanley and Castagna became the 42nd and 43rd Cornell men's hockey alumni to play in an NHL game, and the 41st and 42nd to appear in a regular-season contest. They join Winnipeg forward Morgan Barron, Colorado defenseman Sam Malinski '23 and Anaheim's Jeff Malott '20 and Mitchell as the six Big Red alumni to play in the NHL this season, the most in a single season since 2014-15.
"Hoyt, the way he's been playing, I think everybody notices, and it's good for him," fellow Ottawa defenseman and captain Thomas Chabot said after the Senators' preseason finale on Sept. 26. "I think it won't be long before we see him."
Chabot was right.
Stanley, who was named to Ottawa's opening-night roster before being assigned to Belleville on Oct. 2, played two games for the AHL club last weekend before the Senators recalled him just hours before Thursday's home opener. He is the second former Big Red player to play for Ottawa, joining Colin Greening '10.
Stanley said that at times, the night "didn't really feel real."
A native of West Vancouver, British Columbia, Stanley was a finalist for ECAC Hockey's Best Defensive Defenseman award as a junior last season. He led the Big Red with 44 blocked shots and posted a career-high 15 points (3-12—15) while playing in all 34 games. He finished his Cornell career with 38 points (7-31—38) in 104 games. Ottawa selected Stanley in the fourth round (108th overall) of the 2023 NHL Draft. He finished last season with Belleville on an amateur tryout.
After the Flames' preseason game at Seattle on Sept. 24, general manager Craig Conroy is shown telling Castagna in the season premiere of the team's YouTube series "The Chase" that he was being sent to the AHL, but that it wasn't the end of the road.
"I think tonight was your best game," Conroy told him. "We're going to send you down, but that's not it. With your work ethic, I can go downstairs at 4 o'clock, you're still down there. I'm like, 'This guy is going to be a player.' Don't get discouraged by this."
The extra hours didn't go unnoticed, and they didn't take long to pay off. Two weeks later, Castagna needed just five shifts to record his first NHL point.
Castagna is the third former Big Red player to suit up for the Flames, joining Nieuwendyk (1987-95) and Doug Dadswell (1986-88). A native of Etobicoke, Ontario, he finished his Cornell career with 74 points (31-43—74) in 101 games. He posted a career plus-45 rating, blocked 70 shots and won 60.4 percent of his faceoffs (949-of-1,570). He was one of three Division I players to win at least 60.0 percent of their faceoffs over that three-year span. That skill showed up right away Thursday, as he won his first NHL faceoff, an offensive-zone draw against Colorado's Nicolas Roy.
As a junior in 2025-26, Castagna led the Big Red in goals (15), points (34), short-handed goals (3) and plus-minus (plus-25). He was named ECAC Hockey's Best Defensive Forward, a First Team All-ECAC Hockey selection and a unanimous First Team All-Ivy pick.
The Arizona Coyotes selected Castagna in the third round (70th overall) of the 2023 NHL Draft, and his rights moved to Utah ahead of the 2024-25 season. Calgary acquired him on March 4, 2026, in a trade that sent MacKenzie Weegar to Utah in exchange for Olli Määttä, Castagna and three 2026 second-round picks.
Stanley and Castagna can both make their second NHL appearances as early as Saturday, when Ottawa hosts Nashville and Calgary hosts Anaheim to begin a home-and-home series with the Ducks. If Castagna stays in the lineup, that series would pit him against two Big Red alumni in Malott and Mitchell, with former Cornell goaltender Brian Hayward '82 on the call as the analyst for Anaheim's TV broadcasts.
