Listening to head coach Mike Schafer ’86 speak about the Clarkson Golden Knights, you cannot tell whether he is referring to last year’s team, which finished atop the ECAC Hockey standings, or this year’s club, which currently shares a spot in the conference basement with three other squads. Nevertheless, for its final two home games of 2008, the Red will host Clarkson tonight and St. Lawrence tomorrow evening. Both games are slated for a 7 p.m. faceoff at Lynah Rink.

A recent trend for the men’s hockey team has been to give up a few too many goals in highly-anticipated non-conference contests over Thanksgiving break, as the Red fell to Boston University in Madison Square Garden last year, 6-3. At unranked North Dakota this break, No. 12 Cornell suffered another Thanksgiving rout on Friday, 7-3, but came back to win the next day, 2-1.

For the second year in a row, the men’s hockey team will spend its Thanksgiving break playing in one of the premier hockey facilities in the country. After suffering a 6-3 loss last year at the hands of Boston University at New York City’s iconic Madison Square Garden, a more experienced Red (4-0-2) is looking for a better result during this vacation — this year, Cornell will head to Grand Forks, N.D., to face North Dakota, a school which has made it to the Frozen Four in each of the last four years.

The men’s hockey team had little trouble on Saturday night stopping a red-hot Dartmouth squad that was riding a five-game winning streak. Senior forward and co-captain Michael Kennedy’s power play goal just 2:38 into the game gave the Red a lead it wouldn’t relinquish, as Cornell went on to score twice more and take the victory, 3-1.

Riley Nash could not have picked a better time to break his scoring drought. The sophomore center buried his first two goals of the early 2008-09 campaign — helping Cornell edge Harvard, 2-1, in front of 4,267 raucous Cornell supporters Friday night at Lynah Rink. The victory snapped the Crimson’s four-game winning streak in the bitter Ithaca-Cambridge rivalry. “It’s nice to see Riley score a couple of goals and relieve some of the pressure on him,” said head coach Mike Schafer ’86. “There’s no question he was pressing. I think any offensive player takes a lot of pride in wanting to score goals. He’s had his chances and tonight it was nice for him to get us a couple [goals].” The No. 18 Crimson (4-3-2, 4-3-2 ECAC Hockey) captured an early 1-0 advantage 5:41 into the contest, as sophomore left winger Michael Biega pilfered the puck away from junior netminder Ben Scrivens behind the net and deposited it inside the right post. Scrivens initially left the crease to make a play on the puck, which was dumped into the Cornell zone by freshman defenseman Peter Starrett, but he was unable to recover before Biega lit the lamp. It was Biega’s second tally of the season.

Standing in the middle of Section B as the final minutes ticked off Lynah’s scoreboard on both Friday and Saturday night, I felt a nostalgic electricity reverberating through the student sections that seeped its way around the rink. I imagined that Lynah Rink once bore witness to this contemporary anomaly every evening its famed and feared ice hockey team laced up their skates. Scenes of students shuffling on the wooden bleachers before 7 p.m., of chest painted diehards who brave the tundra-like conditions, of 60 minutes of nonstop enthusiasm from the Faithful and townies alike, and of a domination of our Hahvahd and Dartmouth rivals flooded my mind amid visions of seasons past.

Tonight and tomorrow, Lynah Rink will host what could be two of the most crucial home games for the Red this year. Tonight, the Red (2-0-2, 2-0-2 ECACH Hockey) will square off against the visiting Harvard Crimson (4-2-1, 4-2-1) in what will be the 129th meeting in this bitter historic rivalry. Tomorrow, a Dartmouth team (4-2-0, 4-1) that is tied for second in ECAC Hockey will come to Ithaca for a 7 p.m. matchup.

In its home opener, the men’s hockey team did not get off to the start that it had envisioned. Cornell went down 2-0 to the visiting Colgate Raiders, but scored two goals in a span of 24 seconds in the third period to square the game at 2-2, earning one point in the tie.

The passing of college hockey legend Ned Harkness brought up certain emotions in the Lynah Faithful. One of these may be respect for the consistency of the Cornell hockey tradition, largely established by Harkness himself.

In 2007-08, the Cornell defensive corps ranked second in ECAC Hockey, surrendering a scintillatingly-low 1.95 goals per contest. The Red also finished second in penalty killing opportunities, snuffing 85-of-97 (87.6 percent) short-handed situations. This season, the Red blue-liners will be anchored by senior co-alternate captain Jared Seminoff.