Check Monday's edition of The Cornell Daily Sun for additional coverage

Men's hockey 5, Dartmouth 1

Cornell opened its ECAC Hockey season with a convincing statement, piling on three third-period goals to seal the 5-1 victory in a chippy, physical game against Dartmouth. Forwards Blake Gallagher scored twice, Colin Greening had one goal and two assists; and goalie Ben Scrivens made 21 saves.

Cornell's special teams shone on the opening night of league play. The Red took advantage of 49 Dartmouth penalty minutes, going 4-of-7 on the power play. Cornell's penalty kill turned away all but one of Dartmouth's seven man-advantage opportunities, including a 5-on-3 in the second period.

Women's hockey 4, Union 0

Forget saving the best for last; face-off time for Cornell hockey fans' favorite game of the season is 7 p.m. Saturday. The No. 5 men's hockey team has a 2009-10 schedule littered with tough games against big-name hockey programs like Boston University and North Dakota, but those will be largely forgotten when Harvard takes the ice at Lynah Rink in the 131st installment of the rivalry.

After a disappointing loss in the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament last year, the men’s hockey team is looking ahead to build its momentum and confidence as it opens up its Ivy League season tonight.

Head coach Mike Schafer ’86 has set his goals high this season, and in particular for the Red’s offense. With 15 forwards on this year’s roster, Cornell is ready to reclaim its position in the NCAA tournament as it continues to create opportunities and move the puck better in its offensive zone.

“We have a lot of good forwards up front … they are well balanced. I’m very happy with the depth and we will get more scoring from more lines than we did last year,” Schafer said.

For a traditionally low-scoring Cornell team — a squad that last year averaged just 2.56 goals per game — a prolific and efficient power play could be the difference between victory and defeat. Indeed, 34 percent of the team’s goals last year came with the man advantage, indicating that the power-play unit was an integral part of the Red’s success.

This year’s team features many returning players from the 2008-09 power play lineup, including Riley and Brendon Nash, Colin Greening and Blake Gallagher. Head coach Mike Schafer ’86 saw those four players develop exceptional chemistry playing together last year, and expects that experience to translate into even more success this year.

With one goal and one assist in this last weekend’s game against Niagara, senior Colin Greening continues to demonstrate his swift skills with the puck and reiterate his passion for the sport. It was no doubt to men’s hockey head coach Mike Schafer ’86 to make Greening a returning captain for Cornell to help lead the team to a victorious season.

“He is such a physical beast on the ice; he overpowers kids. His strength is that he is, in school and in hockey, 100 percent all the time, both academically and athletically,” Schafer said.

Coming into Cornell as the seventh-round draft pick for the Ottawa Senators in 2005, Greening knew he had high expectations to fulfill. During his freshman season, he appeared in all 31 games and accumulated 11 goals as a rookie.

ECAC Hockey has a problem, though it’s more a problem for the teams themselves than for fans who want to see good hockey — the problem is that no team in the league is clearly awful. Some are on the upswing. Some are consistently strong programs. Some are legitimate national contenders — Cornell, Princeton and Yale made it to the NCAAs last year, and they all have a shot at making it even further in the tourney in 2010.

Brown Bears

2008-09: 5-23-5

3-15-4 ECAC Hockey (12th)

Correction Appended

After a preseason filled with talk of a balanced and prolific offensive attack, the men’s hockey team relied on some familiar faces for its offensive production as it managed to squeak out a 3-2 overtime victory over Niagara on Saturday. Senior captain Colin Greening netted a goal and an assist, junior Riley Nash tallied two assists, and junior Joe Devin potted the overtime winner in the Red’s first regular season game of the year.

The honeymoon is almost over, but in the meantime, Niagara is up next for the No. 6 men’s hockey team. The Purple Eagles are the last non-conference game until Thanksgiving on the Red’s schedule, and face-off is at 7 p.m. in Lynah Rink. Niagara is 0-3-1 this season, but pushed No. 5 Michigan in a close 3-2 loss on Oct. 22. Cornell split its two exhibition games last weekend, routing Windsor, 7-0, then falling to the U.S. Under-18 National Team, 3-2, on Saturday. Despite the loss to the youngsters on Saturday, the Red saw balanced scoring throughout the weekend, which head coach Mike Schafer ’86 identified as one of the keys to the upcoming season.

They were just exhibition games, but against the University of Windsor and the U.S. Under-18 National Team, the men’s hockey team got a glimpse of its future as well as a blast from the past. Among the six rookies making their Lynah Rink debuts on Friday night in Cornell’s 7-0 rout of Windsor was forward Chris Moulson, brother of Matt Moulson ’06, a former team captain and current left winger for the New York Islanders. Seeing Moulson on the back of a Red sweater might have given die-hard fans flashbacks to the Red’s last ECAC Hockey championship (in 2005), but another rookie, defenseman Nick D’Agostino, scored two goals against Windsor and took steps towards helping the Red back to the top of the league.

The football team won’t be the only Cornell team in the spotlight tomorrow for Homecoming. Returning alumni will also have the chance to get a sneak preview of the men’s hockey team at the squad’s Red-White scrimmage. The team didn’t play a Red-White game last year, the last one was in 2007.