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A rare Tuesday afternoon ECAC contest with Brown provided men’s hockey with an opportunity to get back on track after a series of disappointing ties last weekend.
Instead, Cornell lost, 2-1, to the Bears in Providence. The Red went 0-6 on the power play and were shutout for the first 57 minutes against a Brown team that entered the contest allowing the seventh most goals per game in the country at 3.67.
The loss continued a recent trend of Cornell struggling against the ECAC’s worst teams. In its past five games, Cornell has lost to Princeton and Brown and only gained one point following a tie and a shootout loss against Dartmouth. All three of those teams are currently in the bottom four of the ECAC.
Cornell’s performance against Brown resembled its game against Dartmouth last Friday. In both of the contests, Cornell outshot its opponent but had trouble finding the back of the net.
Cornell notched 33 shots on Tuesday and 32 shots in its game against Dartmouth, scoring twice against Dartmouth and once against Brown.
After the Dartmouth game, junior forward Jack Malone said Cornell had “too many shots to only come away with two [goals].”
As it did against Dartmouth, Cornell struggled on the power play against Brown. Cornell scored once in 25 minutes on the power play against Dartmouth and went 0-6 on the power play against Brown.
Conversely, Brown got on the board on its second power play attempt. Late in the first period, Brown connected on a cross ice pass, allowing Jake Harris to zip a puck past freshman goaltender Ian Shane’s outstretched leg pad on a one-timer.
Brown held on to its 1-0 lead until the stretch of the third period, when it added an insurance goal. With 3:45 left in the contest, Justin Jallen received a lead pass with his back skate barely onside and slid the puck through Shane’s five-hole to put the hosts up 2-0.
The insurance tally proved to be necessary when Cornell got on the board about a minute later. Freshman forward Ondrej Psenicka scored his ninth goal of the year by knocking the puck past Brown’s Mathieu Caron after it bounced around in front of the net.
The goal, which brought the score to 2-1, put Cornell in reach of tying the game with just under three minutes to go.
Cornell pulled Shane for an extra attacker after the goal, but the Red did not find the equalizer. Cornell took eight shots in the final minute of the game, including three shots that were saved by Caron in a chaotic series during the final 11 seconds, but failed to tie the game.
Cornell has a home-and-home series with Colgate, another ECAC team with a losing record, coming up this weekend. The Red will try to turn things around starting Friday night in Hamilton, New York.