HAMILTON, N.Y. — Men’s hockey settled for a tie in the second night of its home-and-home series with Colgate on Saturday night.
The Red jumped out to a 3-0 lead early in the first period, but allowed four unanswered goals before equalizing late in the second and forcing overtime.
Senior forward Ben Berard got the Red on the board just over a minute into the game when he pounced on a rebound in the slot and shot it past Colgate’s Carter Gylander.
Cornell continued to apply pressure with long shifts in its offensive zone and extended their lead to 2-0 with 10:32 left in the first off a designed faceoff play. After an icing call on Colgate, junior forward Gabe Seger won the draw and the puck was collected by Berard, who found freshman forward Nick DeSantis in front of the net for the goal.
Less than four minutes later, senior forward Jack Malone collected a nifty drop pass from freshman forward Winter Wallace and went bar-down to give Cornell a 3-0 lead with just under seven minutes left in the first period.
Colgate ate away at the Red’s early lead. Colton Young scored for the Raiders with just under four minutes left and Nick Anderson got a shot through traffic and past sophomore goaltender Ian Shane with less than a second left in the period.
Shane made six saves on eight shots, and was replaced by freshman goaltender Remington Keopple to start the second period.
Keopple initially did not fare much better than Shane, as he gave up two goals in his first eight minutes of action. The first came to Ethan Manderville on a Colgate power play to even the score, and the second was Colton Young’s second of the game and it gave Colgate a 4-3 lead with 12 minutes left in the second period.
Cornell evened things up with four minutes left in the second when Malone scored his second of the night after he collected a rebound on junior forward Kyle Penney’s backhand try.
Neither team broke the deadlock in the third period, but not for a lack of action. Throughout the period, the Colgate student section pelted Keopple with sticks of “Big Red” gum that were given out to fans as part of a Colgate marketing promotion. The officials threatened to give the Raiders a bench minor penalty if the fans did not stop, but they never followed through. Keopple had to sweep the gum into his net throughout the period.
Instead of a Colgate penalty, Cornell had to kill two big penalties down the stretch. The Red killed sophomore forward Sullivan Mack’s tripping penalty eight minutes into the period without incident.
With 2:13 left in the game, freshman forward Dalton Bancroft was called for hooking. Senior defenseman Sebastian Dirven’s stick broke a few seconds into the penalty kill, and the Raiders pinned the Cornell penalty killers on a 90 second long defensive shift. Colgate fired shot after shot, but Keopple and the penalty killers prevented the Raiders from taking a lead. Finally, with 36 seconds left in regulation, Manderville tripped up senior forward Zach Tupker as he was trying to clear the zone.
The Colgate penalty sent the game back to even strength for just over 20 seconds until Bancroft got out of the box. Cornell did not score on its brief five-on-four, and the game went to overtime.
Cornell opened the overtime period with 80 seconds of a four-on-three power play, but despite long possessions in the offensive zone and a flurry of shots, the Red did not end the game. Neither team broke the deadlock, and the game ended in a tie.
Because it was a conference game, the two teams played a shootout for an extra point in the conference standings. Keopple made a series of saves, but Colgate took the shootout after seven rounds.
The tie ended a three game win streak by Cornell and was a somewhat concerning way to end the weekend after a shaky victory on Friday night.
Cornell struggled on the power play during the series and was not its defensively dominant self on Saturday night. Shane’s early exit also raises questions about the previously reliable sophomore goaltender. Shane has not seen more than 12 shots in his past four games, and his save percentage has dipped from .921 to .907 over his last six games. Keopple’s save percentage has creeped up to .852 after making 16 saves on 18 shots on Saturday.
Cornell returns to Lynah next weekend for the last time in the regular season to host Clarkson and St. Lawrence. The Red would have clinched a bye to the ECAC quarterfinals with a win on Saturday night, but will instead need one point over its next four games to lock up a top four seed.