Men’s hockey geared up for a Friday night matchup against Princeton just as it would for any other game.
But before Cornell defeated the Tigers, 6-2, in head coach Mike Schafer’s ’86 final game at Hobey Baker Memorial Rink, the team had endured a pretty difficult week.
On Monday, Cornell dropped out of the NCAA rankings for the first time since Dec. 12, 2022. In the latest iteration of the USCHO.com poll, Cornell received votes but fell outside the top 20. The team trailed even further back in Pairwise, sitting at 29th and almost entirely out of contention for an at-large bid into the NCAA tournament.
Then, the Red lost freshman forward Charlie Major to injury, the latest casualty to Cornell’s forward group. The injury forced Schafer to get creative with the lineup, ultimately dressing nine defensemen — two of whom played as forwards on the fourth line — including senior defenseman Jimmy Rayhill, making his collegiate debut.
The changes even came between the pipes: junior goaltender Remington Keopple earned his first start of the season six days removed from his perfect appearance in relief for senior goaltender Ian Shane. Keopple, entering Friday’s matchup, had stopped all 13 shots he’d faced this season in nearly 47 minutes of play.
Despite all the lineup changes, Cornell’s brand of hockey remained unchanged. For what seemed like the first time in months, Cornell (7-5-4, 4-3-2 ECAC) capitalized on its chances and scored a season-high six goals — including one on the power play — for its first regulation road win of the season.
Things seemed poised to crumble when Princeton (6-9-1, 3-7-1 ECAC) potted its first goal on its first attempt on net. 5:07 into the opening frame, Kai Greaves notched his first career goal as he waltzed into the Cornell defensive zone untouched and wristed a shot over the shoulder of Keopple.
Greaves’ tally was the 11th game in which the opposition scored first against the Red — a familiar occurrence for the Cornell squad.
What was different about this one, though, was the Red’s response
Less than two minutes after the Tigers’ goal, sophomore forward Ryan Walsh — in a good display of speed — broke through the Princeton forecheck and emerged one-on-none against Princeton goaltender Arthur Smith. Walsh roofed it over Smith’s glove for his team-leading eighth goal of the year.
From there, Cornell didn’t relent. The Tigers failed to get another shot on Keopple for another four minutes, and barely survived an onslaught of chances in Cornell’s offensive zone. Senior forward Kyler Kovich just barely missed a prime opportunity after a puck grazed the post.
Kovich later redeemed himself when he buried a deflection off of senior defenseman Michael Suda’s shot. Cornell took a 2-1 lead into the first intermission, its first lead after the opening period and first multi-goal first period since Nov. 30 against Quinnipiac at Madison Square Garden.
After a relatively quiet first 20 minutes for Keopple, the junior netminder made a handful of impressive saves to preserve his team’s lead. Less than 2:30 into the period, Keopple cleaned up a rebound after a strong net drive by the Tigers, just barely batting the puck away from the goal line with his blocker.
The Red used Keopple’s heroics as fuel for fire, as Cornell doubled its lead 3:16 into the middle frame. Junior forward Dalton Bancroft backhanded a rebound home to give Cornell a two-goal advantage, yet another example of Cornell getting back to its marquee scoring strategy — net-front physicality.
Before the second period concluded, and after an unsuccessful power play, the Red tacked on one more. Sophomore forward Jake Kraft picked up his third point of the night — his first three-point game of his career — when he deflected a shot from the point by sophomore defenseman Ben Robertson.
Cornell took the lead into the third, something it hadn’t done since its last bout with the Tigers on Nov. 23.
The Red killed a pair of penalties in the third period, but not before extending its lead to four goals. Sophomore forward Jonathan Castagna threw his head back in relief after his wicked wrist shot that beat Smith 3:50 into period three, breaking a six-game goal drought dating back to Nov. 22.
Firmly grasping a 5-1 advantage midway through the third, things got dicey when Kovich was sent off for five minutes due to a face-masking penalty, giving the Tigers an opportunity to chip away at the Red’s lead.
Cornell staved off the Tigers for nearly four minutes, but Princeton got one back on Brendan Wang’s hard wrister which beat Keopple through traffic. That would be all Princeton generated on the man advantage and in the game, and Cornell even added a power play goal of its own with 3:56 left in the game — Bancroft’s second of the game took a weird bounce off a Tiger skate to restore the three-goal lead.
As the buzzer sounded in Princeton, New Jersey, the Red swarmed Keopple, whose 23 saves earned Cornell three ECAC points that will be crucial as the team looks to secure a top-four seed and home ice for the ECAC playoffs.
Cornell will look to gain three more points as it takes on No. 16 Quinnipiac on Saturday night for the third and final time this regular season. Puck drop is slated for 7 p.m. in Hamden, Connecticut.