Men’s hockey departed Ithaca on Thursday ahead of a pair of games in North Country against ECAC foes St. Lawrence and Clarkson. The team, once again, will face the all-too-familiar battle with the injury bug, which has infected the Red since the season began. However, the coming weekend will pose a series of new challenges for Cornell.
Cornell’s already thin lineup will be even more depleted on Friday. Senior forward Kyle Penney, senior forward Jack O’Leary and sophomore defenseman Hoyt Stanley were given disqualifications after the Dartmouth game, which comes with an automatic one-game suspension.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the team had not been informed of further disciplinary action from the ECAC. However, the Red could be faced with a precarious situation, as video evidence from Saturday’s brawl has resurfaced on social media and depicts other Cornell players engaging in post-game fights.
After the Dartmouth game, Schafer suspected that he might be suspended — meaning he wouldn’t be behind the bench.
“I talked to the referee at the end. … He put his hands on one of our players, and I [thought] it was inappropriate, and I put my hands on him and asked [him] not to put his hands on our player,” Schafer said after the game. “So I’ll probably get suspended. … But I take full responsibility to keep our guys near the bench on what went on near the end of the game.”
Anything further will not be known until hours before the game, if at all — the ECAC is the only league in the NCAA that does not publicly disclose information about suspensions. Further disciplinary action from the league is dealt with internally.
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With or without its head coach, Cornell will have to ready itself for two crucial ECAC games. St. Lawrence (7-16-1, 3-8-1 ECAC) and Clarkson (14-8-2, 8-4-0 ECAC) differ greatly in the standings — the Saints sit last in the league while the Golden Knights hold the third-best record — but both pose equally daunting challenges.
In addition to the suspended skaters, Cornell is not expecting any new faces to return from injury. This means freshman forward Charlie Major, sophomore forward Luke Devlin and junior forwards Winter Wallace and Sean Donaldson are likely still sidelined for the time being.
“We’ll probably be at nine defensemen playing in the game and probably three of them playing up front, but we’ve been here before,” Schafer said. “I watched the amount of minutes that we’re getting on guys like [Jonathan] Castagna, Ryan Walsh, Dalton Bancroft and Sullivan Mack. I gotta pay a little more attention to how much I’m using them in the course of the game, especially on the Friday night game.”
Friday’s game against St. Lawrence — a rematch of last year’s ECAC Tournament championship game — should be a closer one than one might assume. Cornell’s depleted lineup aside, the Saints are coming off a win over then-ranked Clarkson and have additionally beaten Dartmouth on the road — something Cornell didn’t do.
Assuming no other suspensions were added or lengthened, Cornell should get a few critical pieces back. Saturday’s game against Clarkson should be one of the toughest tests yet for the Red, as the Golden Knights have amassed eight conference wins and boast one of the toughest atmospheres to play in.
Saturday will also mark something significant for one member of the Cornell coaching staff — associate head coach Casey Jones ’90 will make his return to Clarkson, a team he coached for 13 years before being hired by Cornell ahead of the 2024-2025 season.
Ahead of the matchup, Jones recalled the tough decision he had to make before he ultimately decided to join Schafer’s staff.
“Very few opportunities could have come up that would have made me make a tough decision to leave something that I was loyal to and felt good about. … I just thought [that] this was an opportunity for me that I couldn’t pass up,” Jones said. “I owe a lot to Clarkson. … It’s hard to become a head coach [from] an assistant coach in the business. It’s really hard, and they certainly afforded me that opportunity.”
After a commanding 6-1 start to conference play, the Golden Knights have gone 2-3 over the last five ECAC matchups. Clarkson has split its last three weekends of play, in each case winning the Friday game before dropping the Saturday matchup.
Six points would do wonders for a Cornell team desperately looking to play itself back into a top-four spot in the ECAC standings, a position that would secure the team a first-round bye and a home quarterfinal series.
“[Records] seem [to be] going right out the window. Everybody’s splitting right now, and it’s really, really close,” Schafer said.
Cornell will take on St. Lawrence on Friday at Appleton Arena in Canton, New York, before making the quick drive to Potsdam to take on Clarkson on Saturday. Puck drop for both games is slated for 7 p.m., and both games can be streamed live on ESPN+.