This story has been updated.
NEW HAVEN, C.T. — Before men’s hockey headed east for two critical Ivy League matchups, it had scored a combined 10 goals in its last five games.
It took only two games in 24 hours for the Red to match that.
Aided by two separate two-goal performances, Cornell cruised to a 5-3 win over Yale on Saturday, earning its first clean ECAC sweep in its third-to-last weekend of play.
“[Yale] is a tough place to win. … It’s a great few points for us,” said head coach Mike Schafer ’86.
Sophomore forward Ryan Walsh netted two goals and three points — his second consecutive three-point game — while junior forward Dalton Bancroft also posted a two-goal performance.
“Obviously it’s great to get a sweep. [It was] pretty convincing this weekend, and it’s great for us to build some confidence going into playoffs,” Bancroft said. “We’re kind of getting our momentum built here, and we know the special group we have.”
Though it took longer than the seven seconds it took the Red to scores against Yale on Nov. 8, Cornell got an early lead.
Fresh off his stellar performance against Brown, Walsh collected a pass from senior forward Ondrej Psenicka and ripped it past Yale’s Noah Pak 3:34 into the contest. The puck deflected off of Pak’s glove and into the net.
Yale’s sophomore goaltender Jack Stark, who had started the last two contests between Yale (6-17-2, 5-11-2 ECAC) and Cornell (11-8-6, 8-6-4 ECAC), did not dress on Saturday, leaving the crease for Pak. Pak was pulled after allowing four goals on 15 shots, while senior goaltender Ian Shane finished the game with 23 saves on 26 shots.
Playing confidently with the lead once again, the Red drew the game’s first penalty as Yale’s Kieran O’Hearn was sent off for tripping 2:52 after Walsh’s tally.
Paired against the worst penalty kill in the NCAA, It was only a matter of time before the power play cashed in — Bancroft cleaned up a loose puck from a Walsh shot and beat Pak on the far side with his backhand. The goal ended a drought for a man-advantage unit that had been unsuccessful in its last 10 attempts.
“[We got] a dirty goal –– that’s one we haven’t gotten in awhile,” Bancroft said. “We need the power play to get going to be successful in playoffs, so hopefully that continues.”
Minutes after a strong penalty kill, Cornell’s power play got a second try late in the period, and the Red held the puck in the offensive zone for nearly the entire duration of the penalty, but the 2-0 score would ultimately hold as the team’s skated for their respective locker rooms.
What the teams did not know was the five-goal second period that would be in store.
As quickly as Cornell amassed its lead, it lost it. 1:56 into the second period, the score was tied at 2-2. First it was David Chen, who deflected a centering pass from O’Hearn just 37 seconds after puck drop. Then Donovan Frias lit the lamp with a hard wrister that sailed past Shane, knotting the score.
Desperate to restore the lead, Cornell attacked the Yale offensive zone, putting pressure on Pak and the rest of the d-corps.
Cornell found the third goal it was looking for when Bancroft cleaned up a rebound from sophomore defenseman Hoyt Stanley’s shot, quickly burying it through the five-hole of Pak.
“We’ve kind of had some bad luck earlier in the season where some things might not have been going in,” Bancroft said. “I think we were working so hard and we were playing physical. … We created our own luck tonight and the pucks just happened to go in.”
1:38 later, Cornell once again led by two. Pak was pulled after allowing a fourth goal, which came via a sophomore forward Jake Kraft snapshot from the right wing. The goal, marking Kraft’s seventh of the year, was thanks to a lucky bounce off the boards that found Kraft breaking towards the net all alone.
After four goals were scored between the two squads in a six-minute span, the Red and the Bulldogs got a brief five-minute break from scoring.
But Cornell resumed things before the halfway mark of the period. It was Walsh once again, collecting his fourth goal of the weekend by batting a puck mid-air into the net. The Walsh tally would cap off the wild middle frame, marking five goals in an 11:33 span.
“I told our guys I was really proud of the way we bounced back [through] adversity, came back and scored the three quick goals in the second period,” Schafer said.
Both team’s caught their breath in the third period, as only one team found the back of the net in the final frame. Yale ultimately crept up on Cornell in shots, finishing the game with a 26-22 edge, and beat Shane with just three seconds left in the game to make it a 5-3 win for Cornell.
The victory secures six much-needed points for the Red as it battles through a tight race to secure a first-round bye for the ECAC playoffs. Out of town, two opponents ahead of Cornell in the standings lost on Friday, with Colgate losing to Brown in regulation and Dartmouth earning just one point in an overtime loss to St. Lawrence.
“I haven’t looked at the standings for a couple weeks now, I have no idea where [we are]. It doesn’t really matter, it’s more about how we’re playing,” Schafer said. “ I feel like we took a really good step to get back to the kind of hockey we need to play.”
Cornell will be back in action next weekend as it will host Clarkson on Friday and St. Lawrence on Saturday for its final home weekend of the regular season. Puck drop for Friday’s game is slated for 7 p.m. and 6 p.m. for Saturday’s contest.
Jane McNally is a senior editor on the 143rd editorial board and was the sports editor on the 142nd editorial board. She is a member of the class of 2026 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. You can follow her on X @JaneMcNally_ and reach her at jmcnally@cornellsun.com.
