The last time men’s hockey played in a do-or-die game in the ECAC playoffs was March 23, 2024 — nearly one year ago.
It came not at Lynah Rink but somewhere a little further north, with history and excellence inscribed along the walls and hanging in the rafters. It ended with 28 players tossing their gloves in the air, hollering in front of a sea of red before being handed the coveted Whitelaw Cup.
Cornell won its last do-or-die game, and it came in the ECAC title game last season. The Red defeated St. Lawrence in Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, New York, ending a 14-year title drought.
This year, Cornell is tasked with yet another do-or-die playoff game, only this time it’s coming a couple weeks earlier than expected. It is embracing a common mentality for lower seeds in sports.
“[We need to] just keep that underdog mentality right now,” said senior defenseman Hank Kempf. “Roll into the playoffs with that.”
Cornell enters this year’s ECAC playoffs as the defending champion. But also as the sixth seed.
“Just lay it all on the line,” said associate head coach Casey Jones ’90. “It's that time of the year.”
Last week’s 4-1 loss to Union barred the Red from finishing within the top-four, forcing them to play in the one-game opening round. Cornell will host Yale, the 11th seed.
Although the ECAC playoff format was changed ahead of the 2022-2023 season — changing the first round from a best-of-three series to a one-game, do-or-die contest — Cornell has finished within the top four in each of the last two seasons, bypassing it straight into the best-of-three quarterfinals in both 2023 and 2024.
But the Red certainly has experience in do-or-die moments. Take Lake Placid last year, the night before it clinched the championship, storming back from a 3-1 deficit against Dartmouth and notching five third-period goals to punch its ticket to the title match.
“We've never played this early in the playoffs in a one-game do-or-die, but we have later in the playoffs. So that's nothing new to us,” Kempf said. “Off weekends are great, but at the same time, you're taking 14 days off without a game. So I think we [have] to take advantage of that.”
Jones also boasts ample experience coaching in do-or-die moments. Since the playoff format change, Jones’ Clarkson teams made two straight appearances in the opening round, defeating Brown in 2023 but falling to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2024.
“It's like anything else — you better be prepared to handle any type of adversity coming at you,” Jones said. “[There] might be no penalties, it might be a high-volume penalty game. [There] might be a bad bounce or something. There's a lot that goes into that one game.”
Anything can happen in a one-game playoff contest. Cornell has split its season series against Yale, falling in a shootout on Nov. 8 before cruising to a 5-3 victory over the Bulldogs in New Haven, Connecticut on Feb. 15.
The Red is less focused on defending its title, and more so on sticking to its gameplan.
“If you get focused on the end goal, you get yourself caught, because then you get nervous, and you don't play as free as you need to play,” Jones said. “We just [have] to focus on what we have to do and how we have to play.”
For Jones, it’ll be his third straight first-round appearance behind the bench. It is unclear whether head coach Mike Schafer ’86 will be joining him — Schafer was hit in the head by a puck in the second period of the Union game last weekend and returned to Ithaca to rest the next day. In what would be Schafer’s final game at Lynah Rink, he is “questionable” to coach in it.
Still, no matter who is calling the shifts, the focus is on Yale.
“It's gonna be a game where we just have to play to our identity. We just gotta get above them. Really just do the things that makes Cornell hockey, Cornell hockey,” Kempf said. “Forecheck, sound defense, possess the puck. These are the things that always give us success.”
For Kempf, he — along with his nine fellow senior classmates — is also readying for one final game at Lynah Rink.
“It sucks,” Kempf said. “[I am] definitely gonna have a moment or so to look around and enjoy it. But it's also [a] really important game, so it's gonna be all business.”
Cornell will host Yale at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Lynah Rink, although that time could be pushed later depending on the ECAC women’s championship game taking place at Lynah Rink earlier that day. All will be streamed live on ESPN+.
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.
