For the fifth time in program history, women’s hockey has made it to the final possible weekend of the season. After losing last season’s best player — 2024 Patty Kazmaier award-winner Izzy Daniel ’24 — and starting the season 1-3-1, Cornell has arrived on the biggest stage in college hockey: the Frozen Four.
On Friday night, No. 3 Cornell (25-4-5, 16-2-4 ECAC) will take on No. 2 Ohio State (28-7-3, 19-6-3 WCHA) in the first of two semifinal games. With a win, the Red would advance to Sunday’s national championship game.
The road to Minneapolis — the site of this season’s Frozen Four — has not been an easy one for Cornell. While the Red dominated conference play after its aforementioned rocky start, losing just twice all season to ECAC opponents, the postseason has been filled with nail-biters.
Three of Cornell’s five playoff contests have come down to a single goal. First, the Red scored twice in the game’s final 70 seconds to complete a sweep over Union in the ECAC quarterfinals on March 1. The next weekend, Cornell needed three overtimes to take down Clarkson, 2-1, before dispatching Colgate, 5-1, to secure the ECAC title the next day. In the NCAA tournament, the Red knocked off the University of Minnesota-Duluth, 1-0, in front of a record crowd at Lynah Rink to punch its ticket to the Frozen Four.
The key to the Red’s playoff success has been its defense. Cornell has given up just four goals through five games in the postseason, a feat sophomore goaltender Annelies Bergmann credits to her team’s close bond.
“I think we just have such a great dynamic between the D-corps and the goalies, and we're always communicating with each other,” Bergmann said on Thursday in Minneapolis. “I think that’s really what’s carried us through [as] each weekend [got] bigger and bigger, and I think our dynamic allows us to grow with that, which I think has been a key part of our success.”
Bergmann has been possibly the biggest star on the team this season, earning the ECAC Goaltender of the Year award and leading the nation in shutouts with 10. The Detroit native has led Cornell to be the second-best scoring defense in the nation, allowing just 1.4 goals per game.
On the other side of the ice, Cornell has thrived thanks to its depth offensively. Cornell leads the nation in players with a game-winning goal (14) and is tied with Minnesota for the lead in number of goal-scorers (18). In fact, the goal-scorer in Cornell’s biggest game of the season, the NCAA tournament regional final win over Minnesota-Duluth, was junior defender Alyssa Regalado, who had scored just a single goal all season up until that point.
Still, trying to find a balance between offense and defense against Ohio State will be a challenge.
“You’ve got to be solid defensively against Ohio State to give yourself a chance, but you’ve also got to score some goals,” said head coach Doug Derraugh ’91. “It’s managing the old risk versus reward and being smart and managing the puck well. It's something that we’ve done well throughout the entire playoffs. So, we just need to continue to do what we’ve been doing and I think we’ll be fine.”
In Cornell’s lone matchup with Ohio State earlier this season on Oct. 26, the Red did not hold up well. While Cornell trailed by just a single goal late in the second period, the Buckeyes scored three times in a 10-minute span to down the Red, 7-3. While the loss came in just Cornell’s fourth game of the season, for Derraugh there are still lessons to be learned.
“Ohio State’s got a lot of firepower, they’re physical, they’re a big challenge for us,” Derraugh said. “We’ve got to figure some things out and we'll definitely have to be better, but I do think our team has played better here in the second half [of the season] than we did in the first half.”
The challenge of matching up against Ohio State is obvious. The Buckeyes average the second-most goals per game in the nation (3.9) and are led by a dynamic duo of forwards in Jocelyn Amos (27 goals) and Joy Dunne (26 goals). To put those numbers in perspective, Cornell’s leading goal-scorer is freshman forward Lindzi Avar, who has 15.
However, the Buckeyes do show some cracks defensively. Ohio State gives up over half a goal more per game than Cornell does on average, takes the most penalty minutes in the nation and has a mediocre penalty kill (81.1 percent, ranking 24 out of 44). If Cornell can mostly contain the Buckeyes’ electric offense and net multiple early goals, the Red have a clear pathway to pull off the upset.
In the other semifinal matchup — where puck drop is set for 8:30 p.m. on Friday night — the Buckeyes are joined by two other Western Collegiate Hockey Association Teams in host Minnesota and tournament favorite Wisconsin. The Badgers seem nearly unstoppable, having lost just once this season (to Ohio State on Nov. 16), and boast all three Patty Kazmaier Award finalists. Minnesota, meanwhile, is also a force on the ice, and will have the loud support of a home crowd all weekend.
Despite the challenge of facing off against the best teams in the nation, Cornell feels ready.
“While it is a bigger stage, it's the same game,” said Bergmann. “Day in and day out, we traine[ed] for this. We [did] the reps. So I think that we feel prepared and we feel good.”
Puck drop for the NCAA semifinal matchup between Cornell and Ohio State is slated for 5 p.m. EST at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and will be streamed live on ESPN+. Sunday’s national championship is set for 4:30 p.m. and will be available on ESPNU and ESPN+.
Eli Fastiff is a senior editor on the 143rd editorial board and a member of the class of 2026 in the College of Arts and Sciences. You can follow him on X @Eli_Fastiff and reach him at efastiff@cornellsun.com.
