Four straight wins. A 2-2 mid-November stretch. The first winless ECAC weekend in over a season. Women’s hockey has looked dominant, listless, and confusing at various times during its first half of conference play.
But despite its ups and downs, the Red (10-6-1, 6-4-0 ECAC) still sit tied atop the Ivy League standings and fourth in ECAC Hockey heading into this weekend’s resumption of conference play. With the league shifting its championship weekend to Lake Placid and away from the highest seed’s campus, a top-four finish guarantees the same amount of home ice as a regular season championship.
“I think overall, in the first half, just from a record standpoint, we’re in pretty good shape,” said head coach Doug Derraugh ’91. “We need to clean up some things and change a few things to improve and get better, but it’s only halfway.”
For Derraugh, the change in location of championship weekend, alongside the fact that all 12 ECAC teams make the playoffs, means that the result of each game isn’t necessarily the most important outcome. Instead, being the best possible team in late February and March is key.
“Each game is obviously really important, but at the same time, more importantly, are you improving? Are you getting better as a team? Are you coming together as a team at the right time,” Derraugh said. “The second half is going to be about which team can generate consistency and be playing their best hockey at the most important time of the year.”
Consistency throughout the full 60 minutes of each game has been a struggle for the Red. In Cornell’s most recent weekend of conference play — 3-0 and 3-2 losses to Princeton and Quinnipiac respectively in early December — the Red conceded a pair of goals three minutes apart and a trio of goals within two minutes. In the combined 115 minutes of gametime outside of those short-defensive lapses, Cornell outscored its opponents 2-1.
Derraugh believes the key to his team regaining its early season (the Red began the year with seven consecutive wins) consistency begins in practice. And while the early winning streak may have caused a brief letdown in intensity, Cornell’s head coach can feel his team bouncing back.
“They have been practicing with a higher level of accountability, understanding the correlation between how you practice is going to equate to how you’re going to play,” Derraugh said. “I think they saw that in the first half, where … you get off to the hot start and maybe you think ‘this is, the way it’s going to be’ and maybe you don't quite practice with the same intensity or with the same standards.”
In a conference as tight as the ECAC this season, where no single team, or group of teams, has been able to separate themselves from the rest of the pack, smaller things like a high-effort practice or a miniscule strategy adjustment can be the difference between wins and losses.
Scouting the Golden Knights
Cornell will begin its first home weekend of 2026 facing off against Clarkson. The last time the Red and the Golden Knights faced off was last in the 2025 ECAC semifinals, one of the most memorable games in recent memory. Then-shophomore goaltender Annelies Bergmann made 54 saves in the four hour, 2-1, triple overtime win for the Red, its second-longest win in program history.
This year’s Clarkson team is likely to once again prove challenging for Cornell. The Golden Knights (13-6-2, 6-2-1 ECAC) boast Division I’s fifth best offense, seventh-ranked defense, and second-highest freshman point scorer in Sara Manness.
“They’re a really tough opponent, and they are a team that plays with consistency,” Derraugh said. “So it is a really tough matchup for us coming out of the break, and we’re looking forward to the challenge.”
Cornell trails Clarkson by 1.5 points in the ECAC standings despite having played one more game.
Scouting the Saints
While Clarkson is midway through an impressive season, St. Lawrence (another ECAC semifinalist last March) is in the midst of an uneven 2025-2026 campaign. While the Saints gave Princeton its lone conference loss, the Canton, New York, squad has already matched its 2024-2025 loss total of 12.
The main issue for St. Lawrence (7-12-2, 4-5-0 ECAC) has been its offense. The Saints are averaging just 1.7 goals per game, fifth-worst in the country, and have capitalized on just 16.4 percent of their power-play opportunities. In fact, special teams is an area that Cornell matches up particularly well with the Saints. Cornell’s fourth-in-the-nation power play should get plenty of good looks on net, with St. Lawrence’s penalty kill entering the weekend 12th-worst in the nation.
According to Derraugh, one challenge for the weekend could be the difference in playstyles between Cornell’s opponents.
“[St. Lawrence uses] a more aggressive fore checking style, more of a speed game. I guess you would say usually it’s more of a back and forth game,” Derraugh said. “And Clarkson is usually a more controlled kind of game.”
Lastly, Saturday’s matchup with St. Lawrence will mark the return of graduate transfer Alexa Davis ’25 to Lynah Rink. Davis tallied 15 points in 87 games during her first three years on East Hill, but appeared only once in her senior season. Since the Ivy League does not allow graduate students to play varsity sports, Davis was had to use her extra year of eligibility elsewhere. The Philadelphia native has appeared in all 21 games this season for the Saints, scoring three goals including the game winner over Princeton.
Cornell will host Clarkson Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. and St. Lawrence on Saturday at 3 p.m. Both games will be played at Lynah Rink and streamed live on 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.
