Colgate forward Isaiah Norlin skated over to the Lynah Rink student section, the remainder of his team soon joining him just in celebration beside the Cornell bench. The rest of the Red stood terribly still.
The three skaters on the ice for No. 9 men’s hockey looked at the puck, which Norlin had fired upstairs on freshman goaltender Alexis Cournoyer. Others looked at the scoreboard, reading 3-2 in favor of Colgate.
Many wondered how the game had slipped out of the Red’s grasp in the way that it did.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” said head coach Casey Jones ’90.
A tough pill to swallow, made all the tougher by the neck-and-neck race to the top of the ECAC Hockey standings. Earning just one point in an overtime loss to a middle-of-the-pack Colgate (11-14-3, 8-6-2 ECAC) team deals a severe blow to the Red’s chances at winning the Cleary Cup.
A tough pill to swallow for a sold-out crowd at Lynah Rink that left unhappy, a feeling few and far between considering the immaculate 11-1 record Cornell (17-5-1, 12-3-1 ECAC) boasted on home ice entering Saturday’s game.
But mostly, a tough pill to swallow considering Cornell had the game won, in the coaching staff’s eyes.
Junior forward Jake Kraft buried a puck into a gaping net with 3:40 left in the third period, giving Cornell a late 3-2 lead.
But freshman forward Chase Pirtle was in the crease, making contact with Colgate netminder Reid Dyck, and that was a no-go for the referees. The goal was immediately waved off for goaltender interference, but Cornell promptly challenged the play, insisting that the Raider defenseman pushed Pirtle in and did not allow him a path out.
Unfortunately for the Red, that wasn’t how the officials saw it. No-goal for Kraft was the call and to overtime the Red would go. Norlin took matters into his own hands soon thereafter.
“I mean, the [Colgate] kid’s got his stick right up underneath [Pirtle’s] gut and pushed him right into [the goaltender],” Jones said. “So I'm going to get clarification from the league, but I don't know. I don't know where he was supposed to go. I don't know.”
Digesting Saturday’s loss, there is no doubting the bad blood between Cornell and its upstate New York foe. It’s evident both in the vicious chants bellowing throughout Lynah Rink and in the box score — evident in the 45 penalty minutes between the two teams.
“I thought we lacked discipline in certain parts of the game,” Jones said. “It probably bit us tonight, losing the special teams battle because of our discipline. But [we] certainly had plenty of chances to score and didn't convert in our power play with some good looks.”
Colgate’s two goals in regulation came on the power play, hence Jones’ dissatisfaction with discipline. Those two scores came in the second period, two of the Raiders’ mere five shots on goal in the middle frame.
Both were shots from distance that Cornell’s penalty-killers failed to block. After Friday’s win, one of Jones’ qualms was his skaters' failure to clog up the shooting lanes.
“I don't think we did a good job of getting in shot lanes,” Jones said on Friday. “I didn't think we did a great job with that, letting some shots get through from the point.”
Same old story on Saturday.
The first Colgate goal — Norlin’s other goal apart from his game-winner — occurred at the 10:17 mark of the second period, after a bevy of Cornell penalties sent Colgate to the man-advantage.
At the time, three skaters were in the box for Cornell, the result of a post-whistle retaliation.
“For me, it's a disappointing way to get beat,” Jones said. “I think it's a little bit of self-inflicted wounds.”
Norlin’s tally tied up the game after Cornell took a 1-0 lead into the second period, courtesy of freshman forward Gio DiGiulian’s wrister that beat Dyck just 6:08 into the game. The goal had come on the power play, the Red’s only successful attempt on the man-advantage all night.
That includes the five-on-three Cornell earned in the second period, lasting 1:08 and elapsing while the game was still tied, 1-1.
“I thought we had good movement on our power play,” Jones said. “The five-on-three — you got to score on that. It's a killer when you don't score on a five-on-three.”
And a killer it was — Colgate scored its second goal of the game soon after Cornell’s two-man advantage expired, giving the Raiders a 2-1 lead with 2:32 to go in the second period.
The Red ultimately took six penalties — adding up to 23 minutes — in the second, including a five-minute major with just 1:18 to go. A boarding call on junior forward Jonathan Castagna was upgraded to a major penalty and a game misconduct after a review, marking the second straight game in which the Red has lost one of its players — crucial pieces down the middle, at that — to a game misconduct.
Cornell was already down its top-line center: junior forward Ryan Walsh — nabbed for a major cross-checking call the night prior — who was most likely suspended by the ECAC, the only Division I hockey conference that does not make suspension information publicly available.
Players had to step up with Walsh and Castagna — Cornell’s two Hobey Baker Award nominees — out of the lineup.
One of those players who did so was freshman forward Caton Ryan, who tied things up, 2-2, when he struck just 3:03 into the third period. Ryan pulled off a brilliant move, shimmying by the Colgate defender and finding a seam just beneath Dyck’s glove.
“There's a lot that I liked from that game. I thought our guys stepped up in the absence of some players,” Jones said. “We were missing the net on a lot of really good scoring chances that we had on our stick, and I thought we had enough chances to win that game.”
Cornell thought it had won the game, queuing Kraft’s scrubbed-off goal later in the third period. But circumstances out of the Red’s control would rob the team of a win.
“[It was a] frustrating weekend from an officiating standpoint, I'll be perfectly honest with you,” Jones said. “Really frustrating. I thought our guys deserved a better fate there tonight.”
But there was also a lot that Cornell could control that barred it from deserving that better fate, like the 25 penalty minutes it accumulated and all of the Grade A scoring chances missed. That won’t fly for Cornell as it embarks on a four-game slate away from Lynah Rink, including a date with No. 5 Quinnipiac in two weeks’ time.
“I think they were trying to get under our skin, and we didn't react properly in some areas,” Jones said. “We're gonna have to get better at that. In college hockey, it's one-and-done normally at this time of the year, and you certainly can't lose a game because of discipline.”
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.
