For the third consecutive season, women’s hockey is playing on championship weekend — home of the ECAC Hockey tournament’s semifinals and final. Two seasons ago, the Red’s bid for a fifth ECAC title ended in disappointment at Class of 1965 Arena. In March 2025, Cornell avenged its loss to Colgate from the previous season, capturing the conference title in front of a raucous Lynah Rink crowd.
These postseason experiences — both the wins and the losses — have primed No. 11 Cornell (20-10-2, 14-7-1) for playoff success.
While the Red is the lowest-ranked team arriving in Lake Placid, New York, its senior class’ 16 games worth of playoff experience is tied with Quinnipiac for the most out of the remaining four teams. And while Cornell played its way to the Frozen Four last season, No. 8 Quinnipiac and No. 7 Yale have not appeared in the NCAA tournament since the 2022-2023 season. No. 9 Princeton has not qualified since 2020.
“Our veteran players have been in this tournament a number of times and have experienced both losses and wins in this tournament, and I think they understand what it takes now to have success,” said head coach Doug Derraugh ’91. “There’s no substitute for experience.”
Last weekend against the Raiders, the Red showed its playoff mettle in the two-game sweep of Colgate. Cornell found six goals from four different skaters, allowed three goals across the weekend against a Colgate offense averaging 2.9 per game and committed seven penalties to the Raiders’ 11.
“To have any success in this tournament going forward, it’s going to have to be sort of the same recipe for us,” Derraugh said. “We’ve got to get balanced scoring, we’ve got to be strong defensively, we’ve got to be disciplined and then [we’ve] got to win the special teams battle as well.”
“I think we did a lot of that last weekend, and that's going to have to continue for us to have any chance this weekend,” Derraugh added.
When Cornell faced Yale — the Red’s opponent in Friday’s semifinal — in January, Derraugh’s squad failed to find its winning formula. At Ingalls Rink, Cornell took four first-period penalties and conceded a pair of power-play goals, while going 0-for-4 with the skater advantage in a 3-1 loss.
“It’s playoff hockey, and you’ve got to be physical and be ready for that, but you also got to be really disciplined and keep your emotions in check and make sure that you're not putting yourselves in the penalty box early on in the game,” Derraugh said.
Otherwise, the keys for Cornell remain largely the same from the quarterfinals.
“You’ve got to find ways to score goals. Your special teams have to be good, and [you have to] defend well and get good goaltending,” Derraugh said. “Those are some of the things that happened for us last weekend, and then those things have to happen again this weekend.”
Against Colgate, the Red’s goaltending advantage played a big part in the series win. Junior goaltender Annelies Bergmann was excellent in both games, saving 55 of the 58 shots she faced.
Against Yale (24-8-0, 16-6-0 ECAC), Cornell is unlikely to have as large an advantage in net. When the calendar flipped to 2026, the Bulldogs made a change in net, swapping in freshman Samson Frey for junior Anna Phillips.
Frey went on a tear in January and February, posting a 13-1 record en route to All-ECAC Rookie Team honors. The Northport, New York native was in net for the Bulldogs’ win over Cornell, making 33 saves. Frey’s impressive play catapulted Yale to the top of the ECAC regular season standings and is a leading factor in why the Bulldogs have won 16 of their last 17 games.
However, in Yale’s sweep of Union in the quarterfinals, Phillips received the nod. The upperclassman was the Bulldogs’ netminder in Cornell’s 3-0 win over Yale on Oct. 31.
If the Red wins on Friday, it will face the winner of Princeton and Quinnipiac’s semifinal bout Saturday afternoon. Cornell split the regular season series with the Tigers — thumping them 6-1 in late January and falling 3-2 at home in December — and was swept by the Bobcats.
While Yale, Quinnipiac and Princeton can all receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament even with a loss this weekend, Cornell’s lone route to playing for a national championship is winning the ECAC title.
Friday’s semifinal against Yale is for 4 p.m. at Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, with Quinnipiac and Princeton squaring off at 7 p.m. Saturday’s championship game will begin at 5 p.m., and all three games will be streamed 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.
