This story is part of The Sun’s 2026 NCAA Hockey Tournament Supplement. To view the rest of the supplement, click here.
There are 63 Division I men’s hockey teams. Each year, only 16 make the NCAA Tournament.
The odds of repeatedly facing an opponent are slim.
But for two teams on opposite sides of the Mississippi, Cornell and Denver sure have seen a whole lot of one another.
“We definitely owe these guys,” said junior forward Jonathan Castagna. “I haven't forgotten what happened. A lot of guys haven't forgotten what happened two years ago now.”
Friday’s NCAA Tournament regional semifinal is the latest iteration of a longstanding battle between two college hockey blue bloods. Though the teams clashed regularly between the 1960s and 1980s before taking 30 years to meet again, Friday will mark the third time in four years that Cornell and Denver have clashed in the NCAA Tournament.
How competitive is their history? It speaks for itself — those previous two meetings in 2023 and 2024 delivered a win to each team. The overall series edge belongs to Denver, which boasts eight wins to Cornell’s six.
“It's not even just when we play Denver,” said senior forward Nick DeSantis. “It's one game elimination now, so any little mistake you make can cost you. And any little thing you do well can give you that extra jump over the other team.”
For DeSantis, it will be his third time facing Denver in the NCAA Tournament. He remembers how it felt when, in 2023, his squad shut out the Pioneers — then the defending national champions — in the regional semifinal in Manchester, New Hampshire.
But he also remembers the sting of what happened the following year, “to a tee.” DeSantis broke the ice in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the regional final against the Pioneers, but Denver scored twice to down the Red and, eventually, go on to win the national championship.
Castagna remembers it, too. A freshman at the time, he had a prime opportunity to even the score late in a one-goal game, but couldn’t quite get it to go.
“For Jonny, that was as hard a game [as] he's played in college,” Jones said.
Jones was not a part of those Cornell teams, but he knows a thing or two about exacting revenge. After falling in last year’s regional final to Boston University, a game that ended the 30-year head coaching career of Mike Schafer ’86, he is ready to lead the Red to a stage it has become quite familiar with in recent memory.
But the path to the Frozen Four, something so elusive for Cornell, runs through Colorado. Quite literally.
“Hopefully we can be the David versus Goliath here,” Castagna said.
Denver is the host of the Loveland, Colorado regional, meaning the Pioneers will be playing close to home — just 55 miles stand between the Denver campus and Blue Arena, where Cornell and Denver will take to the ice at 6 p.m. Friday.
It is expected that the Pioneers will have a loyal allegiance of fans, if Denver’s raucous crowd at the NCHC Tournament final is any indication.
“It's a home game for them,” Jones said. “You want to be in that kind of environment. We're looking forward to it.”
But that environment, no matter how unrelenting, is something Cornell won’t be intimidated by — it can’t be, if the Red wants to reach the regional final for the fourth year in a row, and if it wants to clinch a Frozen Four berth for the first time in 23 years.
“[Being a lower seed] forces you to want to be that villain and the disturber of the bracket, and I think that's what we do very well, and we do it most years,” Castagna said. “I'd like to think it's a benefit for us, and it forces you to have that mindset that it's going to take a hell of a lot to get this done.”
After all, Cornell is not just used to being the lower seed — for each of its last three regional semifinal wins, it has been a three-seed or a four-seed — but also to its fans being outnumbered come tournament time. Last year, the Lynah Faithful that made the trip to Toledo, Ohio, for the NCAA Tournament paled in comparison to top-seeded Michigan State’s near-home crowd.
Nevertheless, things ended pretty swimmingly for Cornell.
“I’d like to think we thrive in front of big crowds,” Castagna said. “There’s a different kind of game that happens when you're playing against a team in their own arena, and it's sold out, and everyone's yelling at you, and it feels like they're all on top of you and kind of being the villain in that building.”
But take the atmosphere and history out of it, and Denver still poses as tough a match as any team in the NCAA Tournament. The Pioneers — fresh off an NCHC Tournament title — are victors of nine straight games and are unbeaten in their last 13. Over that 13-game stretch, only twice did Denver allow more than three goals in a game.
Denver’s stout defensive play has been in large part due to the play of its freshman netminder, Johnny Hicks. Hicks won the starting job in January and has never lost in his young collegiate career, boasting a near-perfect 12-0-1 record.
“We want to make it murky around the net,” Jones said. “[Hicks] is on an unreal stretch. If he sees it, he's stopping it right now. So we're gonna have to make sure he doesn't see it.”
Hicks was named the Most Outstanding Player of the NCHC Tournament, but the championship game, despite his 41 saves, was perhaps Hicks’ most vulnerable outing. After amassing a 3-0 lead just 13:02 into the championship game, Denver allowed Minnesota-Duluth to climb all the way back, though the Pioneers eventually notched the game-winner in a second overtime period.
More than anything else, that game shows that Denver is human.
“[From the 2024 loss to Denver], we took away that they're beatable,” Castagna said. “I thought — and everyone else in that room after that game — thought that we deserved to win that one. So it hurt for sure, and we're not going to take these guys lightly at all. But it's reassurance that any night, anyone can beat anyone.”
Upsetting a team is hard under any circumstances. Add in a hostile crowd, a streaking hot goaltender, one of the nation’s best defensemen in Eric Pohlkamp and a longstanding team championship pedigree, and it gets that much harder.
But Cornell is careful not to blow up the proportions. Denver is as good as anyone in the NCAA Tournament, and the Red has an utmost respect for it.
But Cornell has been here before — it carries a quiet confidence that it can do it again.
“The pressure’s on them,” Jones said. “They’ve been one of the best teams all year. There's a little bit of pressure on them. … They're good team, [but] so are we, you know? We understand the urgency that’s there, and now your season’s on the line, yeah? Now there’s some urgency.”
“You don't want to be too confident. You don't want to be under confident,” Castagna said. “It’s better to just appreciate the situation that you're in and the chance that you have, and use that as the confidence, instead of relying on ego or any sort of boost in self confidence.”
Cornell and Denver will face off in the NCAA Tournament regional semifinal at Blue Arena in Loveland, Colorado, on Friday. Puck drop is slated for 6 p.m. and the game is available on ESPN+.
The winner of that semifinal will play the winner of the region’s other semifinal between Western Michigan — the defending national champion — and Minnesota State in the regional final on Sunday.
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.
