Chicago looms. It is not how the Lynah Faithful or Cornell hockey dreamt of it. The Red slumbers now until the first face-off in late October. The Faithful will not bring new levels of madness to that hallowed barn on Madison. Jeff Kubiak will not lead his boys home.

Another wrinkle in the story needs to be smoothed before face-off at 6:00 pm on April 6, 2017. Harvard made it to the Frozen Four Semifinal. What are the Lynah Faithful to do?

This contributor has an unorthodox suggestion: Consider cheering for Cornell's nemesis.

Why, you may ask. Does not the success of Harvard undercut the esteem of Cornell hockey? The answer is decidedly "no," in this writer's mind. Cornell and Harvard are so intimately intertwined that the success of one serves to bolster the other internally and externally. The two are inseparable. In hockey, neither would be a shadow of itself if not for the other. The same can be said of the institutions that these iconic hockey programs represent.

Like a pencil sharpener before a class, Cornell and Harvard whittle away needless excess and whet each other into finer, purer versions of themselves. Cornell's success drives Harvard. Harvard's accolades inspire Cornell.

Cornell University seeks to perfect upon the model that Harvard University pioneered. Harvard University responds with curricular and institutional changes. The complexion and wiles of Harvard would be very different were it not through the passive and active goading of Cornell. The founders of Cornell University and Cornellians always have aimed high. It is why from before the University's founding, Andrew Dickson White and Ezra Cornell set their sights on equaling and surpassing Harvard to become America's Oxford.

This is an intractable clash that grates generationally. It plays out on the ice as well as it does in the ether of academia. Harvard was the dominant hockey power of the Intercollegiate Hockey Association. Its reign lasted but two seasons of Cornell's gaining sanction from that league. The carnelian and white took the Crimson's crowd for their own in 1911. Harvard responded over the course of the next few seasons with revolutionizing hockey with the addition of the line change to combat the Red's superior conditioning and implementation of defensive systems.

Cornell and Harvard make each other better. Their essences are so close that they clash. There is much abrasion along the boundary. Carnelian and Crimson forever clash.

However, there need not be resentment or jealousy. Simply, if Harvard surpasses Cornell ever so briefly, the task falls to Cornell simply to reverse that gap once more. This is true in hockey as it is in all things. There need not be insecurity about Harvard's success this weekend, whatever form that it may take.

Harvard's triumphs mean only that Cornell needs to respond. Unless you have little faith in Cornell hockey to rebut whatever statement that the Crimson make this weekend, you need not shy away from any impulses to feel but a twinge of pride in the success of a pitted rival. Feel not insecurity because then you become no better than Yalies. Cornellians are more.

Cornell's goal is never to tie Harvard. It is to surpass Harvard. If Harvard raises the bar to equal or surpass Cornell, then the Red will find a way to vault over it.

This contributor has great faith in Coach Schafer and Associate Head Coach Ben Syer to build a contender that in the not-too-distant future will know success on the stage onto which the Crimson has played itself. There is no reason to doubt them. This season's character-driven team laid the groundwork for modern greatness in the coming seasons.

Coach Schafer reiterated throughout the season that it was the model of sacrifice of Quinnipiac's team last season, the first loser of the 2016 Frozen Four, in not taking off any shifts and block shots that stood as a lesson for his team's run to the 2017 ECAC Hockey Final. Imagine the lecture that the stick breaker himself will deliver after this run from his alma mater's nemesis.

Conference and national achievements will come. They will come all the faster if Cornell is challenged to equal the level of the Crimson's success. Harvard has narrowed its deficit relative to the Red's total to two Whitelaw Cups over the last three seasons. Cornell returned to its conference final this season for the first time in six years. Further success from the Cantabs will motivate Cornell's hockey program and stir from slumber any moribund backing in Teagle Hall.

It is hard not to root for a team that cares so much about beating Cornell that Lewis Zerter-Gossage found it in himself to score over one-fifth of his career goals in one outing against the Red to guarantee success for his program. Then, there is Ryan Donato. The legacy born into Harvard hockey and its associated lore. He is one of the most dynamic players in the nation to watch. This writer's opinion on the topic are well known. However, the prospects of mere ties to Cornell make him visibly weep and physically shake. Imagine what a loss to the Red would do. Sadly, Cornell has not exacted such a result while he has played in Cambridge. Harvard needs someone in the stands because its release of its allotted tickets proves that it certainly has not enough fans.

The vitriol-tinged respect of the Cornell-Harvard series will seep from the ice on Thursday and, maybe, Saturday. Why should the Red not tacitly accept or root for a result that would force it to become better?

The words of a Harvard alumnus come to mind when this contributor considers his feelings toward the Crimson playing in the 2017 Frozen Four Semifinal. They reflect some shared values between the universities. Why does he want to see Harvard be successful? The answer is because the iron of Harvard will temper the carnelian ore on East Hill. This writer wants Cornell to have to equal Harvard's run from this season. Or, simply, "[w]e choose to...do [these] things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept...and one we intend to win."

There is dignity in defeating the Crimson. Victor Creed famously reserved the right to end Logan's torment. Sabretooth denied it to all others. Why should anyone else have the privilege of ending Harvard if Cornell could not?

So, yes, as the Frozen Four is but hours away, this contributor for Where Angels Fear to Tread finds himself hoping that Harvard will do something special. The Crimson has not done that yet. It has made 12 previous Frozen Fours and emerged with but one modern title. His hope is not that Harvard is successful for itself, but for what it will do for his alma mater.

​Remember, reader, the dynamic of nemeses is exemplified in the axiom that "[i]f [a nemesis] died, you would attend his funeral and--privately--you might shed a tear over his passing." This writer may wish for one result. If the alternative happens, the Crimson can trust him, that Cornell will be more than present for the funeral in the town of Topher Scott.

​Eras define all things. Ideally, as Frank Costello quips in The Departed, leaders try to make their environments a product of them. Often, however, something’s epoch limits the latitude of even the greatest of people. This reality is as true in sports as it is in business, academia, law, politics, or life. Athletes shape their eras, but their times provide the studio, raw materials, and accoutrements.
 
One example springs to this writer’s mind. It is one that has jumbled around in his head for some time. It is telling in how it reveals one of this contributor’s athletic pastimes and passions beyond his life among the Lynah Faithful.
 
Greatness is not known independent of time. Who was the greatest cyclist of the late 1990s and early 2000s if one excludes ex post punishments? Was it Jan Ullrich or Lance Armstrong? Armstrong won seven Tours de France on the roads of Europe. Ullrich won the Le Tour in 1997, finished second to Armstrong three other times, and fell third to the American’s first on one other occasion. The German had one other second-place finish that the Texan did not exact.
 
Reader, if you do not know, five wins in the Tour de France is the gold standard for the legends of that most celebrated of the Grand Tours. Armstrong is the only rider to have worn the yellow jersey on the last day of the race more times. It could have been Ullrich. It was Jan Ullrich, not Armstrong who was suffering from cancer in 1996 through 1998, who was rumored as the one likely to win more than five Tours. Armstrong’s return prevented that.
 
Removal of Armstrong alone conceivably would give Ullrich five earned victories. One finds it tempting to assume that German with a penchant for off-season debauchery would have won six Tours but for Armstrong. It never will be. The era of Armstrong defines and throttles Ullrich’s legacy through no fault of his own.
 
Both were two of the best cyclists ever. They competed mightily. However, one will be remembered (now, for more reasons than initially thought). One will not.
 
This reader watching the resurrection of a dormant Harvard program after the arrival of Paul Pearl has wondered in this era of the Cornell-Harvard rivalry: Who is Armstrong and who is Ullrich? Cornell clearly is building toward something big. The tales of the recruiting trail foretell that. However, is Harvard building toward something bigger?
 
The Red may prove that it is superior to Crimson. That possibility is weeks in build-up. Let’s live now.

​Cornell hockey is nothing if not the product of its era. It has found ways to climb to the pinnacle of its sport in eras when defense dominates, offense controls, and even when teams played seven a side. This team seeks to add to that legacy.
 
To the sincerest chagrin of this contributor, college hockey is in the vicious throes of the at-large bid victor. Union is the only program since Where Angels Fear to Tread launched to have won the national title in the traditional way. Yale lost twice in championship weekend. Providence got swept at home. North Dakota lost and tied before it strung together four wins. The Dutchmen alone won their way into the Frozen-Four field.
 
Conference titles should matter. Conference titles do matter. However, only one of the last four national champions lifted conference-sponsored silver before it hoisted NCAA-sanctioned lacquer. This writer ventures that Coach Schafer has noticed this trend. He has built this team for this type of four-game run.
 
Success in a conference tournament bears little correlation to success in the tournament that culminates in the Frozen Four. Half of the champions of the Frozen Four have failed to win their conference’s top prize since the NCAA adopted its current balanced four-round format in 2003. Only four teams not named Boston College have won in this current era with winning their conference tournament.
 
The triumphs of fourth-seeded Yale and Providence invite the assumption that this trend will grow only starker.
 
This team all season has been focused upon getting to the Frozen-Four tournament through whatever means that it can. Coach Schafer and its members know that this is the formula that has served well recent national champions. A team need not win its conference tournament to prove that it is the best in the nation in this era. It need only have an account full enough to buy a ticket to the dance. Cornell was not overdrawn this season.
 
Like Armstrong and Ullrich, Cornell does not choose its era. It just has to win in it.
 
Now, it is time for Cornell to make good on this timely plan in the ways that Denver, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Duluth, Yale, Providence, and North Dakota have.

​Cycling, like all endurance sports, is an exercise in divided focus. The easiest way to pass the time and ride true is to focus upon the horizon, the closest thing to the endpoint that one can see. If a rider does this for too long, he will find himself rubbing the tire of someone ahead of him and causing a wreck. Or, simply, one may find their front tire in a pothole while grimacing into the sunlight trying to see the flamme rouge.
 
The River Hawks of Lowell are more than a pothole. They may in fact be more like the Category 2 climbs that thin the pack on an expectedly mundane stage. Sure, they never would be declared hors catégoire like…on second thought, do not even think about the other side of the bracket. Norm Bazin and Lowell are nothing to overlook.
 
The River Hawks never played in ECAC Hockey despite their winning three of the last five traitor’s trophies in the Hockey East Division. Aficionados of ECAC Hockey might not know this without engaging in a bit of research, but that means Lowell is now more decorated in the East’s other conference than is New Hampshire.
 
New Hampshire, now there is a program that imbues fear and disdain in the hearts of generations of the Lynah Faithful. The River Hawks have won their conference now more times than have the Wildcats. Cornell cannot afford to allow Lowell to gain similar footing in the national tournament against it as has the host of the Northeast Regional.
 
This is the fourth time that Norm Bazin has led Lowell into the Frozen-Four field. Three of those four tournament appearances ended with the River Hawks bowing to a program from ECAC Hockey. There will be no amount of underestimation in the opposing team’s locker room. Norm Bazin never has lost in the Frozen Four First Round.
 
Bazin has a perfect record in “the first game” not because of luck of the draw. Sure, his River Hawks have beaten titleless Miami, Minnesota State, and New Hampshire. They have slain a Frozen-Four blue blood in Wisconsin.
 
Fans of the designed haves of Hockey East often malign Norm Bazin’s system as one that presupposes that a game can be won 0-0. They often say that watching paint dry would be more exhilarating. Generally, Lowell’s approach is viewed as a flattened, less creative version of the scheme for which Coach Schafer is known.
 
Lowell has not had to win many games 0-0 lately. The River Hawks soared scoring four or more goals in three of its four victories en route to a Hockey East championship. It has averaged outscoring opponents by 3.25 goals per game over that run. This satellite school on the ice need not orbit anything It brings its own gravity to bear.
 
So, instead of a team that seeks to win 0-0, the Lynah Faithful should look at Lowell and see a disharmonious union of the elements that make Cornell and Union such dangerous teams this season. Lowell, like Union, will not defeat itself. Lowell, like Cornell, brings a balanced offense that relies on no line for its survival than others.
 
The River Hawks are neither as sound as the Dutchmen nor as balanced as the Red. The weakness of Lowell’s backside on the power play was on full display against Notre Dame and Boston College at the TD Garden. Only Boston College converted, but it was apparent why Lowell has the ignominious distinction of allowing the third-greatest number of short-handed goals this season. Alex Rauter or Mitch Vanderlaan may crack the history books if either can spring for a shortie in Manchester.
 
Lowell exhibited sloppy play in the neutral zone against Boston College. Jerry York’s Eagles only made good on those mistakes enough to fall one goal shy of the ospreys. War is always built for wars of attrition in the neutral zone. The Red’s comfort in such battles as this game will be may give it a catalyst to precipitate victory.
 
The balance of Lowell’s offense still sees its top line of C.J. Smith, Joe Gambardella, and John Edwardh produce 40.3% of the team’s goal scoring. Its contribution was relatively consistent over the Hockey East tournament. Freshman Colin O’Neill found his form in the playoffs and doubled his regular-season production in just five games.
 
The River Hawks have versatile weapons. They have weaknesses that Coach Schafer and his team can exploit on the ice of Manchester. Those are not numerous. The Cornell team that played in Lake Placid will win this game.
 
The question remains if that team is the one that laces its skates on Saturday morning. Cornell dominated a team sounder than Lowell in Union in the 2017 ECAC Hockey Semifinal like few teams in the nation can. The Red was relentless. It never saw a puck that it did not want. It never doubted the prospect of a rebound and bore down to finish through when one emerged. Beau Starrett was the hero of that story. Cornell’s power play was dynamic.
 
Cornell played no differently on Saturday. The difference largely was a product of luck. Luck is not an excuse from failure. It is one from disappointment. The Red did almost everything right. It was not rewarded for it. The difference between the Schafemen’s 4-1 dismantling of the Dutchmen and 4-1 humbling to the Crimson was misfortune. Ted Donato conceded that Cornell had his talented Harvard squad “on the ropes” for much of the game.
 
The car just came off the rails last weekend. It is time to get in line for the next ride.
 
The River Hawks like to pounce early. Cornell will need to weather that storm or, better, bring its wrath to Tyler Wall’s doorstop early. Lowell scored within the first half of the first period in its last three wins. It took only 66 seconds to best Boston College. The Eagles gave the River Hawks all that they could handle.
 
A disallowed goal went in Lowell’s favor. Boston College still got within one when Lowell nursed a two-goal lead in a defensive shell. For those who fancy outmoded metrics, the team rated 14th in the Pairwise Ranking took Norm Bazin’s Lowell to the brink. What can the 11th-rated team do to them?
 
Focus and determination appear like anger to some. Anger can be distracting. Cornell needs to be ready Saturday.
 
Whether it is the usual suspects of Anthony Angello, Jeff Kubiak, Mitch Vanderlaan, and Trevor Yates, those more infrequent contributors who rise to Cornell’s generational call for playoff glory like Noah Bauld and Eric Freschi, those whose name the Lynah Faithful cannot wait to yell in this postseason like those of Matt Buckles and Alex Rauter, or the throngs of Lynah Faithful harassing Norm, his River Hawks, and his misnomer of a netminder, everyone who bleeds carnelian this time of year must give everything to start this four-game season with a win.

​Cornell may have the bluest of blood in the Northeast Regional. Its nobility is not distinct. The other prong in the regional sees the 12th-most dominant post-season program in college hockey in the Golden Gophers of Minnesota.
 
Match-ups between Minnesota and the fourth-most dominant playoff program in college hockey, Cornell, are unique. No, not literally, but very close. The two programs have met only twice in their storied histories.
 
Cornell and Minnesota were the best teams in the nation regularly during the 2000s. The 2002-03 season set the two diametric styles and histories on a collision course. The final conflict never happened.
 
The one time that the Red tangled with maroon and gold was in the 2005 Frozen Four Quarterfinal. Cornell had the privilege of playing the late game in that regional. Oh, yeah, it was played at Mariucci Arena too. The less-rested Cornell squad fell to Minnesota, 2-1, in overtime. It seems only appropriate that the Red repays the favor if given the opportunity with the Gophers on our ice and playing in the later game.
 
Gopher leader Don Lucia will need to defeat his alma mater for a rare Cornell-Minnesota meeting to occur.
 
Cornell’s history with Notre Dame hockey is far richer than one would expect. The series is also deeper than the one that Cornell shares with the Fighting Irish’s first opponent. The non-sectarians of New York’s land-grant university have skated against the golden domers twice as many times as the former has against Minnesota.
 
The recent drama of the series relates largely to developments off of the ice. The Irish envied Cornell hockey for one thing after the 2004-05 season. Paying no mind to this commission of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, the Fighting Irish who recently had decided to take hockey more seriously resolved to lure Coach Schafer away from his alma mater.
 
Notre Dame Athletics marveled at what the legend behind the bench could do at an Ivy-League institution. They salivated at the prospects of him leading their hockey program. They knew that Cornell and the Lynah Faithful never could offer Coach Schafer as much in staying as Notre Dame could to induce his leaving.
 
Coach Schafer thankfully was not led into temptation.
 
That is when Notre Dame learned its most important lesson about Cornell hockey. We live it. If the opportunity presents itself, Cornell is fit to deliver another lesson as this team will reach its ninth Frozen Four with a victory over Notre Dame while the Fighting Irish languish with their two appearances under Jeff Jackson.

​The grandest things warrant the simplest introductions.
 
Jeff Vincent. Kevin Pettit. Mike Sancimino. Sam Paolini. Charlie Cook.
 
Those legends seized immortality for themselves the moment that they struck at the heart of Cornell’s nemesis for a game winner. Cornell and Harvard have met seven times in championship match-ups. Tonight, a tradition steeped in more than one century of lore takes center ice at the Olympic Center with the Whitelaw Cup on the line.
 
It has been 11 years since Crimson and Red collided with a trophy in the balance. The first championship meeting occurred 106 years ago. Jeff Vincent, a self-made hero of the Rust Belt, defeated Cornell University’s institutional foil in overtime for the 1911 Intercollegiate Hockey Association title. The last time that the class of the Ivy League and ECAC Hockey met for the Whitelaw Cup at the Olympic Center closed ECAC Hockey’s first tenure there.
 
The Crimson won that installment. It took two overtimes to mete out which team was superior. The benefit of retrospect makes it predictable that Cornell and Harvard are even in championship meetings in Lake Placid.
 
The melodically named Mike Sancimino put Coach Schafer and the hockey program of Cornell University back on top in the 1996 ECAC Hockey Final at the Olympic Center. The fortuitous arc of the puck after Sancimino’s release behind Harvard’s Tripp Tracy is one that the Lynah Faithful remember even if they have not the advantage of witnessing it. This writer lives that moment even though on that day his thoughts were far from Lake Placid.
 
This game is a rubber match for the foreseeable future. Cornell won the first meeting in Lake Placid. Harvard answered six years later. Lake Placid’s spellbook of magic is about to add a page.
 
The narratives of both programs differ slightly from the last time that the hockey programs of America’s oldest university and New York’s land-grant institution met in the shadow of the Adirondacks. The Crimson then derided the Red as “big and slow.” This lumbering giant evidently wielded a club large enough to slay the careers of two of Harvard’s bench bosses as the Crimson ceded its series lead against Cornell once Coach Schafer led the Red.
 
“Big and slow,” Cornell is no longer, if it ever was. Harvard’s inflated rationale for its victory over its rival in the 2002 ECAC Hockey Final, a moment archived on the walls of the Crimson’s renovated home in Cambridge, provides neither comfort nor excuse tonight. Speed and skill are as much a part of Cornell as they are of Harvard.
 
Ye of much Faith’, fear not the big sheet. Harvard’s victory over Cornell in November was the Crimson’s first such home victory in over seven years. Bill Cleary saw that his program’s home ice surface would be larger and more spacious so that Harvard’s finesse game could overcome the hard-hitting, honest tactics of Cornell’s Canadian-influenced brand of hockey. It has not worked. The team wearing carnelian recorded a 0.688 winning percentage and four wins on Cambridge’s nearly Olympic-sized ice since the 2009-10 season began.
 
Tonight, Cornell will be wearing carnelian and the sheet is Olympic-sized.
 
The frozen pitch of this contest unexpectedly may be exactly what gives the Red a key advantage in the most important meeting of these two rivals in over a decade. However, it is a cliché, but in this series, the previous records do not matter. All that matter is what each team can prove on the ice.
 
Cornell and Harvard have proven to be two of the best teams in the nation this season. It is the natural order of things. It is only fitting that these rivals who met in the first weekend of ECAC Hockey play this season will close the conference’s slate tonight. It is almost as if it were writ.
 
Harvard is one of three teams against which Cornell did not register a conference victory. The Red retired one of the other last weekend. It is time that the Red exacts the same treatment on the Crimson. A lesson in humility is due.
 
Partisans of the Crimson faction (yes, there are some) have been proclaiming that their team is bound for the Frozen Four. In a display of what constitutes modesty only in Cambridge, those same people predict that despite Harvard’s tying Union for the regular-season trophy, Harvard is the inevitable victor of the Whitelaw Cup. It falls to Cornell to teach Harvardians a lesson. As it so often does.
 
Earning and entitlement are what are on display. The purer Red of hard work and the sullied Crimson of privilege will battle for supremacy tonight at the Olympic Center. It is how college hockey has been since its 12th season. It is how it will remain. Ardor will be in one corner. Praise will be in the other.
 
The drama and narrative never changes. The times and players do. Cornell and Harvard are not dissimilar in one regard. They both are blessed with the talents of stars who know how to make their teams better. These distributors of pucks are both equally uncanny in their ability to create openings, sense opportunities, and trust in their teammates. Ryan Donato stands in that role for the Crimson. The Red calls upon Jeff Kubiak. Neither side should be shocked when magic happens on the ice and either player is present for the prestige.
 
The deadliest weapon that goes largely unnoticed because of the head of the team from along the Charles River is Merrick Madsen. His parents may have shortchanged him with a name that sounds taken from wadded parchment in the studio of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, but he rarely comes up short for Harvard. The Crimson goaltender looks solid against other non-carnelian teams. He looks unbeatable at times against Cornell. Cornell will need to find answers.
 
The test that Cornell will provide Harvard is an equally rigorous one. Mitch Gillam has proven to know where his playoff gear is and when to slip into it. The Red has played complementary hockey like few other teams in the nation this season. It has gotten only better in the post-season. Gillam needs not get a shutout if the floodgates have opened. Meanwhile, when scoring is at a premium, he delivers stellar efforts that neutralize opponents.
 
Harvard compared itself to Goliath early in the season. The Crimson can have that likeness. Perhaps more than a cursory skim of the tale’s wiki would serve their boosters well. It is only appropriate that the carnelian and white in this context become David. Cornell University always was more welcoming to the sons and daughters of David.
 
The Red, the more cunning, prepared, and savvier belligerent, looks to slay a Philistine tonight.
 
Tonight, we are privilege to the rarest of sporting events. An event that needs neither build-up nor superfluous adjectives. In academic or philosophical senses, it is viewed with varying perspectives. But, manifestly, it is a hockey game. It is so much more. Cornell University and Harvard College on a sheet of ice in Lake Placid.
 
The stakes are real. Harvard assumes that it will win. It also assumed that a neophyte university in Upstate New York never could rival its global and national reputation. Now, it scrambles to rival its relevance in science and emergent fields. The founder of American education faces off with its redeemer. We need each other.
 
Whether one turns to the maxims of The Lego Batman Movie or the Book of Proverbs, one realizes that Cornell and Harvard need each other. They make each other better. Cornell and Harvard are each other’s reason for waking, pumping iron, and preparing for the moment that their clashes mean just a little more than usual. Their sharpened iron crosses tonight. The stakes hardly could be higher.

​This writer told you that it would take a 120-minute effort, one double-length game, to advance to Lake Placid. He just never told you which 120 minutes. This team, true to the form of its character and the University for which it played, took the harder path to the Adirondack Region. Time will tell if it was the correct route.
 
Reader, you might find yourself asking aloud, “how can advancing in three rather than two contests be advantageous?” Well, to you, this contributor says, did you watch last Friday’s game? Cornell clearly was not playing in that contest. It took Friday off and played only on Saturday and Sunday. I kid, I kid. Mostly.
 
The rest is now history. This team defended Lynah’s hallowed playoff ice with the home team’s 34th post-season series victory. Coach Schafer mashed a fruit of his coaching tree. The Red won with its back against the wall in patient fashion. Real senior night occurred on a Sunday evening.
 
Cornell will participate in its 37th Eastern championship weekend. ECAC Hockey got the semifinal of its dreams.
 
There are two ways to win a college-hockey series in three games. Option one is to win game one, surrender game two, and win game three. Option two is to forfeit game one and win out the series’s remainder. The former builds no momentum. It also creates little urgency. The team could remain an oscillating tempest of inconsistencies.
 
Winning two games in sequence when each serves as a de facto single-elimination game from playoff glory requires far sterner stuff in the traveler. Momentum must be built and not seized in this case. The benefit of possessing already the credit of a game won to leverage later is unavailable. Everything must be earned in the present.
 
Cornell played itself into this mindset last Friday. It ensured that its next loss would jettison this team from the ECAC Hockey tournament and end its pursuit of a Whitelaw Cup. Cornell did not play either of its last two games with the benefit of tomorrow’s promise. Value therein lies.
 
The Red will begin every contest in the post-season as it did on Saturday night: knowing that if it delivers less than its best, it will be its last chance to advance toward associated championship glory. The same stakes will accompany every game that the members of this team play and the journey on which they take the Lynah Faithful.
 
These stakes loomed like banners hung above the ice on Saturday and Sunday. The astounding thing was how this team played its methodical, calculated, and cold-blooded style of hockey nearly faultlessly with knowing the task. On Friday, the Golden Knights ought to have chartered the Mystery Machine for how they unmasked the fraudulent ghoul that they faced. Carnelian and white became Baba Yaga and showed no mercy on Saturday and Sunday.
 
Like the emblematic John Wick, this team had to return to workin’ from a state of grave despair.
 
If journalism is the first draft of history, then social media and blogging now chisel the first lines of legend. If this team lifts the Whitelaw Cup, Frozen-Four trophy, or both, the moment historically identified as the beginning of the run occurred in the first half of the first period of game two of the 2017 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal.
 
Jake Weidner leapt to snag the puck out of the air along the blue line. The captain connected with fellow senior Eric Freschi who sent the puck across ice. This contributor’s call for an offensive defenseman to lead this team as was the championship tradition of Cornell hockey since Frank Crassweller in 1911 did not go to voicemail. Paddy answered with an unstoppable snipe from the blue line making good on Freschi’s disorientation of Clarkson’s defenses.
 
Everything changed then. The improvisation and teamwork of seniors gave Cornell its first lead of the series. It was the fitting beginning to a series rally. Cornell did not need to score first as it proved the next day. However, its scoring first altered the course of the series. The seniors saved the series.
 
The last two hours of play during the 2017 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal demonstrated exactly how Cornell hockey wins. The team trusted in itself to a player. A simpler team would allow the fear of elimination give rise to frenetic play that would eviscerate a season each shift. The members of this team played confidently, believing in themselves and each other, on Saturday and Sunday.
 
Clarkson’s scoring the first goal did not unravel these carnelian champions. Cornell answered in little over two minutes. The Red was contented defending leads while responsibly challenging Clarkson. It was a complementary balance of give and take. Cornell capitalized when it needed on the opportunities presented. Clarkson presented few.
 
The Ithacans did leave a handful of goals on their home ice. The peskiness of the Golden Knights cannot be ignored, but if this team hopes to go yard on the shot that Mitch Gillam called before the season turned to Schenectady, it will need to convert the promise of what it generated into capitalized results. Too many shots from the slot were directed wide. Too many breakaways led to gasps rather than taunts. Too much hesitation closed once-open lanes.
 
These deficiencies would have sent a lesser team to the locker room for a week of rest and anxious hope. This team is neither simple nor less. It is Cornellian in its character. Cornellians deliver in the clutch, when it matters most, when it is the proverbial or actual playoffs. They often do this after putting much unneeded drama in the tale to historic achievements. It is perhaps the demure arrogance or youthful brazenness of our University that causes these lapses. It remains archetypally Cornellian to dare greatly, often overthinking or second guessing, and to fall from grace. However, with swelling pride, whether it is in college admissions, prelims and final exams, professional licensing exams, graduate studies, employment opportunities, or college-hockey playoffs, Cornellians will deliver like none of their predecessors. They rarely need more than a second chance.
 
This weekend marks these seniors’ second kick at ECAC Hockey’s championship weekend.
 
Union reached Friday’s semifinal contest against Cornell in the fashion that many expected. Mike Vecchione scored a scripted overtime game winner to send the Dutchmen to Lake Placid. Oh, as if that storyline needed a more dramatic flourish, the winner was scored off of a penalty shot awarded to Union’s hero. Cornell and Union won in the ways that one would expect of their teams this season.
 
ECAC Hockey’s Baba Yaga embodied pure focus, commitment, and sheer will in its patient grappling with Clarkson over the two games that it played against its first playoff opponent. Clarkson held sway at times over that run. Cornell never lost control. It relied on discipline and focus. It lacked some of the thrills of the semifinal gun fu classic, but the determination of our hero was no different.
 
The determined standpoints of Cornell were not necessarily those that leap from the series’s box scores. Noah Bauld was a nuisance and pest in generating offense despite not registering a point. Eric Freschi and Jared Fiegl were the woad warriors with their omnipresent threats in the blue paint. Jeff Malott, previously handled as “Ffej,” did what he could to tilt the ice toward Clarkson and was rewarded mightily with Saturday’s crucial game-tying goal.
 
Luc Lalor failed to stand out which was a good thing for a skater who made no major missteps appearing in just his fifth and sixth games of his career in the crucible of the playoffs. Cornell’s power play cycled with moments of brilliance each time that it was called into service in the last 120 minutes of it series.
 
Noteworthy was the play of Yanni Kaldis who played all weekend with the form that the Lynah Faithful attributed to him most of the season. Anthony Angello’s point in every game of the series and two goals indicate that the sophomore is hitting his first-half stride from last season at the season’s most pivotal time.
 
Mitch Gillam proved beyond a doubt that he is ready to win as a Cornell goaltender in his senior season. Gillam defied the laws of logic and physics with several of his saves last weekend. This criminality will need to continue if Cornell wants to double dip on playoff glory. The senior netminder showed no signs of slowing down.
 
Union advanced with little hiccups in a predictable fashion. The Dutchmen scored eight goals over their series. Only four of Union’s skaters deposited the puck behind Colton Phinney. Mike Vecchione rifled nearly 40% of Union’s salvos. Spencer Foo contributed one quarter of the Dutchmen’s offensive output against Princeton.
 
Cornell played as Cornell does. Five different skaters for the Red recorded a goal in its quarterfinal series. The carnelian and white scored two fewer goals than did Union, but it did so with more players finding the back of the net. The Red attack remained lethal and multifaceted. Union’s front proved pointed and potent. Predictable.
 
Cornell and Union have written the greatest emergent rivalry over the last seven years. The programs are equal. Their coaches are bound for lists of all-time greats. The teams play their similar but respective styles unapologetically and with few mistakes. Garnet and Red have clashed five times in the last seven post-seasons.
 
The seniors on the ice Friday night will have played this series in every post-season of their careers. The legacies of the seniors at both institutions is interwoven forever. Mike Vecchione returned to Union College for his senior season to elevate its hockey program to its level when he joined the program. This alone indicates why he is one of the best in college hockey. That lofty target on which he has trained correlates to Union’s possessing only the second run of winning three consecutive Whitelaw Cups of current members of ECAC Hockey.
 
Cornell is the possessor of the other run. Oh, the Red won four that time too. Vecchione’s ambitions run afoul of those of this senior class at Cornell University. Cornell’s seniors have not wavered in seeking to uphold the traditions of Cornell hockey since they faithfully committed to the University and program. They lack presently a rite of passage for Red skaters: a Whitelaw Cup to call their own. They return for that goal.
 
This senior class in carnelian has had one heck of a run. Last weekend, they righted the wrong of a game-two quarterfinal loss in their freshman campaign against the same opponent. They did it their own way. They nonetheless got a sweep. This writer was disappointed at times, but emerged proud. Poignant history is again in play Friday.
 
The lake below the Olympic Center will cut as a plane through this senior class’ legacy. It will bisect the careers of these seniors between their sophomore and junior seasons. This plane, much like the lake, may stand as a mirror.

These seniors ended their freshman season with a semifinal loss to Union. They ended their sophomore seasons with a first-round sweep at the hands of Union. They repaid the favor a year later with ending the Dutchmen at Lynah Rink in a sweep. Their sophomore and junior seasons mirrored each other.
 
Will the reflection continue? Can this senior class close this saga with a semifinal victory over Union? Will their careers come full circle?
 
A moment unnoticed to many made this contributor realize that this team knows that it has the potential for greatness. Players from Clarkson tried to goad several players into fisticuffs on Sunday to draw the Red into foolish penalties. Even Cornell’s most pugnacious members did not bite. Beau Starrett noticeably laughed off such an invitation in the second period.
 
This team did not need to become mired in the pettiness of the moment. It knows that it has better things, bigger things to do. Cornell draped in carnelian went to Union on Friday, February 3 in search of a signature win. It got it. Why stop there? It seeks the first letter of a signature season on Friday against those same Dutchmen.

The time has arrived. It is the most wonderful time of the year. Now is when legends are made. Stitches of nameplates years removed from fixation will be planned from the moments that occur in the coming days.

The next seven days will see every conference in the throes of college-hockey playoffs. The zealotry becomes all-consuming for the partisans of any teams left playing in March and April. The emotion of the early Spring is hard to explain to the uninitiated. College-hockey playoffs are something unique.
 
The post-season in intercollegiate hockey at the NCAA Division I level is unlike anything else. It suffers from neither the exclusion of the College Football Playoff nor the dilution of the Final-Four tournament. A tournament whose design necessarily excludes at least one of the victors of its dominant conferences never can capture the imagination of a nationwide fanbase. A field of 68 teams and apportioned asymmetric advantages of byes render entry into that tournament less precious and its allotted paths unequitable. College hockey strikes the balance.
 
Conference tournaments matter in college hockey. No, not just the conferences that the media prefers, not just the most powerful unified cadre of programs. Every conference tournament matters. Additionally, those invited to the national tournament represent roughly the top quartile of the sport. The ultimate Frozen-Four champion is a legitimate national champion because each team in that tournament must traverse as similar a path as college hockey’s current constitution will allow. This is why college hockey’s playoffs gain unparalleled international attention.
 
College hockey is cosmopolitan. No, this writer is not talking about the cocktails that you threw back with Carrie before Red Hot Hockeys I and II in Manhattan. Our sport is international in a way that few others are. American talent dots rosters. Canadians have remained mainstays on the rosters of the best teams since Murray Armstrong and Ned Harkness penned sweet, sweet symphonies off of the riffs of their frontmen from North of the Border.
 
European talent from nations such as Finland and Sweden has contributed to deep playoff runs. Russians are now trickling into the ranks of programs young and old. Coach Schafer recently accepted the commitment to Cornell of the first Chinese-born NHL draft pick. Neither college football nor college basketball can boast of equivalent breadth and depth of buy-in from such a globally sprawling audience. This still fails to explain the rollercoaster of emotions that college-hockey fans will experience in the coming weeks.
 
Why should the ride of college hockey’s March and April come with approved harnesses? Well, that question is quite elementary, fellow thrill-seekers. Analogy is an instrument. Proportionality gives it reason.
 
Perhaps inevitably, sports in the collegiate ranks take cues from their professional counterparts. Hockey is no different. How many teams make the Stanley Cup Playoffs? How many teams make the Frozen Four First Round? Conveniently and symmetrically, the answer to both questions is 16. This is one of the many reasons that this contributor believes the current format of the national tournament is the closest to ideal possible at this time.
 
The same number of teams enters the ultimate stage of each season to claim the sport’s highest prizes. The answer to why college hockey has the most feverish sprint toward tournament hardware herein lies. Now, the denizens of Motor City must double fist cephalopods before they let the octopi fly because it takes 16 wins to raise Lord Stanley’s Cup. It takes just four wins to lift the oaken prize as champion of the Frozen Four.
 
Each victory from the Frozen Four First Round to the Final carries with it the weight of four wins in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. However, teams arrive in the First Round after as many as three weeks of playoff hockey. What of the meaningful conference tournaments that unfold before John Buccigross reads 16 names on a late March morning?
 
It takes 12 wins to claim either the Campbell Bowl or the Prince of Wales Trophy as a conference champion in the NHL. It typically takes four wins to decorate a program’s trophy case with a Lamoriello Trophy or Whitelaw Cup. Atlantic Hockey follows the same structure, but does not name its top prize.
 
Meanwhile, on either side of the four-win norm are the WCHA and B1G. The former requires five wins to get the hotel miniature of the Broadmoor Trophy. The latter effectively requires only two wins to earn the B1G Championship (no team has won from the first round yet). So, each win in a conference tournament moves college-hockey fans by roughly two and a half to six times as much as a win en route to the NHL’s conference hardware sways professional fans.
 
This writer for simplicity will assume the four-win paradigm that applies for a plurality of men’s conferences and three of the four women’s conferences in college hockey. This all explains why college-hockey fans experience the best and worst of times during the months of March and April. It is a simple product of scale.
 
The events of a conference tournament in college hockey are weighted by a factor of three relative to their professional analogs. The incidents of the national tournament are fourfold as impactful as those of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Despair and elation rapidly succeed and continuously oscillate like no other time in sports.
 
Each minor penalty feels like a major and more. Each save prevents the ruin of four goals allowed. Each breakaway against looms as damnation while racing the other way it promises salvation. Each winner buckles twine with quadruple moment. Each sentence is a paragraph in a program’s annals.
 
This is why college hockey has the best post-season.
 
It is not the fact that college hockey first recognized a national champion nine years before the Montreal Canadiens were founded. Nor is it the fact that the Whitelaw Cup was awarded six times before the NHL first expanded. It is the fact that everything, every split second, shift, call, and scheme scrawled on a whiteboard, tilts a season’s balance.
 
This is why college-hockey fans live the best post-season.
 
College-hockey fans are blessed this time of year. May your blessings not feel as curses. See you at the rink.

​The Lynah Faithful know the truth of Lynah Rink in the playoffs whether they know the facts behind it or not. Lynah provides a post-season home-ice advantage that franchises and fanbases of the NHL openly covet. Hockey fans the world over need not know that the Red has won 33 of the 38 playoff series that it has hosted on East Hill to know what a game at Lynah means: carnelian victory. Opponents know this. Cornell needs to prove this each and every time that it has the benefit of home ice in the Eastern tournament. The proving is the task this time out.
 
Another fact should nag in the minds of the Lynah Faithful, Assistant Coach Sean Flanagan, Associate Head Coach Ben Syer, Coach Schafer, and this team. Cornell dominated ECAC Hockey in the regular season in a way that it had not since its last historic run to a Whitelaw Cup in 2010. However, unlike that most dominant team in the history of the ECAC Hockey tournament, this team does not host a team that it has defeated twice already in the playoff’s opening round. The task is quite the opposite.
 
Only three conference teams denied the carnelian and white victory in both of their meetings. Keith Allain sent one of those teams back to its locker room to start early Spring cleaning last weekend. Harvard, well, Harvard will have to wait for another time. The third team? Clarkson. Cornell has not bettered Casey Jones’s Golden Knights yet.
 
Cornell salvaged a home tie and sacrificed a road win to their weekend crashers. It does not matter that by metrics subjective and objective that the Red should reign over green in the next few days. What matters is that each time that Coach Schafer led this team against the team of one of his protégés, there was no meaningful difference between the two squads.
 
There will be a victor this weekend. In an even series such as this one, a bad bounce can unravel the toil of a season. It does not matter that Clarkson is projected presently to be the tenth team out of the Frozen-Four tournament. The Golden Knights were the most unaccommodating team in the 2017 ECAC Hockey First Round.
 
Clarkson obliterated RPI with putting up 5.50 goals per game over last weekend. Yes, the Engineers were having quite the off year, but Casey Jones had his team humming at a rate that led it to net nearly two goals per game more on RPI than it had allowed through a lackluster regular season. This humiliation likely was not a mere factor in the “evaluation” in Troy that led to the ouster of Seth Appert.
 
If the change in leadership at RPI was the stick of last weekend’s series, Cornell must not underestimate the carrot that may be feeding the draft horse from Potsdam. Rumblings there for at least two seasons have rattled the ground on which Casey Jones stands. Clarkson is demanding that its Cornellian bench boss deliver results.
 
Clarkson likely delivered such an emphatic series victory which cost the Engineers their head coach to preserve the career of its own. Goldenrod brings unexpected thorns from the North Country. The aura of Lynah Rink alone against a program that an alumnus of Cornell hockey leads whose tenure it wants to maintain and is just two wins away from what it believes will be a home-ice advantage in Lake Placid will prove impotent.
 
This contributor is not one to shy away from analogy to other forms of entertainment. He has likened Cornell’s taking the ice in the playoffs to the ominousness of The Undertaker’s entrance in WWE. Last season, in a similar homage, this writer declared that the Cornell-Union first-round series at Lynah was Hell in a Cell. Neither season resulted in the Red lifting playoff silver or lacquer. The emphasis was misplaced.
 
Whether it was the calamity of clapping thunder and the flashes of flame associated with ‘Taker’s entrance or the vicious confines and stakes of Hell in a Cell, this contributor failed in one key regard. The spectacle is never the event. It is the team. The team makes the moment, not the converse.
 
The task before this team is a steep one. A juggernaut succeeded. The Phenom from Death Valley and the Beast Incarnate proved inadequate golems. The choice is clear. If the Boogeyman himself is insufficient, then this Cornell team must model itself on “the one you sen[d] to kill the…Boogeyman.”
 
John Wick is the perfect inspiration in more than his lethality (he leaves a wake in two films that outstrips any two of the franchise death tolls of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees (not Paula’s relative), and Michael Myers, the Boogeyman himself). Now, that might give you nightmares. The manner in which Wick conducts his business is the paradigm, especially for this weekend’s series.
 
Love drives Wick back into a life of violence that he once abandoned. His return is very personal. The enemies that he must vanquish are former partners. This connection makes him no less methodical. There is a heated nonchalance that Keanu Reeves’s stoicism grafts upon the character. This will be the most important aspect this weekend.
 
It is love of program, fans, and University that will drive this Cornell hockey team onto the ice surface on Friday and Saturday. Casey Jones, one of our own, is the foe that must be felled. It is hard to end any team’s season (well, except for Harvard, right?). It grows only harder when it is a friend. Coach Schafer and Cornell cannot hesitate this time.
 
Harvard and Union will take no moment’s pause in advancing to Lake Placid. This time, Cornell must not either. There it is again. The nagging subtext of the press conference after game three of the 2014 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal risks becoming again the story of this team.
 
Coach Schafer mourned understandably ending the season of a fellow coach whom he coached and with whom he coached at their alma mater. This was just one night removed from when his team clearly unprepared for game two gifted the Golden Knights another day of hockey in a contest in which the Red trailed for 53 minutes. Did compassion lead one of the greatest coaches in the history of ECAC Hockey to spare one of his mentees a sweep?
 
This contributor likes to think not. The prospect still stirs in the minds of the Lynah Faithful as it does his. Coach Schafer and his squad can allay those doubts on Saturday. Sweeping Clarkson is a narrative beyond that between Coaches Jones and Schafer. It is a beginning fit for the closing chapter of this senior class.
 
The seniors on this 100th team to represent Cornell University began their careers lifting their program to a bye in the regular season. Their first of four playoff series at Lynah Rink was against Clarkson. The Golden Knights cost them a sweep and maybe more in game two. These seniors advanced to ECAC Hockey’s Lake-Placid reunion in three games. The Dutchmen awaited the Red at the Olympic Center.
 
Had Cornell swept that quarterfinal series in 2014, what would be different? A more rested Union team defeated the then-freshmen and dispensed with Colgate the next day. The Dutchmen then rattled off four more wins to end the season with both the Whitelaw Cup and Frozen-Four title. What if?
 
A rested Cornell might have defeated Union. A rested Cornell might have won the Whitelaw Cup. A rested Cornell might have won a third NCAA title. These seniors have the chance for a second draft of their freshman season.
 
The rewrite begins with the flourish of a sweep of the Golden Knights. The rest will fall into place. SHagwell prophesied five weeks ago that Cornell and Union would meet in the 2017 ECAC Hockey Semifinal. The first two steps of this carnelian reboot seem to be in place. Let’s hope it is more Batman Begins than Psycho.
 
The surest way to make sure it is Christopher Nolan behind the camera and not Vince Vaughn in the walls is sweeping Clarkson. The task will be harder than it was in March 2014. These Golden Knights, the same ones that tied the Schafemen twice, have slipped into a different gear.
 
Clarkson’s formula for success in the first round predictably resembled that of most Cornell teams. The North Countrymen scored 11 goals last weekend. Six of those markers came on the power play. Each game winner came when the Golden Knights played with a man advantage. Clarkson was so efficient in deconstructing the Engineers that the former converted three times as frequently as had RPI allowed on average through the regular season.
 
This borderline dependence upon its power-play production is a weakness wrapped in a strength. Clarkson averaged only two goals per game during five-on-five play last weekend. Yes, it was a series in the North Country where such situations are the exception rather than the rule, but stalwart penalty killing and measured play from the Red should deprive Clarkson of the edge that propelled it to victory in the first round.
 
Clarkson’s play in transition is what shocked this writer last weekend. Sheldon Rempal terrorized Seth Appert. The Golden Knight’s attack is as versatile as claymore and as hard hitting as a trebuchet.
 
Who leads ECAC Hockey in scoring rate since February began? Here is a hint, reader, it is not Mike Vecchione, Ryan Donato, Alex Kerfoot, nor Spencer Foo. It is Troy Josephs.
 
The preventer of a Cornell-imposed senior-night loss for Clarkson averages one goal per game since the calendar flipped to year’s second month. If Josephs’s inability to wait even one minute to tie the carnelian and white once they had gained a lead at Cheel is insufficient to put the Lynah Faithful and this team on notice of the level at which this Clarkson senior is playing, nothing that this contributor puts across a screen will.
 
If the production crew can get this reboot up and running, this series is a 120-minute drama with a 21.5-hour intermission. Advance in two. Channel the Beastie Boys: two wins ‘til…Placid.
 
There will be no excuses from this corner if the Red fails in that pursuit. There are no excuses available. Cornell’s offense displays no ill omens in the build-up to the playoffs which is unlike similar metrics in the past three seasons.
 
The carnelian and white have scored 27.1% more goals per game in the regular season’s ultimate month than they had in the season’s first four months. The Red played nine games including four tilts against stout Clarkson, St. Lawrence, and Union. Cornell scored 3.56 goals per game in February.
 
This gaudy figure outpaces the analogous rates observed at programs with more offensively conducive systems at Boston College, Boston University, Duluth, and North Dakota. Coach Schafer was right to mock of that hackneyed criticism of his program in the program’s video for Giving Day. His team must continue in March and April what it has started in February. Pertinent history runs deeper than just one month.
 
This contributor described Cornell’s meetings with the North Country as akin to games between Original-Six franchises in the NHL. The history between Clarkson and Cornell is vast. Nearly one-third of ECAC Hockey’s postseasons have seen a Clarkson-Cornell duel.
 
Cornell has faced Clarkson 17 times in the Eastern playoffs before this weekend. The team from the university formerly known as Tech is Cornell’s most common opponent in ECAC Hockey’s postseason. Crimson and Red have clashed one time fewer prior to this season. The carnelian and white defeated green and goldenrod in runs that gave Cornell half of its Whitelaw Cups (one more than Clarkson owns as a program).
 
A history somewhere between one month and 51 years is also salient. Saturday is the real senior night for Holden Anderson, Matt Buckles, Ryan Coon, Eric Freschi, Mitch Gillam, Jeff Kubiak, Paddy McCarron, and Jake Weidner. It is the night on which these dedicated players who have given themselves in their own ways to this program should advance to seek immortality in Lake Placid and places beyond. The contributors of Where Angels Fear to Tread will be there to salute them.
 
The hesitation from March 2014, no matter its cause, must not be there. Otherwise, this team very readily could be taking a week off vainly tinkering with preferential scenarios in the Pairwise Ranking Predictors. As dapperly dressed in vintage-inspired threads as John Wick, this team needs to reify his passionate indifference in the playoffs.
 
When Clarkson and Casey Jones ask this team and Coach Schafer, “are you here on business, sirs?”
 
The answer should be simple, clean, and measured.
 
“Afraid so, Casey.”

​This season’s winding road twists northward to Potsdam. That dot on the map in the North Country has become a milestone for our great champions in carnelian and white over the last several seasons. This piece is not to extoll the steep obstacles that await our ladies in red (they and you know them), but to give a nod of premature appreciation. Trust this writer, Potsdam will be but a mile marker, not a destination, for this team in its program’s 45th season.
 
The mood’s all changed. There is a reason. In a lot of ways, this is personal for this particular contributor. When pollsters, commentators, and coaches still were self-deluding and grasping to rationalize their prediction that this Cornell team would finish sixth in ECAC Hockey (sixth, as in squeaking into ECAC Hockey’s post-season), he believed.
 
Well, with a plurality of Ontarians on this team, it seems only appropriate to quote another: Started from the bottom now we’re here.
 
This team swept a formidable opponent in Colgate at Lynah already in the post-season. Lest we forget that those same Raiders began this season as preseason favorites to make the Frozen-Four tournament. That was not the first box checked in the long list of expectations for all Cornell women’s hockey teams.
 
Doug Derraugh’s 12th team skated to an undefeated season in this sport’s oldest conference. It was just the sixth regular season of Ivy-League play in which the Red emerged without a loss’ blemish. This team’s undefeated season in the Ivy League marks just the 12th time that a team has emerged without a loss in the League’s post-tournament era. These carnelian-and-white wearers defended their program’s legacy of greatness with a 13th Ivy-League title.
 
Now, they aim to build upon it.
 
This writer remembers the moment that this team captured his imagination. It took just 13:19 of its season. He camped out in the lair of Where Angels Fear to Tread and turned on ILDN to watch the first Cornell hockey game of the season. He did not know what to expect. The loss of character players who resonated with the essence of Cornell like Jess Brown and Anna Zorn had him wondering if the magic still could possibly be there. It was.
 
An intrepid donner of #13 collected the puck and raced in on an unsuspecting season. She fired truly with the confidence of a seasoned all-star. It was a magical goal in a crucial moment. This is how Valerie Audet introduced herself to the Lynah Faithful. This is how this team greeted the college-hockey world.
 
The air of that moment has not left the lungs of this team for long. Yes, at moments, it appears panting and taxed. It nevertheless has proven well-conditioned over the long haul. Whether it is the brazenness of a freshman who challenges record books as openly as she challenges opposing netminders when her team is shorthanded or a senior who has come full circle from Ivy-League rookie of the year to that league’s player of the year as a reliably dynamic scoring threat in every facet of the game, this team plays with love for each other and their University.
 
Yes, this contributor has been disappointed at times. One needs only think to the first two periods against St. Lawrence just two weeks ago to find the last instance of disappointment. Let’s not do that again, shall we? However, that disappointment comes from the same passion that this team has for itself. The contributors at Where Angels Fear to Tread are disappointed only so much in that we see the greatness in this team and take such pride in it.
 
This team never fails to work. It supports itself as one. Pippy Gerace’s willing her teammates to victory as she nursed a braced leg on the bleachers on East Hill, Sarah Knee’s holding Colgate at bay singlehandedly on an unexpected breakaway, or knowing, just knowing, that Big Paula was not going to allow a single goal in game two are what makes this team so distinctly Cornellian. It never tires. It never quits. It revels in ardor.
 
Cornellians make no excuses. They take it upon themselves to do the work necessary to be successful. They command themselves to deliver in crucial moments. The goaltenders and skaters on this team have done that. In this regard, they have set a very high post-season bar by which their male counterparts will be measured when their time comes. However, dare I say, this team is not done.
 
These players for Coach Derraugh have proven that they are better than sixth as many dismissed them. How much better? Well, as is the world through carnelian-tinted lenses, the playoffs are when all is proven. Cornell may still be only fourth. It has proven only that it is one of the top four teams. The Red continues to educate the college-hockey world as to how good it is. Then, it will answer, which four?
 
The namesake of Potsdam famously was host to the last of three meetings of the Big Three during the Second World War. Rather than the last, let’s make this the first of another three big weekends for this team. Hoisting the ECAC Hockey championship in Cheel was one of the last moments of this senior class’ freshman campaign. History’s refrain calls Hanna Bunton, Kaitlin Doering, Sydney Smith, and Paula Voorheis, and these exhilarating freshmen.
 
This contributor’s optimism from October 21 about the players on this team has not ebbed. Will we see you in Potsdam?
 
I know that they will not disappoint. I do not hope that they will be successful. I believe that they will. 

​These five seniors are (likely) playing in their final games at Lynah Rink this weekend. They did what was necessary to extend their time at Lynah this season. So, in honor of what Cornellians consider unofficial Senior Week, here is a little bit about each member of the class of 2017 as they complete their storied careers in the coming weeks. So far, these seniors have garnered a combined 189 career points (30% during this season alone) and 80 goals. They have played in a whopping 579 games in carnelian and white. These seniors already have one ECAC Hockey Championship to their names (2014) and an Ivy League title from this season. Replacement is never truly possible in Cornell hockey. Each team is unique and there never will be another like it from one year to the next. Just like the team from 2010 was different than that in both 2009 and 2011, this team, the Cornellian squad of 2016-17, is unlike any past or future, just like last year’s team was and just like next year’s team will be.
 
So, without further ado, let us celebrate the class of 2017 in numerical order. Here is some of what these contributors will miss the most.

​Hanna is very much a leader on this team without a letter. Touted as a talent coming in and the Ivy League’s Rookie of the Year in 2014, Hanna’s grit and skill combine to leave these writers with memories of overtime game-winning goals and breakout plays that will still come to mind years from now. Hanna’s presence on the ice calms players and propels them on to win. But the breakout plays that she creates are far from the only thing that distinguishes who Hanna is. You can see it in the stands as children cheer “go Hanna!” and in their eyes when she delivers to their cheers. Hanna always comes to play regardless of who her linemates are and giving up is not in her nature. Hanna’s quiet confidence and determination are going to be part of what we will miss most.

​Brianna Veerman had a rougher start to her Cornell career than most. She may have an atypical finish. Her academic eligibility gives the hope that she may have another round in Red next season. Veerman did not suit up in a game during her freshman campaign. That did not, however, mean that she was any less of an integral part of the team then or this senior year’s class. As a sophomore, she surprised everyone by having a breakout year and starting in 28 more games than the previous year. This Friday will be her 28th game of the season. And Veerman has turned into more than just a reliable player on the ice. She fights and claws and even though the roster lists her as a forward, she plays on defense when called upon. She is the epitomical “everywoman” of this team. Though many unacquainted with the team may not recall her name, her absence will be a void to fill.

​Sydney Smith is the only defenseman in the senior class and the best phrase to describe her is Iron Woman. Smith has played in every single game (127 of them!) during her time on East Hill. A stay-at-home defenseman in the best possible way, Smith is responsible, reliable, and necessary to the defensive success of this and every team that she has been a part of. The Alberta native found success minding the blue line in Lynah and around the country. Though her goals have been sparing, they have all been important including during time that she skated as a forward. This Iron Woman still has a few more games in her. We’re excited to see what they bring. Syd Smith will be missed as a reliable, constant presence on the blue line.

​One of Cornell’s captains sits in the senior class as a woman of purpose: Kaitlyn Doering. Doering co-captains the red as a consistent scorer and backbone of the team. Ten of her points this season are goals, leaving her tied with classmate Hanna Bunton for second-most goals on the team. More impressive? Four of her ten goals this season are game winners. Doering has stepped up, already scoring three more goals than the previous season, one more than the season before that, and twice as many as she had as a freshman. It is easy to imagine the exciting freshman that Doering was, but it is impressive to see the leader that she has become. Doering has improved consistently on the ice, but her off-the-ice work as a leader is what these contributors will really miss in the effortless leadership she brings to the team.

​What can we say about Big Paula? The six-foot tall senior who excels both in the net and in the classroom is the heart of this team. She is part of the nation’s best tandem in the country. Paula never fails to give this team a chance to win and her confidence and poise in the net are only part of the reason. In 85 games in net, Paula notched a career save percentage of 0.922 with eight shutouts to her name, and time in three playoff games as a freshman en route to an ECAC Hockey Championship and six other playoff games to boot. Playoffs are familiar to Paula and even when the team is not victorious, everyone knows how much she put into the game. Last year in Potsdam, Clarkson fans exalted her to this contributor. Paula’s stalwart defense and huge heart are going to be the biggest things that this contributor misses about Big Paula.

​These seniors are a special quintet. Which moments will you remember from Hanna, Brianna, Sydney, Kaitlyn, and Paula? Have they already been written, or are they still yet to come?

​The time of year when the Lynah Faithful sing songs that remind them of the good times and sing songs that remind them of the bad times is nigh. The carnelian-clad mob that will ascend East Hill on Friday and Saturday cannot look too far afield whether they are on the bleachers or ice. A common sports metaphor keeps coming to the forefront of this writer’s mind. The last opponent that Cornell will face in the regular season refines the resolution of that image.
 
Union has been a well-oiled machine in pulverizing opponents from nearly the beginning of the season to the present. Mike Vecchione, a freshman on the Dutchmen’s last team that won a Whitelaw Cup and more, returned for his senior season with the promise that he was going to return Union to the greatness that he joined. A worthy contender for the Hobey Baker Memorial Award, Vecchione has done that.
 
Self-forged hero Alex Rauter corralled all the momentum from a heated contest in Messa Rink in early February. Mike Vecchione threw his weight to even the contest on a short-handed goal. Union was no match for Cornell in grit and desire in Schenectady as Anthony Angello and Jake Weidner opportunistically sank the Dutchmen.
 
The game was essentially even largely because the Red gave the garnet-wearing homestanders the ability to re-enter a contest that Cornell should have controlled for nearly three-quarters of the game. Union tends to do that to teams. Cornell tends to do that to itself.
 
Cornell has settled for less than a win four times in its last nine contests. The Red held third-period leads in all of those four games. Coach Schafer’s squad charitably gave victory away in the last five minutes of half of those non-wins. Find much authorial intent in the use of the possessive proper noun in the previous sentence.
 
Come on, guys, this is a Schafer-coached Cornell hockey team! Where are the dream-crushing, soul-devouring blitzkrieg to an early lead and stifling, coldly methodical, strangling defense of that lead? Teams rarely should surrender third-period leads. Implosions of this frequency are blasphemous on East Hill since 1995.
 
Feeding into this unpredictability and instability were the performances of two of the Red’s go-to point grabbers. Mitch Vanderlaan vanished as a goal scorer for Cornell for nine games. Anthony Angello scored only four goals in the first half of the season. The game of neither ever looked entirely off, but they were not producing what the Lynah Faithful expected of them and what they expected of themselves. They were works in progress.
 
Cornell is a work in progress. It makes many mistakes that doom otherwise stellar efforts. Union is a work of consistency. It is doing what it needs to win now with few mistakes. So, who you got on Saturday?
 
The adage after a healthy lead off fits here. Baseball coaches and scouts have spirited debates about a traditional hypothetical about two prospects. One exhibits unrefined form in his stride in making his way to first base after a hit. The other’s form is exquisite in traversing the same distance. Both have the same time. Whom should you take?
 
The traditional answer is the former. A coach or scout sees in the former the promise of improvement with refinement. The latter, arguably, is getting already the same output as the former with no basis on which a coach or scout can improve. The latter’s upside is known. That of the former is not. The unorthodox answer is to take the latter because discipline likely will not wane and putting overwhelming faith in the promise of the former is betting on the benefits of promise. Cornell is the flailer. Union is the paragon. Now.
 
The Dutchmen have been restless ever since a blaring crimson alarm stirred them from a slumber. Union has held opponents at arm’s length since Harvard visited a humiliating 6-2 defeat on it. The team from Schenectady has trailed only 12:56 in the three contests since the Crimson defeated garnet. Union has won each contest.
 
Vanderlaan and Angello prove what happens when elements of a team with great potential begin to become refined. The two sophomores combine for eight goals in February. The Red has faced off less than eight times in the year’s shortest month. Last season’s linemates have scored 36.4% of their goals on the season in the last three weeks. Two of the contributors on whom Cornell depends have put together their whole games at the season’s most critical time.
 
The best center in college hockey wears carnelian. This statement is particularly bold considering that Mike Vecchione brings Union to town this weekend. Vecchione is one of the best players in college hockey. Any fan of the game should find watching him a pleasure. His scoring touch does edge out that of this writer’s preference.
 
The senior who hopes to take his boys on a roadtrip back home to Chicago in April is the center in every conception of the term. Jeff Kubiak is the fulcrum on which games swing. He rarely is beaten to the puck on the forecheck. He has incredible vision on the ice. Few can overpower him. He is the best distributor of the puck in the nation.

Kubiak finds or creates an opponent’s weaknesses and then exploits them. His pass and a prayer to Anthony Angello against Yale was truly divine. This Red seraph delivers similarly devastating maneuvers regularly. When all else is going wrong in a contest and suddenly something goes right, Jeff Kubiak stands at its epicenter. The senior center makes sure that the trains run on time for New York’s land-grant institution.
 
Coach Schafer is not pleased with this progress alone. He is more inclined to use another “p” word: pissed.
 
The carnelian and white’s schemer of plays used that term to describe his feelings toward his charges’s efforts in their two most recent defeats…err, non-wins (?). This contributor, one none too shy to be critical of the hockey teams that represent his alma mater when they deserve it, thought that the Red could have played better in its ties against Yale and Clarkson. However, his sentiments were admittedly far kinder than were those of Coach Schafer. The respected head coach was kindest when he said that he was “disappointed” in his team during those games.
 
There is a reason that Coach Schafer leads one of the teams projected to finish highly in the PairWise Rankings. He sees in teams potential. What seemed as moderately successful efforts against Yale and Clarkson to a somewhat knowledgeable observer were nothing but pain to a skilled tactician who knew his team could perform better.
 
Coach Schafer saw his teams in little more than a stupor. Players regularly have been out of striking position in the offensive zone. Undisciplined execution on the penalty kill keeps games thrilling for opponents when they should not be.
 
A trans-Atlantic pissing off is developing on Campus Road. Coach Schafer is dissatisfied and annoyed with the Red’s recent efforts. The team has appeared as though it is playing in an alcohol-induced haze for long stretches recently. Coach Schafer has two weeks to distill this team into a potent tonic.
 
The team is presently a sweet mash of top-shelf potential (a “p” word perhaps more loathsome than all others). The question that remains is whether the work ethic of Assistant Coach Sean Flanagan, Associate Head Coach Ben Syer, Coach Schafer, and their team will be enough to distill it into a fine bourbon (we’re makin’ bourbon because Corn’ dominates the mash, right?). They have two games and two weeks to age their product before its first crucial tasting.
 
Cornell hockey nearly made history last weekend. The Red was 3:15 away from sweeping in the North Country for the first time in 12 years. The last two teams to bring three points back from the North Country made the national tournament. One of them won the Whitelaw Cup. This team openly aims higher. Its coach expects more too.
 
The principal contributors of Where Angels Fear to Tread took the long road trip to Potsdam to witness history. No Cornell hockey team ever has swept four of the five road conference weekends since ECAC Hockey adopted the travel-partner model. The contributors were there to witness history. It was not to be.
 
The writers were a little disappointed despite the valiant effort. Heck, perhaps they were even a little pissed (in the American sense, not the other, we had a long drive ahead of us, remember) that this team did not write its own footnote in the annals of Cornell hockey already. Matt Nuttle’s go-ahead goal gave hope that the unexpected could happen even if the current unrefinement of this team dashed it.
 
The right balance may be struck. The final product may be distilled into a smooth spirit. Success of historic proportions may be on the horizon just as long as the team does not keep playing like it is drinking it.

​Cornell traversed the treacherous terrain of the icy road to a post-season bye already. It did so with a week to spare. The Ithacans can fall no lower than fourth in ECAC Hockey’s standings. They can climb as high as first. The carnelian and white will need some help from maroon, and scarlet or green to climb to the highest reaches of the conference standings. The Red’s ascent is beyond its control.
 
Union will need to fall to Colgate on Friday and Harvard will need to produce at least its second-worst weekend in conference play for Cornell to have a chance to be jettisoned into the first seed overall. The scenarios are not that outlandish for Cornell to claim the spittoon without the first seed. Remember, this is a participation prize, every team that ties for the greatest number of points receives a souvenir.
 
The Crimson’s gaining only one point is most beneficial to the Schafemen. However, even a three-way tie at 32 points for Cornell, Harvard, and Union, the type that would happen if Union ties Colgate on Friday and Harvard gets as many as two points out of its senior weekend, would result in SHagwell handing Cornell some sawftware before Saturday night’s senior festivities. This presupposes that Cornell will sweep its senior weekend.
 
Frankly, Cornell needs to sweep its senior weekend. This contributor rarely puts things in the must-win category. But, what good is home ice in the playoffs if the Red has not dominated its ice with a weekend sweep since December? This team has swept no conference weekends at home.
 
There is no better time to prove this team’s worth and build this team’s confidence than to sweep two quality teams now. Union is, well, Union. RPI is flush with talent and waving the bloody shirt of preferential officiating like a flag during its goal celebration after Cornell’s late power play put carnelian over cherry at Houston Field House. Oh, yeah, the team that last prevented Cornell from defaming ECAC Hockey’s regular-season trophy was RPI in February 2012. If Cornell cannot sweep Union and RPI, it does not deserve to be in the conversation for the bedpan.
 
Here’s hoping we all can lap a highball after an anacelebration on Saturday night.

​This 2016-17 edition of Cornell women’s hockey is getting ready for the best worst time of the year. Yes, readers, that is what the playoffs are. The highest of highs and the lowest of lows. All of one’s wildest dreams can be answered in the playoffs. And all of the scariest nightmares can come to life with your hopes and dreams dashed in an instant. The playoffs truly are the best worst time of year.
 
This team has had some big ambitions. ECAC Hockey Championships. Frozen Four Championships. Where does that all begin? Lynah Rink.
 
A lot of big talk was had last weekend about showing up big against the North Country teams. The first two periods of the weekend looked like it was all talk. It almost would have been better if we couldn’t have seen the first two periods of hockey on Friday night at Lynah. The third period, though? Now, that was a period that felt like this team’s time was NOW.
 
Many speak about leadership from upperclassmen. No doubt is leadership essential, but this third period was fueled by the freshmen and sophomores. Jaime Bourbonnais lit the lamp and Amy Curlew kept the fire raging as the game was reset.
 
Friday’s game is a ready-made metaphor for exactly what happens in the playoffs and it is exactly the “learning lesson” that this youthful team was in sore need of. If the first two periods are how this team plays, the final game of their seasons, of the seniors’s careers, will tick down on Saturday. If this team puts 120 minutes together as solid as the last 20 on Friday evening, their season will still be alive. If it doesn’t?
 
Their time will be up.

​Who stands in the way of the Red’s trip to championship weekend other than its Central NY travel partner, the toothpaste itself. Crest is better, but Cornell will have to brush with Colgate if it wants to continue its season.
 
The Red-Raider series this year is a mirror. The Raiders came away victorious at Riggs Rink in a 2-1 decision while the Rouge took away its own 2-1 victory at Lynah. The tightness of this season’s series belies the difficulty that the Raiders will bring to Lynah Rink. Cornell and Colgate have the same number of league wins this season. The difference in standings is the number of ties that the Red has racked up.
 
Colgate has been a team of streaks this season, not suffering a loss until its 14th game. The Red did not even go two whole weekends without suffering its first loss. But that’s not to say that the Raiders have cooled down while the Red heated up. Cornell has had no more than seven games without a loss, its longest streak of the season, just snapped Saturday. Colgate’s last streak lasted nearly as long and also was active until this past weekend. The Raiders may be a number six seed in the playoffs, but the difference between Cornell and Colgate is less stark than the three vs. six implies.
 
Colgate also has done something that this Cornell team has not accomplished this season: It has beaten St. Lawrence. Colgate is not to be trifled with. Goaltending is not a weakness for the Raiders. Both their typical starter, sophomore Julia Vandyk and their freshman back-up, Liz Auby, have solid save percentages and results. Vandyk has started the lion’s share of games and, in spite of recording every loss this season, she holds a 0.924 save percentage. Auby has seen fewer starts by almost a tenth, but she has yet to lose a game.
 
The penalty kill for the Raiders is strong: almost 91%. How does that compare nationally? Only behind Boston College and another familiar foe for the Red: Wisconsin. Colgate’s penalty kill is more than just “solid,” it is amongst the best in the nation and has scored as many short-handed goals as Cornell has. Special teams are not going to be an easy way to beat the Raiders. Cornell edges Colgate in terms of power play, but barely. The 1.5% of edge that Cornell has on Colgate accounts to just one more power-play goal in 66 opportunities. Given that Cornell has only had twice that many opportunities in the entirety of the season, that sort of edge is unlikely to be beneficial in a two-game series.
 
Cornell sits in an unenviable seven spot in the PairWise Rankings. Beating Colgate (11) will likely do little to push the Red in. Losing to Colgate will certainly end the Red’s season for good. The time is past for Cornell hoping for an at-large bid to make the NCAA Tournament. If this team has Frozen Four ambitions, there is only one sure-fire way to make it there: earn a spot.
 
Is Cornell’s time up…or is it now? Only time will tell.