Opponents last week: Boston University, St. Lawrence University
Opponents this weekend: Brown University, Yale University
Boston University started their season with a local rival: Boston College. They beat BC 4-2 on the road and continued the season on a tear, winning all of their games before Cornell game to town. Boston University handily defeated RPI and Union at home and Northeastern on the road. It was a different story when the Lady Rouge came to meet the familiar opponent. (The last meeting between the two teams occurred in the NCAA Tournament in a memorable 3OT game.) The Big Red dominated in the first game, skating to a 5-2 victory with all five goals scored by different players. Freshmen Anna Zorn and Taylor Woods scored their first NCAA goals while sophomores Emily Fulton and Monika Leck netted two more and junior Jessica Campbell got the empty netter for a decisive outing from the forwards of the team. Two of the goals were even strength, two were short-handed goals and the remaining was an empty-net goal. Alyssa Gagliardi and Hayleigh Cudmore notched a pair of assists while Jill Saulnier, Brianne Jenner, Lauriane Rougeau, and Lauren Slebodnick (yes, our GOALTENDER) also made their way to the box score with assists. Speaking of Slebodnick, she had a total of 25 saves for a save percentage of 0.926 on the night.
For as well as Saturday went, Sunday was not the Big Red's day. They dropped a 5-1 game to the Terriers with the sole goal being scored on the power play by Laura Fortino with assists from Jill Saulnier and Brianne Jenner. The Big Red earned a split on the weekend which was incredibly impressive given that it was the first weekend of games for Cornell when Boston University had 4 NCAA DI games under their belt already.
Tuesday brought ECAC foe St. Lawrence to Lynah Rink in a non-conference match between the reigning ECAC Champions and the Big Red. St. Lawrence, much like Boston University, has played 4 games so far this year, but they could not have started more differently than BU. The Saints dropped their first four games, two to Clarkson (currently ranked #4 in the country) and two to the University of Minnesota (currently ranked #1 in the country). And the luck was not with St. Lawrence again for their fifth game of the year. The first period started off slow until a run of 59 seconds that proved to be explosive for the Big Red. In less than a minute, Cornell scored three times with three different players scoring a goal. At 15:01 Emily Fulton scored her second goal of the season unassisted. Thirty seconds later, Brianne Jenner got her first goal of the season assisted by Jess Brown and Emily Fulton. The third goal came 29 seconds after that, from either Alyssa Gagliardi or Anna Zorn, depending on who you believe. (At the time, it was credited to Zorn, and that is what the commentators seem to think happened, but the box score gives the goal to Gagliardi.) The other assist was given to Jill Saulnier. Immediately after the third goal, St. Lawrence swapped out their goaltender (Carmen MacDonald, last year's tournament MVP) for Guilia Mazzocchi who played the remainder of the game. The second period was scoreless for both teams. Scoring picked up again in the third with two goals from the Big Red. The first was scored by Emily Fulton, her second of the night, from Alyssa Gagliardi and Hayleigh Cudmore. The final Big Red goal of the evening went to Anna Zorn, from Brianne Jenner. Overall Cornell scored 4 even-strength goals and one power-play goal. The Saints attempted to rally, scoring one a little less than halfway through the third, but their rally fell short there. Cornell improved to 2-1-0 on the season.
Next weekend begins ECAC and Ivy play for the Big Red with Brown and Yale both coming to Lynah Rink for afternoon games. Brown has only played one game this year, losing 4-2 to Princeton. Yale comes to town on Saturday. Yale has started the season with two losses. Both games were against CHA teams. Robert Morris beat the Elis 2-0 and new DI team RIT shut out Yale 3-0. This weekend looks to be a big one for Cornell hockey in general, with the men and women both playing at home. Should all go well, the women should look to start conference play with a great record.
4 - Fulton, Gagliardi, Jenner
3 - Cudmore, Saulnier, Zorn
1 - Brown, Campbell, Fortino, Leck, Rougeau, Slebodnick, Woods