​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.

​The unthinkable has happened. Or, that is how many observers of ECAC Hockey would have us believe. When the dust settles on Saturday evening and seeding for the post-season is set, two teams written off as middle-of-the-pack players will be among the two teams that enjoy a week of coveted rest before our sport’s most important month. Those same teams are both contending for the regular-season title in the conference’s last regular-season weekend.
 
Our boys in carnelian and white constitute one of those teams.
 
This begs for particular consideration. Now, a series of fortunate events beyond Cornell’s control will need to go the Red’s way for Cornell to tie for or earn the greatest number of conference points. However, on Saturday, when the Dutchmen of Union seek vengeance, Cornell could be playing for ECAC Hockey’s regular-season title.
 
The last time that Cornell vied for this particular tchotchke this late in a season was 2012.
 
A half-decade tends to dull recollection. An entire graduating class of players and Lynah Faithful have come and gone without the Red contending for this prize. A refresher in Cornell’s protocol if the unlikely happens on Saturday is in order.
 
As with all things in ECAC Hockey and Cornell hockey, a brief history provides context. ECAC Hockey named the prize that it gives its top conference point getter(s) (yes, if there is a tie, all participants get their own version of it) on March 16, 2001. Each season’s point monger has gotten the “Cleary Cup” to do with it as it wishes (more on that soon) since the end of the 2001-02 season.
 
Readers and followers of Where Angels Fear to Tread know that contributors refuse to use that term to refer to the boondoggle physically presented to the team that earned the greatest number of points in a regular season. Our writers elect instead for more accurate terms like “spittoon,” “bedpan,” “participation trophy,” or, when discussing something of real value, “first seed.” Why do they engage in such ritualized practice?
 
Bill Cleary resembled Lex Luthor to more than coiffeurs. The Lynah Faithful saw in him for 19 years the very embodiment of evil. The Harvard man turned coach oversaw the era during which the Crimson re-discovered their roots and hurled fish at Cornell skaters, and drunken denizens of Cambridge lobbed wine battles at netminders from Ithaca. Cleary was the opposing coach who showed so little regard for Cornell hockey that he disparaged its accomplishments in the media and waved his defeated teams from congratulating the Red in handshakes on the ice.
 
His villainous permagrin made him Joker. Bill Cleary was the entire rogues gallery in one. Cornell found a suitable antihero in Cleary’s waning days at Harvard. A blueliner with the audacity to challenge an opposing team’s bench boss. A defenseman whose clearing attempts occasionally veered up the boards and into Harvard’s bench near Bill Cleary. Stick-breaking Mike Schafer was that player.
 
Coach Schafer as an assistant helped Cornell growl at Harvard, “why so serious?” in the 1990 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal that ended Bill Cleary’s career on Lynak Rink’s ice. Coach Schafer as a head coach led Cornell in the first regular season after which ECAC Hockey would give a named trophy to the league’s regular-season champion.
 
Cornell won the first name regular-season trinket. Then, the second. Each time, like all those subsequent, including when the Red clinched the regular-season title during the 2004-05 season, Cornell remembered nearly two decades of disrespect that Bill Cleary as head coach at Harvard had paid the carnelian and white.
 
The captains of Cornell refused to accept the regular-season trophy. They left it on the ice. No players touched it.
 
Now, Quinnipiac tried something foolishly similar during the 2012-13 season. It is not the accomplishment that is tainted as the Bobcats misinterpreted. It is the namesake. Cornell refuses to celebrate an award affixed with a figure who did so much to disregard and demean its program.
 
If the Red wins the bedpan on Saturday, the skaters of this team and their coach will remember to refuse it and leave it on the ice. In the event that Cornell and Union tie for the regular-season title, I advise that the leaders of this team encourage the Dutchmen to take the tarnished accolade with them rather than wait to get their own version at Messa Rink. There are far nobler prizes to win on the ice ahead for this Cornell team.
 
You laugh at the prospect, right?
 
Why is the unlikely impossible when the unthinkable already has happened?

​The marathon is over. The finish line has been crossed. Well, one of those finish lines, anyways.
 
Three more finish lines are glossed over the macadam on the horizon for Cornell University’s carnelian warriors. Eyes need to survey the course ahead and the potholes that pock the pavement before those demarcations. Nevertheless, while this team guzzles what any regular viewer of ILDN assumes must be Big Red Refuel, the Lynah Faithful can reflect upon the grueling terrain traversed in the last two weeks of play.
 
Coach Schafer said it several times between face-off with Union on Friday, February 3 and the post-game press conference on Sunday, February 12. The members of this team were going to get a taste of professional hockey. They did get just that. Collegiate athletics are the passion of the contributors here at Where Angels Fear to Tread, if you could not tell, but with the frequency with which this team’s last run of games was compared to those of their professional peers, perhaps a look at the professional ranks is in order.
 
Only ten teams in the NHL played as many games as did Cornell between February 3 and February 12. No team played more games than did the wearers of the carnelian and white. Yes, only one-third of the franchises in the NHL sent their paid athletes into competition five times in that span. How did those teams fare?
 
Those ten NHL clubs went 25-16-9. A winning percentage of 0.590 is respectable…if you do not play for Coach Schafer or on this team. The Red won at a rate 52.5% greater than did professionals in producing its 0.900 winning percentage during its five-game run. Only the Washington Capitals won every one of their five games.
 
The NHL runners-up to Cornell’s blitz through its five-games-in-nine-days stretch were the St. Louis Blues and Pittsburgh Penguins. The two tied for a 0.800 record in two different ways. The Blues went 4-1-0. The Penguins went 3-0-2. So, were Cornell an NHL team over that run, only the appropriators of the anthem “red!” would have outperformed the icers of New York’s land-grant university.
 
The most talented hockey players in the world play in the NHL. A grueling schedule of five games in nine days takes its toll. Conditioning erodes to fatigue. Mental acuity dulls. It must have an effect on the offensive output of even the most talented franchises. It certainly would at the collegiate level with the demands of the academy.
 
The Lynah Faithful from Schenectady to Ithaca celebrated 20 goals over five games. The offensively replete aquatic birds of the Steel City scored only 17 goals on the same calendar. The Penguins own one of the NHL’s four best records. The grapplers of the Beltway constituted the only club to outscore the 77-year elder Red.
 
Oh, yeah, the Caps currently lead the NHL in the hunt for the boondoggle of the Presidents’ Trophy.
 
Cornell was the second-best team in the NHL. This team is far from proving that it is the second-best or best team in college hockey. They were a solid nine days. Coach Schafer’s charges and he chilled one regrettable point on the ice in a very winnable contest against Keith Allain’s Yale. The professional hiatus retired.
 
The road ahead is no easier. If anything, it is more grueling. The players on this season’s roster have made their intentions known. Mitch Gillam, channeling the panache of The Bambino, most pointedly called his shot (save?) for his team when publicizing its goal to play in the 2017 Frozen Four Final.
 
A hack-the-Pairwise-at-all-costs mentality pervades the team. As reassuring as Cornell’s recent 4-0-1 run is, one needs to consider the quality of the opponents relative to the Red’s ambitions of gaining entry to the national tournament. The average of the projected Pairwise Rankings of Union, RPI, Colgate, Yale, and Brown is 40.6.
 
The average result that Cornell notched in that five-game run was equivalent to defeating a team that was roughly 26 spots out of the projected field for the Frozen-Four tournament. Meanwhile, somewhere on Route 11 between Canton and Potsdam must be 22.5 in the Pairwise Rankings. Cornell can check on its trip to Cheel on Saturday.
 
Friday night’s pitch at Appleton Arena pits the nation’s third-best home team against the nation’s third-best road team. St. Lawrence has dropped just four conference games. Three of those setbacks occurred on the road. The Saints have failed to win at home only thrice this season. Cornell has endured just three non-wins on the road.
 
One of those threes will become a four on Friday. It will be a very tall task for the Red to be victorious. Gavin Bayreuther unexpectedly returned three weeks ago. Immediately, he inspired St. Lawrence’s three-goal rally to defeat Union at Appleton. The defensive dynamo has recorded two points in three games.
 
The Saints have played two weekends without a win. Laurentians will demand penance for that sin against their program’s history this weekend. The Ithacans will need to bring with them all of the tenacity that they took to Messa Rink with none of the mental miscues if they want to force Canton’s equally raucous sylvan sanctuary and its talented denizens to part with points.
 
All the soothing history that fans of ECAC Hockey have come to expect and the disproportionate asymmetric loathing that serves as a salutation for the Lynah Faithful at select away venues attend the trip to Cheel. Clarkson-Cornell match-ups for the Whitelaw Cup are the second-most common championship pairing for the Eastern prize (tied with Clarkson-St. Lawrence meetings, if one is curious). Only Cornell and Harvard have met more frequently.
 
The last time that Cornell lost such an encounter to Tech was the Red’s first modern championship game in 1966. Clarkson and Cornell last met to decide a title when the bench boss of Friday’s opponent led the program in Potsdam. Three carnelian-and-white victories over green and goldenrod occurred between those meetings. The Red double dipped in 1970 with victories in the Whitelaw Cup and Frozen Four Finals.
 
Cornell bears little blame for this plight. The Golden Knights are evidently engineered as runners-up. No program has appeared in more Frozen Four Finals (three) without winning a national title as Without a Peer once reminded Clarkson’s fans. Fret not, champions of Clarkson, Quinnipiac is doing its best to usurp that ignominy.
 
Clarkson recently defeated St. Lawrence and Quinnipiac. It lost none of the opportunism that required heroics on East Hill to salvage a point for Cornell in January. The scoring specter that Coach Schafer exorcised from this team against Brown needs to haunt the barns of the North Country.
 
The Lynah Faithful should thank Anthony Angello. The sophomore forward from Central New York found the antiserum for Mitch Vanderlaan’s snake bite. Vanderlaan went nine games without scoring a goal. He scored seven goals in the season’s first 11 games.
 
The winger from New Brunswick has played phenomenally lately. His defensive game against Yale is proof. He plays the puck responsibly. Opponents are all but incapable of keeping him in his defensive zone. Toxin still coursed through his veins until his classmate upped the ante in taking Vanderlaan’s lead in goals. He responded. Vanderlaan’s goal against Brown could be the last piece fitting for his complete game this season.
 
A mainstay of Cornell’s defense seemed dazed all last weekend. These lapses will prevent the Red from earning truly historic victories if they continue this weekend. Appleton and Cheel are no places to make mistakes.
 
Harvard is the only team to have swept in the North Country. If that Harvard team can do it, why not this Cornell team? The rivalry lives in the North Country. The Red can prove it is the Crimson’s equal or superior this weekend.
 
Cornell began its stretch of five games with a public proclamation that it was going to Union to claim this team’s first signature win. It got it. Why should the sights of this team lower to a mere signature win? Why not seek out a signature weekend? It will take at least three signature weekends to punch a ticket to Chicago.
 
Assistant director of athletic communications Brandon Thomas made the Lynah Faithful and this team aware of a historic reality. No Cornell team has swept four road weekends in ECAC Hockey since the league has employed its travel-partner system in 1984. No, not 2002-03. Nope, not 2004-05 either.
 
The members of this Cornell squad already aim to one-up (two-up, more appropriately) the 2002-03 team when April arrives. Why not get started on the task early with foreshadowing penned against St. Lawrence and Clarkson? 

​The war for seeding has but four battles remaining. Well, four battles for each team. The final 48 regular-season games in ECAC Hockey will answer and raise questions in the minds of the league’s fans. Cornell has a challengingly advantageous path before it. Two of its next four games are against opponents that are tied with or standing above the Red. The first such game is on Friday in Canton.
 
Cornell and St. Lawrence are tied in ECAC Hockey’s standings. The readiest way to pass a team in a battle for seeding is to defeat that team directly. A victory against the Saints also would serve to give Cornell a tie-breaker over St. Lawrence which may prove beneficial on February 25. Cornell can clinch a top-four seed if Quinnipiac loses and Cornell earns three points this weekend. The Red could end the weekend as high as first or as low as a tie for fourth. This writer knows as a trained endurance athlete that the race is always in front of you. If Cornell is worried about the Bobcats, it has lost already.

​Cornell women’s hockey did something unprecedented this weekend. It clinched (outright) a thirteenth Ivy title. A thirteenth Ivy title that broke the previous record of 12 Ivy titles. Held by Cornell. That’s right, these women broke a title set by this program. That is a pretty impressive feat. Cornell’s thirteen titles consist of a variety of different types of titles. And no, reader, I do not mean “shared” and “outright” titles alone. Certainly, those are two different types, but the Ivy League championship in women’s hockey initially began as a tournament. In the 1975-76 season, several seasons after the Red had begun play in earnest, the Ivy League hosted its first championship tournament. Naturally, the Red won that one. And the one after that. And the one after that. And the one after that. And the one after that. That is right, the Red won the first five Ivy titles in a row, not only “outright” but on the ice in a championship. Yes, readers, you may remember that the Ivy title was initially awarded in a tournament. You may also remember that for the Red’s sixth Ivy title, the Red and the Pandas of Brown played to a 4-4 draw in four overtimes in a game that was eventually called for the safety of the players.
 
Cornell won five Ivy titles in a tournament. Cornell won its sixth Ivy title in a tournament game that ended in a tie. Only one other team in the League won a tournament title on the ice: Princeton.
 
The remaining seven titles include six outright wins (including the one clinched on Saturday) and one acrimonious tie. The next nearest team? Everyone’s favorite overrated team from Lynah East nips on the Red’s heels with 11 titles.
 
Winning an Ivy title matters. It is something that predates the ECAC Hockey title (c’mon, guys, shouldn’t we have a cool name for the tournament and regular-season trophies? The historic Whitelaw Cup exists for the men. Why can’t the women have a fun one? The Duthie? The Digit? The possibilities are endless.). It is a part of the women’s history that shows how much older East Coast hockey is than the neophytes out West.
 
However, it is not the end-all, be-all. The Ivy League title is a regular-season title contested among a subset of our hockey home. Does it indicate success? Absolutely. Does it foretell post-season success? No.
 
Cornell owns a hefty share of titles. Thirteen Ivy titles. Four regular-season championships. Four tournament championships.
 
Numbers that should be familiar to all Faithful will be the years in which these titles occurred:
 
Ivy: 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1990, 1996, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017
 
Regular Season: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
 
Tournament: 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014.
 
To me, dear readers, those numbers are awesome. They inspire both admiration but also fear. More often than not, an Ivy title denotes that the Red can go on to win more championships in the coming weeks. In 2010, 2011, and 2013, the Red won all three trophies. In 2014, without winning either the Ivy League or the regular season, the Red won a triumphant and memorable tournament trophy in Potsdam. An Ivy League title does not foretell success.
 
But what of 2012? Cornell in 2012 rolled in hard. They went into the post-season having won the Ivy League and won the regular-season title, handily. Cornell went into the ECAC Hockey playoffs with only three losses on the season. No ties. A magical first seed guaranteed the Red the ability to host the playoffs as long as they remained alive. The first weekend saw the Red beat Brown in a series to earn the spot hosting the semifinals and final game in Lynah. After defeating Quinnipiac without too much of a thought, the Red, backstopped by the goalie tandem of Amanda Mazzotta (now assisting at the Bobcats) and Lauren Slebodnick faced St. Lawrence in the ECAC Hockey Final, looking for three ECAC Hockey championships in as many seasons. In spite of all of the firepower of former and future Olympians from Rebecca Johnston, Lauriane Rougeau, and Laura Fortino to Brianne Jenner, Jill Saulnier, and Catherine White, Cornell dropped only its fourth game of the season, snapping a 10-game winning streak. The Saints were the ones celebrating on Lynah’s ice as the seconds ticked off of the clock.
 
An Ivy League title does not automatically accompany post-season success.
 
But, hey! They did get TWO titles that year, right?!
 
Yes, they did. Cornell captured both the Ivy League and regular-season titles.
 
Time for some harsh reality, readers. Buckle up. That is not possible this season. Cornell sits with 30 points in the ECAC Hockey standings at third place. Cornell cannot fall below fourth place, guaranteeing the Red the ability to host the first round at home. But, first place, the regular-season trophy, is out of reach for these intrepid players. Clarkson is sitting pretty with 36 points. They look to run away with the regular season if St. Lawrence gets anything but a sweep this weekend (a tough feat in Central New York, especially given that St. Lawrence escaped last weekend at home with just a single point and has scored no more than two goals in its last four outings). Cornell, however, can gain all four points this senior weekend and still fall short. The highest that the Red can climb is to number two. That is one trophy that is impossible to get this season for the Rouge.
 
The post-season tournament trophy (the one that screams to Cornellians as THE trophy) is still up for grabs.  The ECAC Hockey post-season is what people remember. This writer vividly recalls the ECAC Hockey championships won during her time on East Hill. A demolition of Dartmouth capped off an exciting run in what still stands as the largest recorded crowd at a women’s game at Lynah. A shutout by Amanda Mazzotta ’12. Two goals by Chelsea Karpenko. Both of their likenesses adorn doors at Lynah. These are moments that are remembered forever, etched in history.
 
How does that happen for these players? The road goes through the North Country whether in jockeying for better seeding this weekend or possibly on championship weekend.
 
After this weekend, only two games are guaranteed at Lynah. Cornell will host a playoff series. These seniors can have a real senior night, going out of Lynah in two playoff games. So while this weekend is a celebration of Hanna Bunton, Brianna Veerman, Sydney Smith, Kaitlin Doering, and Paula Voorheis, complacency is not the way to give these seniors a truly lasting legacy. These seniors have already won their first ECAC Hockey title. They just engraved their names into the Ivy title for the first time. Let’s give them a second ECAC Hockey title during their time on East Hill. After all, the road to St. Louis begins by making the NCAA Tournament. How can you guarantee that the committee has to choose you? By winning the conference.

​The moment had not hit this writer in a while. In one part, it was because of self-effacement or some feigned version of journalistic style. Another part was the mere lack of feeling it, whatever it is. However, it returned last weekend.
 
Regrettably, the principal contributors of Where Angels Fear to Tread were unable to make one of their favorite trips on ECAC Hockey’s calendar last weekend. Those contributors assembled at their lair to watch Cornell’s games against Union and RPI. It happened in earnest on Friday. Then, during a conversation in the waning minutes of the contest at Houston Field House, it struck this writer as it crept into his speech when discussing the game.
 
This writer since founding Where Angels Fear to Tread avoided the use of self-inclusive pronouns on this and all associated platforms. This practice became routine in his casual discussions about Cornell hockey. So, roughly since this contributor was a senior at Cornell University, he never took ownership of the team in a way that made him utter that word.
 
We.
 
You know, fans do it all the time. How rightfully do they do it? How much does one standing on a bleacher actually do to earn defeat or victory in any sporting contest? Can fans take ownership of the result as though they contributed?
 
That is what makes this 100th team to represent Cornell University distinct from more recent team. It is taking the Lynah Faithful along with them on its journey. The Lynah Faithful finally again that they are not just auxiliary to the team and program, but part of the program and team. When this team won last weekend, we won.
 
This author’s sentimental renaissance came at a striking time. The too-long drive back from dual losses against Harvard and Dartmouth were an incubator for critical analysis of this team’s potential. There is no denying its talent. There is little reason ever to doubt its hard work or resilience. Nevertheless, this contributor voiced concern in the 8,625 minutes between the loss against the Big Green and the victory over the Engineers.
 
There was something missing that was not tangible. It even defied ready qualification. Winners and champions have that edge or killer instinct. This team seemed to lack it. Yes, the sweep at Lynah Rink is reasonably excusable because of bad luck and miserable officiating. Winners and champions still find ways to defy the odds of such outrageous fortune. They make no excuses. They bear down. They go for the jugular.
 
This team seemed good enough to beat any team in the nation before and after its last regular-season stand against Harvard and Dartmouth. It seemed contented with putting forth valiant efforts and endurance. Good teams endure and prove their resiliency. Champions persevere with an edge that produces victory at any cost in the contest because it is in their nature to go for the kill. Cornellians are chosen for that instinct.
 
Cornellians justly demand that their on-ice champions vivify the same. Cornell University is a rebellious institution. It is the only great Eastern university with the daring frontier ethic so engrained into its institutional character. Cornellians must strive valiantly and dare greatly. This requires them to snatch victory to from the clutches of disadvantage and misfortune. Failure may come, but victory must be pursued relentlessly at any price in the contest.
 
Think this is foolish rambling? Ken Dryden ’69 does not. Dryden, a great political-identity theorist, knows that Cornell hockey must play in harmony with the ethos of its represented community to be victorious. He noted that three players from his 1967 Whitelaw Cup and Frozen Four championship team reified Cornell’s ethic most.
 
“Mike Doran, Dave Ferguson, [and] Doug Ferguson were…[p]layers that needed to find a win and players who played with them knew that they would find a way to win.” Did this team have that edge, killer instinct, pulsing carnelian blood through its veins, or whatever else you may call it? This contributor doubted it. Until last Friday.
 
Fittingly, it was the sight of Alex Rauter scorching down the ice on a break-out play that gave Cornell a 1-0 lead at Messa Rink that began to change this writer’s mind. Rauter competes every shift. He stood in the arena with an opportunity. He plunged the dagger…err…puck past a dazed Jake Kupsky. That is when it began to become a “we.”
 
The Red retrieved absolute victory from uncertainty with two late pushes against Union and RPI. Cornell quadrupled its rate of scoring third-period earned goals from January in just two games in the Capital District. The skaters for Cornell University erred and fell short at times during both contests. They won.
 
We are playing like Cornellians headed into the pivotal end to the regular season. Lake Placid and Chicago loom large already for this team. Where Angels Fear to Tread is damned proud to be along for this ride.
 
An element of proving that programs invariably reflect the values of the universities that they represent is present in Friday night’s clash between carnelian and azure. Yale’s offensive clout is as diversified as the institution it represents is economically diverse. Score keepers attributed 11 points to the Elis last weekend. One point was given to a skater not named Frankie DiChiara, John Hayden, or Joe Snively.
 
DiChiara, Hayden, and Snively produce one-half of Yale’s goals. Yale blue quickly will fade to Columbia blue on Saturday if the charges of Coach Schafer and Associated Head Coach Ben Syer can contain and stifle not-Andrew Miller and his two lethal pals. Cornell failed to neutralize Union’s Mike Vecchione. John Hayden poses a similar but less potent threat. The Bulldogs depend on Hayden for one-quarter of their offense.
 
Yale’s offense exhibited as little chemistry as one would expect of a university that is obsessed with producing columnists and poets at the expense of physical scientists and professionals (it is apparently zero-sum in New Haven). The Bulldogs still averaged 2.00 goals per game. Their bite cannot be undersold too greatly.
 
One of its two goals against Quinnipiac occurred while Yale was killing its second five-minute major against its archrivals. Frankie DiChiara brilliantly struck to return the lead to his team during a stretch of 17:45 when Yale was forced to kill 10 minutes of penalties. Yale lost both of its games last weekend. It has signs of the promise for a playoff run. The Elis come to Lynah Rink very hungry for victory.
 
The game on Saturday likely will be heated. Cornell humbled the removers of names on their own campus. Yalies loathe Cornellians with such vitriol that they once produced buttons emblazoned with “Ned Must Go” and dubbed the Cornell-Yale series the “ice war.” It always remains just an opportunity for two precious points for the Red.
 
The Sunday matinee now will feature the Red meeting the eighth Ivy. Cornell will play in its second-oldest active series on Saturday night. Brown holds the distinction of being the last Ivy-League hockey program that Cornell met in intercollegiate competition. The Cornell-Brown series is 48 years younger than Cornell’s next youngest series against an Ivy-League member. The Red and Bears first met in 1959.
 
Brown is an enigma. The Bears do little to defeat themselves. They seem epitomically unlucky. The last spot in ECAC Hockey’s standings belongs to Brown. Brendan Whittet’s team did manage to defeat a Dartmouth team that Cornell could not best. Additionally, Brown held a Quinnipiac team that is accustomed to scoring three goals per game to one goal just last weekend. Misfortune seems to have bogged down the Bears. Lady Luck rarely wears carnelian lately.
 
Cornell presents a balanced attack for its tardy visitors from New England. Alex Rauter, Mitch Vanderlaan, and Trevor Yates are top goal producers on East Hill. They combine for 38.3% of the Red’s goal scoring. The next highest goal producers who have played every game, Anthony Angello, Patrick McCarron, and Jake Weidner, contribute 24.7% of Cornell’s goals. This balance with neither a single line nor a star is emblematic of what has made all championships teams on East Hill the embodiment of selfless, team-oriented domination.
 
Trevor Yates. Say it again. The junior forward sneakily has climbed into a tie for the lead as the team’s gaudiest goal scorer. Yates has become a reliable contributor even if he lacks discernible flash. His preferred flash is the light lit behind his opponent’s sullen netminder. The maneuverings of Yates’s carnelian-and-white 15 honor the way in which champion captain Colin Greening wore the same sweater.
 
The talents of Yates and Jake Weidner with his Moulsonian knack for occupying the pesky areas around the opposition’s net, especially on the power play, will be needed to erase doubts this weekend. Cornell has lost as many games at Lynah Rink as it has on the road despite having played five fewer games on East Hill. The Red wins at a rate 1.23 greater on the road than it has in front of the home-standing Lynah Faithful.
 
Cornell needs to reclaim its home ice. This team is pushing for one of the top four seeds in the Eastern post-season. What bounty will it claim if it achieves that goal? Home ice in the playoffs. It falls to this team and the Faithful to prove the value of such an advantage. Lake Placid would be just two wins away if Cornell grabs one of those spots.
 
But first, Cornell must prove that we can win at home.

​The sling-shot effect on which Cornell has been relying to catapult itself to the top of ECAC Hockey’s standing vanished on Sunday at a little after 6:00 pm. Every team in ECAC Hockey will have played 18 games when the weekend resolves. Weighted standings no longer will be needed. The standings become actual. The potential of the weekend captures the volatility of the standings at this point.
 
The Red could end the weekend seeded as low as fifth or as high as first. Quinnipiac would pass Cornell if the Red earns no points this weekend and the Bobcats defeat Clarkson. A tie between Union and Harvard on Friday, a Union loss on Saturday, a St. Lawrence loss or tie against Princeton, and a Cornell sweep would put Cornell in a tie or three-way tie for first. The importance of future games against St. Lawrence and Union becomes immediately apparent when considering the very real scenario of such a tie. Now, it is time to play hockey again.

​Was the glass of last weekend’s play half empty, half full, or full of something else entirely?
 
Classes just commenced on East Hill, but a curve befitting Cornellian banter and lore is racing toward our preferred hockey team with a certain foreboding. Union will be the best team that the Red has faced all season. If you are in search of empirical support, the still-too-early Pairwise Ranking may be your guide. The Dutchmen would be seeded sixth overall and be a very strong second seed were the Frozen-Four tournament to begin today.
 
The only team that would make the NCAA tournament’s field that Cornell has played this season is Harvard. And, well, I assume if you are reading here, you know how those two games played out for the Red. Trust this contributor, a fate far darker and much worse than even last Friday might befall our beloved Ithacans in Schenectady (and Troy, for that matter).
 
Crimson doubled up the Red over two games. Garnet can do much, much worse.
 
Quick. Which team in ECAC Hockey has two forwards who rank in the top 15 of all players in college hockey in goals-per-game production? It is not Harvard. It is those resurgent and swashbuckling Dutchmen whom the Schafemen will face this Friday. Mike Vecchione and Spencer Foo are those two players.
 
Vecchione and Foo (does that not sound like an interesting fusion dish?) respectively rank first and third nationally in absolute number of points tallied this season. Sebastian Vidmar is the third head of these hounds of Hell. His contributions and he are not to be underestimated. Numbers 21 and 15 may get most of the attention, but number 27 is a well-rounded threat.
 
Vidmar contributed to two go-ahead goals against Boston University at Agganis Arena. He put the first in the net on his own. He was the helper on the second. The latter would have stood as the winner over the currently projected third-ranked team in the Pairwise Ranking before the usual creativity of officiating in Hockey-East venues flipped the result. Taking down programs with silver and gold seems to be something for which our crab-named foe has developed a knack. His assist helped put Union over Michigan. At Yost. Again.
 
Speaking of Pairwise Rankings, Union, Michigan, and Yost, one thing sprints to the forefront of this writer’s mind. He finds it foolishly early to consider Pairwise Rankings at this point. They matter once: the moment before John Buccigross reads a team’s name on Selection Sunday. That’s the only time. However, the players on this team whether they admit it publicly or not are keeping an eye on the Pairwise Rankings after narrowly missing the Frozen-Four fields of 2014 and 2016.
 
How has Cornell fared lately? Well, after dropping two at home, the Red tumbled from a projected third seed in the NCAA tournament to the fourth team out of the projected tournament today. Losses to Harvard and Dartmouth bearishly plunged Cornell’s stock from an estimated 11th to 17th in Pairwise Ranking. How does this relate to Union, Michigan, and Yost?
 
The last time that Cornell made the national tournament was 2012. It was on the kamikaze of taking three points out of Union that the Big Red was lofted to a destined encounter with the Wolverines in the 2012 Frozen Four First Round in Green Bay. Why was tying Union at Messa Rink and defeating Union at Lynah Rink worth so much in the 2012 Pairwise Ranking? The Dutchmen were perched highly in anticipated Pairwise Rankings because they had taken a victory from the skaters with winged helmets at Yost in October. The situation is nearly identical this season.
 
So, for any members of this 100th hockey team to represent Cornell University who have their focus on engineering a Providence- or Yale-like hacking of the NCAA-tournament field en route to the Red’s elusive third modern national title, the time is this weekend. Union is quite the sexy piñata of Pairwise goodies sitting at sixth in the currently meaningless Ranking. This team has two whacks at it. If it wants to all but guarantee a trip to the 16-team jamboree at the end of March, one-up the 2011-12 team and take four, not three, points out of the Dutchmen.
 
There is another game that is arguably more crucial this weekend for the same considerations.
 
Where Angels Fear to Tread tweeted and referred to the Engineers as a “bear trap” last weekend. This is not to imply that RPI is a trap game in the tradition sense. It is more to highlight the fact that Seth Appert, for all the things that he may be faulted as a bench boss in Troy, has ensnared Harkness’ glorious rebound consistently as of late. Cornell has not defeated the Engineers in its last six tries. No player on this current roster has ever defeated them.
 
This plight becomes more grave when one considers the tournament-hacking ambitions of this current team. RPI is currently 57th (yes, 5-7) of the 60 teams ranked in the Pairwise. It does not matter what Cornell does to Union if it surrenders a point to RPI. This contributor much rather would prefer the purer way of earning a berth to the national tournament, winning something (i.e. the Whitelaw Cup), but if the skaters on this team want to make the tournament at all costs to test their mettle, surrendering even a point to the Engineers is a dangerous proposition.
 
The most alarming part about RPI is that it carries that Pairwise albatross while having flush potential. Lou Nanne, one of the most entertaining skaters to watch in ECAC Hockey, Evan Tironese, and Riley Bourbonnais, a clutch player from Western New York who is quietly on a goal-scoring streak over his last three games, still are institutionalized. RPI defeated Clarkson and Harvard; things that Cornell could not do. Coach Schafer tabbed the Engineers as beginning to come on lately. The concern is that Appert may flip the cherry switch and further derail this carnelian freight train to the rabid cries of the fans at Houston Field House.
 
Derailment is truly the concern nowadays, is it not, reader? Disappointment, heck, even despair, began to set in last weekend during the second third-period debacle. Yes, this writer knows fully well that the unraveling against Dartmouth was not on this team but a horrible series of calls from officials. However, slumps around this time of year damned the talent of the 2014-15 team and the trajectory of the 2015-16 team. The fear is real.
 
The excuse of bad bounces and bad breaks is neither good nor legitimate. Sometimes, when one sits down for a prelim, a professor will ask something that he promised expressly he would not ask. One never chooses the terms of examination. Their revelations of character remain true. This team wants to seek a fourth national title for Cornell. It is all but a fixation.
 
Ask Jack Eichel how one bad bounce prevented him from carrying his team to a national title. Last weekend was a shame, but great teams are defined by winning when the odds, including the arc of poor officiating, are against them. Excuses graduated with the Class of 2013, the last team to hoist a Whitelaw Cup.
 
One loss became two losses. It cannot be allowed to become three or four losses. The Lynah Faithful hold their breath as Cornell plays its last novel set of travel partners this weekend in its greatest tests to date.
 
Cornell has the talent to achieve its goals, but will an unraveling occur?
 
Alex Rauter is a hero of near-Paolinian proportions. He delivered a stellar goal against Harvard that was memorable. He is becoming a leader in offensive generation in ways that likely were not expected to fall to him. He does all of the little things at each end of the ice on seemingly every shift. However, Sam Paolini won. If this team seeks a favorable legacy, it needs to find a way to win and vault itself into a more secure spot in ECAC Hockey’s standings.
 
Reader, this writer has to be honest. The trends of the last two years with slumps in January and February have him concerned about the tasks that lie before this team on Friday and Saturday. Union is alarmingly good. The Dutchmen are playing at a level and with a consistency that makes them more fearsome than their 2013-14 edition that won the Frozen Four. Cornell has not found its upside. Union has found its form.
 
This coming weekend is certainly unsettling. This contributor is hopefully concerned.
 
This writer is unabashed in admitting that, right now, Cornell-Union is the best non-Harvard series in which Cornell plays. It is great hockey. It brings great history. Even better, it brings recent and relevant playoff history. It has great fans.

​Cornell sits currently fourth in the effective standings for ECAC Hockey. Union is first by virtue of the Dutchmen holding two games in hand over St. Lawrence. The Red has the benefit of holding onto three games in its palm. Cornell needs to shore up its status as a top-four team if it wants to make a trip to Lake Placid. Harvard plays one game this weekend. A Harvard loss and a Cornell sweep would put the Red above the Crimson again. However, proving how much ground Cornell ceded last weekend, Cornell cannot pass the Crimson this weekend without the Cantabs giving the Ithacans an opening.

Cornell is entering the final stretch of the regular season. With only six games remaining for every team, the Red has clinched a playoff spot. Home ice, however, is still up for grabs. The top eight teams look to be crystallizing, but there is still room for the Red to fall as low as #8 if it fails to garner a single conference point in its remaining games. The playoffs may begin at the end of February, but the race for seeding continues. Which teams would be in the playoffs and which matchups would occur if the Red hosted playoffs this weekend instead of a Headway Foundation and Do It for Daron doubleheader?

Number one overall seed Clarkson, still with the Red as its lone ECAC Hockey loss, would host the Engineers of RPI in the first round. Fellow North Country team St. Lawrence would host Yale. Cornell at number 3 would host travel partner Colgate. And the feline travel pair would see their games at Hobey Baker Rink. While these games would undoubtedly be exciting to watch, nothing right now is set in stone. One-conference-loss Clarkson could fall as low as #7 in the standings. It is possible for six different teams to finish #1. Even though it looks as if the eight playoff teams are decided, even 12th place Union, Cornell’s first opponent of the weekend, could still climb as high as a tie for #7. That’s right, readers. Union could climb to seven with Clarkson being able to fall that low.

No one is eliminated yet, and no one should be taken lightly. Cornell’s remaining six games will be a tough test to help ready the Red for the most wonderful time of the year. Aforementioned Union begins the six-game test. RPI ends our weekend. While the Engineers are below 0.500 both in conference and overall, one of their six conference wins comes against the Red in a tight 1-0 loss at Houston Field House just before Halloween. If you think you see Red goal lights, take heed of the warning. The other team who shouts “Let’s Go Red!” (Or in their case, “Let’s Go, Red!”) is looking for the series sweep for only the second time in history. It would be a good tin anniversary for the Engineers. Let’s not be so generous.

The final regular-season road trip for the Rouge finds our intrepid women traveling to Yale and Brown. Yale is presently on a nice little tear, having won four games in a row. The Elis and the Brownies face a tough test with a trip to the feline petting zoo this weekend, but that will make the Red’s trip to Ingalls and Meehan all the more challenging. Every opponent is battle tested and Yale looks to climb from its spot at number seven to the possibility of home ice while Brown looks to claw its way into the tournament.

How would we prefer our regular season to end other than with a chance at number one? (Possibly beating Harvard, but it would get old if that happened every year, right?) Yes, the Red will have the North Country visit Central New York when Senior weekend occurs. If the number one overall seed is still in contention (rooting interests: Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Quinnipiac, Colgate), the Red will have its home ice to seek a possible sweep of Clarkson and a much-needed split with the Saints.

The regular season is shaping up to have an exciting ride. We all know what Cornell hockey is built for, but enjoy the road there. These next six games should have a special feel to them.

The playoffs are coming. Are you ready?

You heard it. This contributor heard it. The great college-hockey community heard it. We all heard it.
 
The chants of “we want Harvard” rang out in Lynah Rink.
 
They chased away quickly the uplift felt from a hard-fought and exhilarating battle against the Saints of St. Lawrence University. St. Lawrence is the class of ECAC Hockey this season. The North Countrymen at Canton’s juncture on Route 11 climbed to the top of the conference’s standings. They have ceded little ground to any program. Union is the exception, but the Dutchmen are on a tear through the conference this season.
 
St. Lawrence has met defeat in only two conference games this season. One occurred last Saturday. Can you name the other? The poles of ECAC Hockey’s greatest rivalry are the subset of ECAC Hockey teams that have defeated St. Lawrence. Even Union settled for a tie on its own ice.
 
You sure you want Harvard?
 
The Crimson are coming to town on Friday no matter whether its presence is desired or shunned. Harvard climbed to its all-time highest ranking in the popularity contest that are the polls. Remember what Mike Shiner said in Bird Man about popularity? Well, never mind, if you do not. Harvard proceeded to lose its next three contests.
 
Those games occurred over a five-day span on the road. Hey, when your program represents Harvard University, why bother send your student-athletes to class? Opponents nearly tripled up the Crimson over that stretch run. The stumble began with a 4-0 shutout against RPI. Polls matter.
 
Harvard regained its footing last weekend with a win over a Brown team that the Lynah Faithful must remember is far better than its record. Ted Donato’s team settled for a tie in its last outing.
 
Cornell and Harvard enter this contest, the 149th of The Game, in similar situations. Neither is quite as heralded. Special teams tell this disparate tale. Harvard is the team with the most lethal power play in the nation. Check the statistics. It is true.
 
Harvard is reliant upon its power play for offense. Nearly one-third, 32.9%, of the goals that this talent-flush Crimson squad has scored have benefited from the advantage of at least one extra skater. The health of the Crimson power play is the success of its team. The recent 1-3-1 skid is a product of opponents neutralizing this advantage of the Cantabs. Harvard’s power-play unit has grown complacent in the season’s second half.
 
Harvard’s lethality on the man advantage has suffered a 47.6% setback relative to its season’s average since the Engineers shut out the then-second ranked Crimson. Harvard has been only the nation’s 38th-most dangerous team when playing on the power play since January 13. Harvard converted only once on seven opportunities last weekend.
 
The carnelian and white have little reason for confidence despite the recent decline of Harvard’s power play. The penalty kill of East Hill has floundered as of late on the ice even if it has not yielded significant statistical decline. Cornell too readily could help Harvard find its stride on the power play.
 
The North-Country pair that visited Lynah Rink last weekend made opponents pay for their infractions 16.24% of the time before they played Cornell. The Red allowed the Golden Knights to convert midway through the second period on the man advantage. Cornell ended the weekend allowing the travel partners from Potsdam and Canton to convert on 16.67% of their power-play opportunities.
 
The Red penalty killers allowed Clarkson and St. Lawrence to improve their rate of capitalizing when given a power play. Yes, perhaps Cornell’s allowing the Golden Knights and Saints to convert 0.43% more frequently is insignificant considering the small sample size of opportunities provided in one weekend and the large differences in percent that result from but slight changes.
 
Reader, you think this is needless alarmism? Consider if a skate, not a kick, directed the puck into the net against an early exposed penalty-killing unit for Cornell against St. Lawrence. Then, Cornell would have allowed the North Country to more than double its man-advantage efficiency over the course of the weekend.
 
Cornell’s penalty kill seemed lost when called into service once against Quinnipiac. Figures tease out the reality that Cornell delivered only an average penalty-killing performance against Clarkson and St. Lawrence. Average play will not defeat Harvard. Average performances do not win championships.
 
The forecheck of the Red continued to impress with its relentless assault against St. Lawrence on Saturday. The defense has its lapses at times. Clarkson would not have been able to leap out to one-goal and two-goal leads if it did not. Cornell’s defensive schemes held in check and frustrated a St. Lawrence team that systematically has dominated the neutral zone against most opponents with its penchants for two-line passes and break-out plays. The Saints grew noticeably irritated with Cornell’s suffocation of that sustenance of their offense.
 
Friday presents Paddy with another opportunity to shine and prove that he is ECAC Hockey’s best blueliner. Harvard’s freshman defenseman, Adam Fox, leads all blueliners in terms of his rate of producing points per game. Cornell’s senior defenseman checks in at third in the same category. Both recorded a point when they first met. Friday’s contest will present both with the chance to settle which defenseman best runs his offense from the blue line.
 
Coach Schafer’s unfamiliarity with Lewis Zerter-Gossage’s name cannot become a trend in this series. Harvard is the program of selfish, individual efforts and glory-seeking plays. Cornell is the program of selfless team work that often sacrifices the individuals acclaim for the benefit of the program and University. It is Cornell, not Harvard, that should produce the unexpected stars in this game. If the Red cannot, it likely will fall again to Harvard this season.
 
Anthony Angello is far from an unexpected star. If anything, he is one of the usual suspects. The sophomore forward had not found the back of the net since Cornell’s first game against Miami in December. Thankfully, he found it again. It will continue hopefully Friday and days subsequent.
 
It was Angello’s defensive responsibility in the Clarkson game in particular that stood out to the contributors of Where Angels Fear to Tread. He thwarted break-away attempts. He grinded out opponents and wore them down with aggressive backchecking and forechecking. His first goal in seven games was a much-deserved product of such efforts.
 
The elation of a victory or deflation from a loss against Cornell’s nemesis at Lynah Rink can doom the Red’s efforts in a Saturday contest against Dartmouth. This Cornell team cannot afford a letdown that gives the Big Green from Hanover points. The Paradox of 1911 could ensnare the Big Red this weekend as it has for far too long.
 
How long has it been since Cornell defeated Dartmouth on East Hill? If you said five years, you are correct. Dartmouth has left Lynah Rink with points in every meeting in Ithaca for the past half-decade. That drought needs to be inundated this weekend.
 
No matter the result on Friday, Cornell needs to prove that it can look past the outcome and narrows it focus on the next opponent. Like last Saturday, the sense among the Faithful and within the program should be the same. The Lynah Faithful and players alike must enjoy the struggles of the moment and the satisfaction of victory. However, once hands are shaken, only one questions remains no matter whom was last vanquished: Who’s next?
 
Speaking of droughts without wins, has it really been two years since Cornell defeated Harvard? The Red has gone 0-2-2 since Eric Freschi got the better of Steve Michalek with just 41 seconds in lingering regulation in an instant-classic tilt between the historic foes.
 
Who’s the next hero? It is time for another instant classic. It is time to beat Harvard again.
 
Yes, we do. We want Harvard.

​Cornell won the first of the five games against teams that occupied a higher rung in ECAC Hockey’s standing when the Red began its season-closing conference slate. The second of those five games comes on Friday. Harvard’s recent slide places the Crimson just behind the Red in the effective standings weighted by rate of earning conference points. A victory over Harvard would jettison Cornell farther above their rival. All the positives of that can be undone on Saturday if the Paradox of 1911 leads to another loss to Dartmouth. If Cornell had mustered but one more point against the Big Green in Hanover, the Red would be outpacing the requirements of the Law of Schafer (earning points at a rate equivalent to sweeping at home and splitting on the road) and positioned second in the effective conference standings.
 
Cornell can undo that damage this weekend, especially with St. Lawrence’s hosting Union amid rumors within the Saints’s program that Gavin Bayreuther may not return this season. The path to Lake Placid is a treacherous, ice-covered one. Cornell still has half of its conference games to etch into stone or erase all hopes of a bye.

​Home is where the hatred is. The Cornell-Harvard rivalry is no different. The friendly confines of the respective programs are where fans feel emboldened to unleash the sheer pandemonium that their ids’s baser sentiments toward their institutional foes direct. Home is where rabbits, chickens, fish, sharks, and corn streak through the air and hazard defilement of vigilant banners earned often in legendary clashes between these champions.
 
The irony of the success of the hockey programs of Cornell University and Harvard University is that the greatest tilts between the nemeses have played out at venues that neither calls home. Surely, the Lynah Faithful make the Crimson keenly aware of their presence no matter the venue. The scornful eye of far-off exhibitors throttles the rites of college hockey’s greatest rivalry. Things are far less tame when Cornell and Harvard brave each other’s rinks in the first rounds of the ECAC Hockey tournament.
 
A playoff series in your enemy’s building is something distinct. Cornell and Harvard get to move on from the oppressive expectations of their series when they meet in the regular season no matter the result. The same is not true in the first rounds of the post-season.
 
The sound of the rink door slamming and latching behind players offers no escape. A heavy sigh accompanies the realization that you’re going to have to face those…Lou Reycroft had a word for Harvard (think William the Conqueror)…again. Tomorrow. You cannot escape the misfortunes and ill choices of the previous night upon rolling over from a sleepless night in a strange bed. Instead, you have to brace to face the same despair once more.
 
Seeding has visited this fortune upon the Cornell-Harvard rivalry on five occasions. These episodes in the long-running spectacle of the series could be best known as The Ones with Two-Night Stands. The players and sets in these entries befit an emotionally charged institutional feud between nemeses grounded in Cornell’s resolution to redeem American higher education from the depths of ignominy to which Harvard plunged it.
 
Wearers of carnelian and crimson assume with alacrity the dramatis personae that outrageous fortune assigns them.

​The stage determines the heroes. The hosts in such conflicts are the protagonists, ask Jack Norworth. Faithful, fret not the bend of this piece from Where Angels Fear to Tread, of the five meetings in the first rounds of the playoff, Cornell has hosted four of them. Harvard was the home team but once.
 
That once was a memorable series in March 1994. Bright Hockey Center hosted the Red in the ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal. The full experience of Lynah East was not born yet. Harvard was preferred. The Crimson more than rose to the expectations to deliver victory at home. No Cantab on the home team’s roster remembered the embarrassment of elimination at Lynah Rink in 1990. Some played as though they suffered it personally.
 
Steve Martins turned on the red light often during that series for the Crimson. The junior contributed five points on the Crimson’s five goals in the final game of the series. Two goals and three assists made Martins’s performance something of lore. The second of the junior’s markers came as Martins lost his edge, fell to his knees, and still tucked the vulcanized disk behind Andy Bandurski.
 
The rivalry’s heat regularly melts the ice and costs the sure footing of home-team heroes. Doug Stienstra sprang a three-on-two trap against Harvard and led home-standing Cornell in the 2000 ECAC Hockey First Round. The Red forward lost his footing as he charged toward J. R. Prestifilippo. The reward already was won. The puck went behind the Crimson netminder as Stienstra recollected himself to celebrate with his team. That goal won the opening contest of the 2000 ECAC Hockey First Round at Lynah Rink. It was not his last.
 
Martins’s five points against Cornell would seem sizable. Doug Stienstra’s performance in the 2000 post-season matched his line identically with two goals and three assists. The senior from British Columbia twice had the opportunity to end Harvard’s season at Lynah Rink. He leads all players in these five on-campus playoff meetings with six points when one considers his performances in the 2000 ECAC Hockey First Round and 1997 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal. Stienstra was not the last to tie Martins’s performance in the rivalry’s playoff series.
 
It was against Harvard that “the dream-crushing, soul-devouring juggernaut” wielded its club most heavily. The Red toyed with the Crimson as a cat does a cornered mouse in the 2010 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal. Nick D’Agostino mounted a write-in campaign to become the next Crimson Killer after Doug Krantz’s graduation left the post vacant for a season. D’Agostino drove a rebound from Mike Devin past Kyle Richter for game one’s winner.
 
The freshman blueliner was not finished. Blake Gallagher and Tyler Roeszler flashed speed as D’Agostino and they caught the Crimson in a malaise. This breakaway goal for the newcomer typified his break-out performance in a pivotal series. It was not the most prolific carnelian-and-white performance of the weekend.
 
Western Canada continued to treat the Red well on March 12 and 13 in 2010. Riley Nash joined Steve Martins and Doug Stienstra as players in the rivalry who recorded five points in a single series between the historic foes. The junior achieved this elevated feat behind two goals and three assists as his predecessors did. Blake Gallagher and Colin Greening rounded out the four Cornellians who averaged more than a point per game in the 2010 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal. It was not the Red’s most prolific performance against the Crimson in a post-season series.
 
The 1990 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal is the historic and conceivably most important playoff series that Cornell and Harvard have played. Five wearers of the carnelian and white produced at a rate greater than one point per game as the Cantabs made a two-game stand in Ithaca. The names are ones that one would expect, some are still seen at Lynah Rink today, Ross Lemon, Joe Dragon, Kent Manderville, Casey Jones, and Doug Derraugh.
 
Cornell never gave Harvard a chance to play its game in the second night of that series. Harvard broke a truism of hockey: Never leave Doug Derraugh open in front of your net, especially if you are Harvard. Joe Dragon with the hardened calculation of a Cornellian saw Derraugh alone in front of the Crimson cage. Dragon connected. Derraugh did what Brian McCutcheon always expected of him. He snapped the release.
 
It pierced the virgin air of Lynah Rink. The star junior forward opened scoring just 51 seconds into the contest. Derraugh had scored the winner the previous night. The wearer of the carnelian 17 deservedly went on to win the first so-named Crimson Cup. No player from either program has surpassed Derraugh’s three goals against Harvard in the 1990 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal in any of the other four rivalry-laden post-season series.

​Villainy is often a product of perspective and interest. The greatest continuous villain for the Lynah Faithful from 1971 through 1990 was Harvard head coach Bill Cleary. Cleary was the waiver of handshakes, complainer of suggestively shaped media that broadcasted that “Harvard Sucks,” and dodger of “errant clearing attempts.” If there was a golem on which the Lynah Faithful directed all of their rage for nearly two decades, it was Bill Cleary.
 
Cleary won the 1989 NCAA National Championship. Harvard and he had designs on defending that title in Cleary’s announced last season behind Harvard’s bench. The Crimson stumbled to a sixth seed in the Eastern tournament. It would brave a purer hue on East Hill in the 1990 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal. Cleary’s career ended at Lynah Rink.
 
One of Bill Cleary’s last sights as head coach was the burning image of the scoreboard above his exit at Lynah Rink reading Cornell four, Harvard two. This most loathsome of enemies was not without a supporting cast in that series. It was a frustrated ensemble on Saturday. Harvard chased the game and drew numerous foolish penalties in trying to endure the punishment of the Lynah Faithful and Red. The Crimson targeted skilled players like Joe Dragon.
 
Penalty killing became a necessity for a Harvard team that was nursing the hopes of continuing their head coach’s career but one more day. Kevin Sneddon for the Crimson botched a clearing attempt late in the second period.  The fatigued pass bounced off of his teammate and into the slot. Ryan Hughes marked the error of the Crimson’s ways.
 
Harvard only would dent the three-goal lead that Cornell enjoyed at that point. The scuffling and battling continued despite the Crimson’s narrowing the lead to two goals. Ted Donato was thrown from the contest with less than one minute remaining. The passions of the rivalry clearly overcame the future head coach of Harvard.
 
Infestations of penalties are common to the post-seasons between these fiercest of rivals. The 1997 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal lived that reality. The quick development of that series ironically occurred without the assistance of special teams. Brett Chodrow knotted the first game for Harvard with an impressive breakaway down the left wing that surprised Cornell’s usually stellar Jason Elliott. Ethan Philpott gave the Crimson a lead with less than 25 minutes in regulation.
 
It fell to the Red’s Vinnie Auger to rectify this cosmic wrong. A one-timer on which Doug Stienstra provided his first playoff point against Harvard bested Prestifilippo. The game progressed to a five-minute overtime. In a quirk of the format of that era’s ECAC Hockey tournament, the game ended in a tie. It is the only time that Harvard has been greeted with fish and left without a loss in the playoffs at Lynah Rink.
 
The Cornell squad that invaded Bright Hockey Center in March 1994 was not up to the task of grappling with a waning but still invested Crimson fanbase and defeating the most recent Harvard team to win a game in the national tournament. The fact that the Red relied upon a roster with only two seniors and 21 of 28 skaters playing in their freshman or sophomore seasons did not alleviate the sting of a consecutive losses in which its rival scored five goals. Cornell bore the fruits of talent, but it was not ripe yet for results.
 
Future heroes of the Cornell-Harvard series stood out to the Lynah Faithful who made the trek to Bright Hockey Center. Mike Sancimino scored late in the first period of game two to tie the contest, 2-2. Harvard’s ultimate victory did not detract from the fact that within two years’s time, Sancimino would elevate and tuck the puck behind Tripp Tracy for a winner over Cornell’s archrival in the 1996 Whitelaw Cup Final. 1994 was not the Red’s time.
 
Humbling defeat befell the Crimson at Lynah Rink one year after Cornell smothered Harvard in Lake Placid. Dominic Moore put forth a valiant effort, perhaps the best of any series-losing player in the history of the rivalry, with four assists as a freshman in his team’s most hostile environment. Harvard returned to Cambridge with matching 4-3 losses.
 
An unstoppable force proved to have no equal in the 2010 ECAC Hockey tournament. The role of antagonist was given to Harvard. The skaters for the Crimson did the best that they could. They did better than any other team that met Cornell in the Eastern post-season. Harvard scored the one goal that the Red allowed en route to the 2010 Whitelaw Cup. The answer to the obscure trivia fact of which player prevented the 2009-10 Cornell hockey team from going through its ECAC Hockey season with a perfect record of allowing no goals was Pier-Olivier Michaud.
 
Michaud’s effort was as inadequate relative to the task of defeating your rivals in their building as Ted Donato’s ability to will a win there. The task before Donato was no small one. He deserves little personal blame. Crimson teams have endured Lynah Rink four times in the playoffs. Cornell swept all of them. Four different coaches with varying temperaments and styles led those four teams. The result never deviated.
 
The predictability of result stands in stark contrast to the variation in head coaches on the Crimson side. Considerable consistency is a hallmark of the Red’s bench during these five post-season series between Cornell and Harvard. Mike Schafer has been behind the bench for four of the five on-campus playoff encounters in the rivalry. He was an assistant coach to Brian McCutcheon during the 1990 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal and served as head coach for the 1997, 2000, and 2010 installments. The stick-breaker’s hiatus in Kalamazoo prevented his coaching the 1994 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal. Would carnelian-clad villainy have triumphed in Cambridge otherwise?

​The ebbs and flows of games raise hopes and descend spectators into despair.  The playoffs only aggravate these oscillations. The post-season played in one’s own building ups the ante even further. When Cornell and Harvard meet in all things, the stakes are high. On-campus playoff series between the institutional foils never could be immune from these trends.
 
There is the horror of inevitability. Harvard felt that before braving Lynah Rink in March 2010. Kyle Richter foreshadowed the inescapable days before that series, “we can’t let the crowd get us off our game. Their crowd always gives them a definite home-ice advantage and it plays a bit of a factor in our game.” Alex Biega, a captain whose career ended on the ice of East Hill, predicted that “against a defense like that, we need to have one of our best nights.”
 
Harvard might have had one of its best nights. Its result of scoring one goal in the ECAC Hockey tournament certainly was superior to any that any other team in the conference’s field could muster against that tournament’s rolling colossus. The 100th year of the Cornell-Harvard rivalry closed on March 13, 2010 with the Red sweeping the Crimson in four games for the first time in the series’s history.
 
The 1993-94 season suffered Harvard no regular-season losses in Cambridge. Cornell arrived in March with Harvard having not lost a conference game since early December. The Red wrested control of the game from circumstance early in both contests. Cornell scored first each night. The daunting task before Cornell wore on its young roster and surrendered control of the game on late goals in the second period twice. The second night’s dagger plunged with just 16 seconds remaining in the second period.
 
Mark Mazzoleni promised his charges in the 2000 ECAC Hockey First Round that “the crowd is only a factor when Cornell starts getting some momentum” and Harvard “can take them out of the game.” Tim Stay, who would end his career a year later in a post-season loss to Cornell in Lake Placid, explain that Harvard “get[s] fired up by the crowd as much as [Cornell does]” while adding that “the best sound to hear there is silence.” Harvard had a plan.
 
The Crimson appeared to execute it in each game of the quarterfinal. Harvard scored in the first ten minutes of each game to take each game’s first lead. Mazzoleni must have seemed quite like The Grinch upon hearing the soothing song of the Whos down in Whoville the morning after his nefarious plot. Much like the Whos without presents on Christmas Day, the Lynah Faithful took their team’s trailing as a dare to impel it on to victory. Harvard lost both contests after holding a lead when during the regular season it owned a 9-2-2 mark given similar advantage.
 
The stakes never were higher than they were in the 1990 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal. The weekend series between nemeses had attached a retirement stipulation for Bill Cleary’s career. Cleary had reason to be confident. His Harvard teams had swept Cornell in the regular season. They also had done it nine consecutive times before the season. No player on Cornell’s roster knew how it felt to defeat Harvard.
 
Unfortunately for Harvard, the Red recognized this. Kent Manderville lamented that his teammates and he “have a lot to prove [because] we haven’t won a big game all year.” Assistant coach Schafer and head coach McCutcheon could guide their team as to how it felt to bring victory over Harvard to “our noble alma mater.”
 
Harvard’s run of consecutive wins over Cornell broke in that series. The career of one Harvard coach ended. Harvard’s future coach was ejected. Legends were writ.

​A rivalry of such stakes between two institutions that compete in all things when given the chance for release in the medium of sports tends to take upon too serious or stoic of a tone. Spectators of the on-campus post-season meetings between Cornell and Harvard tend to keep things in perspective and remember that such contests, as emotionally charged as they may be, are a form of entertainment. Some of the most memorable events have occurred as a spectacle off the playing surface of the series.
 
The anomalous playoff tie between Cornell and Harvard, a result that belligerents of the rivalry have found unacceptable since January 28, 1911, began with an exuberant chant. Jamie Papp for the Red corralled the puck from a scrum along the boards in Harvard’s end. He cut toward the net and jabbed the puck into the Crimson net.
 
Cornell took 29 seconds to score in game one. The Lynah Faithful sung the praises of Papp’s effort. Chants of “thirty seconds” rattled off of the rafters. Many Harvard players likely wished that the Faithful would restrain their involvement to mere verbal barrage. Such likely never will be the case.
 
A particularly ambitious member of the Lynah Faithful procured a much larger fish to hurl at the Cantabs before the commencement of the 2000 ECAC Hockey First Round. That March was the first time that a shark greeted Cornell’s visitors from the Bay State before line-ups were announced. Harvard players traditionally expect this form of harassment when on the ice.
 
The Faithful have not felt restricted to in-game antics when Harvard braves Lynah Rink in the playoffs. Harvard did not benefit from restful nights in their hotel in Central New York in 1997. Some Cornell partisans obtained phone numbers to the hotel rooms in which the players from Cambridge were staying. These members of the Faithful proceeded to prank call those rooms throughout the night.
 
Bill Cleary demanded and received special attention through the series. His last hurrah, the 1990 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal, was no different. Cleary realized the demoralizing toll that the Lynah Faithful had exacted on his squad in the first game of the series. The Crimson’s head coach elected to suffer it firsthand.
 
Cleary joined the Big Red Pep Band and the Lynah Faithful on the bleachers during warm-ups with a sousaphone positioned over both ears. He grinned the entire time. The Faithful in turn bade him adieu with chants of “goodbye, bald guy” in his last moments as coach of the Crimson.
 
The few fans of Harvard who brave Lynah Rink rarely are confident enough to lay their allegiance bare let alone insult their hosts. That was different in March 2000. Crimson fans decked themselves in “Cornell Sucks” shirts to watch their hopes be dashed in a memorable installment of the series.
 
Elation so overcame those assembled at Lynah Rink on March 11, 2000 that they flooded the ice to celebrate with their carnelian and white-clad victors. Coach Schafer referred to the delirium as “a neat, college hockey environment” that “puts the players in touch with the fans.” The crowd need not literally spill onto the ice to have a direct impact on the contest.
 
Game two of the 2010 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal witnessed the absolute wilting of the Crimson in the face of a harassing wall that told Cornellian truths of Harvard’s being a safety school and grade inflation. Harvard leveled only three shots at Ben Scrivens in the first period. Rubber struck the savior from Spruce Grove only seven times in the second stanza. The boast of a proud member of the Lynah Faithful, “you should see what we can do in our own house with a week to plan and a few buckets of red paint,” presaged another post-season loss at Lynah Rink for Harvard a decade later.
 
The meeting of March 2010 was a fitting end to a season in which The Harvard Crimson designated Cornell Harvard's most hated foe. Harvard dubbed Lynah Rink a “house of horrors” that housed Harvard’s greatest rival on March 10, 2000. Lynah Rink deserves this distinction as it is the most common place for Harvard’s season to end on the road.
 
The Crimson and their eponymous periodical saw the value in measuring oneself by an institution that inspires your own to become something greater. Such foresight recently absented itself from The Crimson. Predictably, complacency fills its void.

​The game ends. Generations of fans, alumni, and players who love this most special of rivalries return to their homes. No matter whether it was uplifting or depressing, there is an emotional release that follows each installment. The outpouring of emotion from a post-season victory over one’s nemesis lasts for years. This contributor speaks from personal experience. The feeling is no different for the players who wage these unforgettable battles.
 
Seniors of the victorious Harvard in 1994 would have preferred to encounter no team more than Cornell in the playoffs. Sean McCann summarized that “it’s a good way to go out” that he would not trade. On the opposite side three years later, the emotion of Crimson players could not be contained. Brett Chodrow maintained that the series is always special because “no matter what the situation and who is where in the standing, it will always be about the Cornell-Harvard rivalry.”
 
The altruism of two nemeses came out at the close of the 1990 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal. C.J. Young from Harvard hugged Dave Burke and Tim Vanini of Cornell during the post-game handshakes. Bill Cleary did not wave his team off the ice that time. Both sides remarked at the class with which both sides carried themselves.
 
Bill Cleary after a humbling defeat to his alma mater’s archrival ran across the ice to give Coach McCutcheon a hug. It was to say that if it had to end against someone, it was best that it was you. Nearly three decades leave that feeling among the programs unchanged.
 
Before those handshakes and embraces, there are hatred and emotion. Always.

​The men of the carnelian and white are returning home for the first time in the new year. The new year can mean only one thing: The Red is in hot pursuit of seeding. Formidable Clarkson and a surprisingly steady St. Lawrence chase our preferred team back onto the ice of Lynah Rink.
 
Last weekend was exactly what this Cornell team needed. The fears of a postseason-dooming slump are slightly allayed (for another week). Readers may call me a pessimist. However, a team is only as good as its next sweep, split, or swept (? yeesh), and programs are only as good as the dust that they can keep off of their banners.
 
Cornell beat a Quinnipiac team that has mustered only four favorable results in 12 attempts since leaving Central New York in November. The Tigers of Princeton meanwhile are six games below 0.500 in ECAC Hockey. This is not to diminish the accomplishment of last weekend’s road sweep. It was a big deal.
 
Trust me, there was much jubilance and celebration at the Tower-overlooking lair of Where Angels Fear to Tread after the last second expired on Saturday. A lens of perspective is needed. The road only gets rougher.
 
Clarkson and St. Lawrence are two and seven (yes, seven) games above 0.500 in ECAC Hockey so far this season. The North Countrymen have produced a 0.625 winning percentage since the page of the calendar changed days ago. Union’s lone blemishes on the ECAC Hockey regular season, a loss and tie, were inflicted at the hands of the Golden Knights and Saints in Schenectady. Yeah, things are about to get real…perspective-y.
 
Clarkson may have given Union its only loss in ECAC Hockey, but it is St. Lawrence that is poised to be the behemoth this season. The Saints are looking to get over that recent Carvelian hump of getting to the Whitelaw Cup Semifinals and then losing in overtime. The Laurentians have the talent to do it.
 
Gavin Bayreuther is a star of the game. His blistering overtime-forcing goal against Colgate in the 2015 ECAC Hockey Semifinal surely would have been one for the history books…if St. Lawrence had won its seventh Whitelaw Cup in Lake Placid that weekend. He is a star defenseman who leads the Saints in points still despite missing his team’s last four games. The rub therein lies.
 
The Lynah Faithful will not be treated to the display of Bayreuther on Saturday night. The dazzling defender likely will not appear even at Cornell’s game at Appleton in February. For better or worse, the Big Red likely will not face a Bayreuther-led Saints squad unless the teams meet in the post-season. The score as to which defensemen, Gavin or Paddy, drives his team’s offense with more aplomb will need to wait to be decided at another date. The two rank as the second- and third-most point producing defensemen in ECAC Hockey.
 
The services of the Saints’s leading goal scorer, Mike Marnell, were absent from the ice last weekend. Reliable contributor Jacob Pritchard returned to the line-up against Yale after a four-game hiatus. St. Lawrence has been playing with less than its ideal line-up considering its roster and remained dangerous. Another talent is why.
 
Mark Morris, varyingly of ECAC Hockey fame and infamy, followed Route 11 away from his previous coaching layover toward Ithaca and landed in Canton. Morris’s history with Cornell, much like the new chapters of the new series for which he now wields a quill as bench boss, is not without definition. The last game that Brian McCutcheon, a stealthy and cutting forward of Cornell’s 1969-70 team, coached at Cornell was against Morris-led Golden Knights in the 1995 ECAC Hockey Quarterfinals during the Red’s decade-long championship drought.
 
The story got rosier when Coach Schafer called the lines at Lynah Rink. Coach Schafer amassed an 11-7-0 record against Mark Morris while the latter was at Clarkson. Cornell never met defeat against the denizens of Potsdam in the playoffs despite three post-season meetings in just seven years. Famously, the Schafer-led Ithacans completed a defense of their 1996 Whitelaw Cup in the 1997 Whitelaw Cup Final against Mark Morris’s Clarkson in Lake Placid. The loss was Morris’s first in ECAC Hockey’s championship game.
 
Mark Morris knows how to win if that is not self-evident. Only Jack Parker, Ned Harkness, Joe Marsh, and one other coach have won the East’s top prize more than has St. Lawrence’s current bench boss. Oh, yeah, that other fellow will be standing behind the benches on the South side of Lynah Rink on Saturday.
 
You feel it in the air, don’t you?
 
This bout will be the beginning of something big; something worthy of a series steeped in history. On Friday, this Cornell team will face off against a program whose leader is an alumnus of the ideology of Cornell hockey. Saturday brings a marquee that heralds a collision of two of the best coaches in the history of ECAC Hockey. It is fitting for the most decorated collegiate programs in New York (when RIT joins ECAC Hockey, this writer will decide how to credit its non-Division I success).
 
Were the trophy cases of the three programs to collide, there would be 23 Whitelaw Cups in the wreckage to distribute among the three programs. It is like one of those fabricated made-for-TV Wednesday Night Rivalries that NBC Sports and the NHL force upon you, you think about it, they tell you that it is matter because it is two Original Six teams, and then, by the end, you feel the passion. This weekend brings that to Ithaca.
 
St. Lawrence, Clarkson, and Cornell are the forefathers of New-York hockey and founding reservoirs of college hockey. The Red’s series with the Golden Knights is the ninth-oldest active series for the former. St. Lawrence plays Cornell in the Ithacan’s 12th-oldest active series. The Cornell-St. Lawrence series is second only to the Saints’s spat with rival Clarkson in terms of age. Cornell, meanwhile, is Clarkson’s oldest opponent.
 
At one time, these programs built up New-York and college hockey. This weekend, each aims to tighten their resumes as they aim to gain whatever advantages that they can to climb the precious standings in ECAC Hockey to carry their decorated programs back to the mountaintop (one can assume it is Whiteface, right?).
 
The standout of last weekend was unquestionably (wait, it has to be hat trick-scoring freshman Jeff Malott, right?) Holden Anderson. Malott’s following his first collegiate goal in a Cornell sweater with his second and third was the easy story of Friday. Anderson did the little things on Friday, especially, and Saturday that led to the Red’s success this weekend. The senior blueliner played responsibly in both zones including unleashing his blistering shot to punish goaltenders with regular reminders that “the redcoats are coming.” The Faithful are left wondering how Holden Anderson has not recorded a goal this season.
 
Assistant coach Flanagan’s work with the Red’s forecheck has produced a dynamic attack that had its first glimmers of true brilliance at Princeton and Quinnipiac. There was one downside as Cornell defended its lead in Hamden. Now, a weekend in which Cornell killed 90.0% of opponent’s power-play opportunities is not cause for concern on the ledger. Games are not played in spreadsheets. They are played on the ice.
 
The carnelian-and-white penalty killers looked unfocused and undirected on their penultimate call to duty against Quinnipiac. Nearly nine minutes remained in regulation when the Bobcats got their fourth power-play opportunity of the weekend which afforded Pecknold’s boys more than enough time to write a very different ending to the affair; One that would have been characteristic of recent tilts between the two programs. That ending never came no matter how much lapses in defense and special teams invited its arrival.
 
One can trust that Associate Head Coach Ben Syer and Coach Schafer noticed these missteps and corrected them in practice. If they did not, errors will continue to compound as unseasoned success masks the development of bad tendencies that will be much harder to remove if reinforced with time. Clarkson brings ECAC Hockey’s third-best power-play unit to Lynah Rink. The Knights will provide an early test as to whether last Saturday showed a team that took shifts off or that has taken a shift for the worse in its approach to the game.

​The first of what were last week the five games that Cornell would play against the three teams that were perched above the Red in the effective standings for ECAC Hockey is against St. Lawrence. The Saints right now are locked in with the second-best winning rate in ECAC Hockey. Cornell is one rung below them. The rates of earning conference points between Cornell and St. Lawrence is just 0.14 conference points per game. The contest against Clarkson is no less crucial to all-important post-season jockeying. Clarkson is earning conference points just 0.26 conference points per game slower than is Cornell. A heated battle for top-four spots likely will involve the Golden Knights and Red when February arrives. Cornell will have played half of its conference games by weekend’s end.