Last season when the NCAA instituted new rules to crack down on obstruction, a premium was put on special teams execution. On the defensive side, Cornell performed admirably under the new rules, posting a NCAA 13th-best penalty-killing rate of 87.2 percent.

However, some of the stalwarts from the Red’s penalty killing unit last season graduated in the Spring.

“We do have a lot of guys not coming back on the penalty kill,” said head coach Mike Schafer ’86. “Evan Barlow, Mike Kennedy, Derek Punches, they killed a lot of penalties for us last year.”

However, Schafer is confident in the returning players’ ability to fill in when the team finds itself a man down, and he expects some new contributors to emerge.

Schafer points to senior forwards Joe Scali, Colin Greening and Blake Gallagher, in addition to junior Riley Nash, as players he anticipates will play primary roles on the penalty kill unit this season.

Schafer also noted that several younger players on the team, including some freshmen, have been working hard in practice and appear poised to assume some prominent penalty-killing roles.

“The freshmen, you recruit them with the expectation that they'll contribute on power play and penalty kill as well,” Schafer explained. “It’s a matter of competition to find out which different guys do it the best.”

Nash believes that while the team’s penalty kill unit was strong last year and has high expectations coming into this year, it will only improve as the season progresses and as players gain experience in games and practices.

“I think we’re still sitting fairly well [on the penalty kill],” Nash explained. “PK is just something you work on throughout the year, it gets better and better. Guys figure out what they need to do, you get better scouting reports. It’s just something that’s going to take a little bit of time.”

In that vein, while Schafer did reveal a rough sense of who to expect to be killing penalties this year, he also suggested that he is open to some experimentation as the season moves forward.

“There’s always guys that surprise you,” Schafer explained. “We’ll find that out as we go.”