Watching Cornell hockey over the last few years was essentially a two-period experience. Most of the time, you could watch the first 40 minutes of hockey and know whether Cornell would win or lose. As seen in Saturday’s win over Harvard, this may no longer be true.

Since the start of the 2002-03 season, Cornell boasts an astonishing 115-4-7 record when leading after two periods. Last season, Cornell was 17-1-0 when leading after two periods, with the single loss coming in the final minute against Princeton at Lynah. (For some comparison, the New York Yankees were 71-2 this season when leading after six innings.)

Much of this success can be attributed to the decisions coming from the Cornell coaching staff. With any lead late in the game, Cornell teams under coach Mike Schafer ’86 appear to focus more on shutting down opposing offenses than on creating new scoring opportunities. This style takes the focus away from forechecking and stacks four players along the blue line to prevent any sort of offensive rush.

Cornell’s strategy frustrates some fans who would rather see the team tack on an extra goal or two to put away the game, but it has proven a successful way to win games without having to score many goals. The Red finished second in ECAC Hockey last year despite outscoring only three of the conference’s 12 teams.

Unfortunately, this phenomenon also goes the other way, and Cornell has demonstrated a persistent inability to mount late-game comebacks. Cornell began last season 0-4-2 when losing after one period and 0-7-1 when behind after two.

However, since March, we have witnessed a surprising resurgence of late-game offense that challenges years of stagnation in the third period. This rebirth began in the final game of the regular season; the team trailed Brown, 2-0, in the third period before scoring twice in regulation and once more in overtime to secure a dramatic 3-2 victory. This win helped Cornell to secure the No. 2 seed in the ECAC Hockey tournament and made the long drive from Providence to Ithaca slightly more tolerable.

Three weeks later, the once-unthinkable happened again. In the ECAC Hockey semifinal in Albany, Princeton held what seemed to be a safe, 3-1 lead before Evan Barlow and Riley Nash scored in the final three minutes of the third period (Nash with 25 seconds remaining) to send the game to overtime. Colin Greening ended the game with a goal in the second overtime to seal the 4-3 win.

The following week in Cornell’s first NCAA tournament game, the team put together another remarkable comeback. Trailing Northeastern, 2-1, with four minutes remaining, Greening and Barlow each scored to pull Cornell ahead, 3-2, and into the NCAA regional final against Bemidji State. Barlow’s goal came with only 18 seconds remaining in the game.

It appears that the team did not forget how to mount a comeback over the summer months. On Saturday, Cornell overcame a 3-1 second-period deficit by scoring five unanswered goals against a Harvard defense, which had given up four unanswered goals in a loss to Colgate the night before.

Much of Cornell’s late-game transformation is psychological. Just as opposing teams have come to understand that they must take the lead in the first two periods to have a chance to defeat Cornell, the Red has been haunted by an inability to overcome late-game deficits. With three dramatic comeback wins in the last 11 games played, Cornell knows that victory is still possible even when the team is behind.

In addition to its significance as a comeback win, the Harvard game – and the weekend as a whole – served notice to the country that Cornell is loaded offensively. Cornell’s powerplay is now 6-for-10 in two ECAC games. As fans have seen, there are few players at the college level who can contain Colin Greening along the boards. On the second line, Riley Nash has continued to demonstrate why he is a first-round NHL draft pick by deftly blowing past defensemen and threading the needle for cross-ice passes which have bolstered Cornell’s powerplay success. Although Nash missed two wide open nets this weekend, we are confident that he will begin to finish these slam-dunk plays as the early-season rust wears off.

The weekend also showed that the Big Red will continue to play offense when they have the lead. Cornell scored three times in the third period of Friday’s 5-1 rout of Dartmouth, and they added two more third-period goals on Saturday after taking a 4-3 lead over Harvard.

Given the talent of this year’s team, it is hardly surprising that Cornell was able to rally to beat Harvard. The team’s domination of Dartmouth on Friday has already led some fans to compare this team to the 2002-2003 squad, which received the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament and was the last Big Red team to reach the Frozen Four. As the only undefeated and untied team in the country, we expect Cornell to reach No. 4 in the polls this week, setting the stage for a difficult contest against defending ECAC champion Yale in New Haven on Friday.