It was a matchup of the defending national champion and a top-10 team, the continuation of a long rivalry at a sold-out Madison Square Garden. But for all the excitement surrounding the second Red Hot Hockey, neither Cornell nor Boston University was able to claim victory.

A tie was a fitting result, since the game was both a celebration of Cornell’s strengths and an exhibition of its failures. The strengths are why Cornell heads into December with a solid 6-2-1 record, but the weaknesses are the same ones which doomed Cornell against Yale and Quinnipiac and helped to erase a third period lead on Saturday.

The main bright spot for Cornell continues to be its offense. The Red scored on its first power play of the game; three minutes later, a rare breakaway goal made it 2-0. In the second period, senior Blake Gallagher scored his sixth power play goal of the season, erasing BU’s momentum from a shorthanded goal earlier on that same penalty. Cornell’s power play, anchored by a top unit that has scored 13 extra-attacker goals, is converting at a phenomenal 32 percent clip.

Cornell also demonstrated that it is making progress towards its preseason goal of more balanced scoring. Both sophomores Sean Whitney and Locke Jillson scored their first goals of the season on Saturday. It was Whitney’s first of his career and Jillson’s second. As good as the top line has been, Cornell will need to prove that it can score when other players shoot the puck as well.

Unfortunately, more careless penalties and mental errors doomed the Red’s hopes for victory. We criticized senior Brendon Nash two weeks ago for committing a penalty at the end of the second period against Yale, allowing the Bulldogs a big opportunity at a key point in the game. Last week, undisciplined play allowed Quinnipiac to open an unassailable 3-0 lead.

Saturday, we saw more of the same. Junior Patrick Kennedy went to the box at 17:47 of the first. Junior Mike Devin went to the box at 17:58 of the second. Nash went to the box at 16:40 of the third. Then, with BU already on the powerplay, Kennedy went back to the box with only 1:58 remaining in regulation. With an extended period of 6-on-3 and 6-on-4 hockey, it seemed inevitable that BU would score. They did, tying the game with just 51 seconds left. After tempting fate at the end of the first two periods, the Red’s lack of discipline caught up at the end of the game and cost a win.

What was most frustrating was that BU did not score any clean goals. The first was a 30-foot shot from inside the blue line that trickled through senior goalie Ben Scrivens’ pads and into the net. (Scrivens allowed a similarly long goal at Yale.) The second goal was accidentally scored by Brendon Nash, who was trying to break up a 2-on-1. The third appeared to be shoved into the goal after one of the referees had already blown his whistle.

Yet the Red was still able to earn a win and a tie this week, and it heads into December with an impressive record. As the first semester of hockey winds down, Cornell again finds itself in the hunt both in the ECAC Hockey standings and national polls. However, the theme that eluded the team this semester is something called consistency, and Cornell must discover this key element to success in the months ahead.

Of the five weekends of hockey, whether in exhibition, league play, or non-league match-ups, Cornell walked away with two wins just once. That was against Harvard and Dartmouth, whose combined league record is an embarrassing 2-10-2. Losses to the U.S. Under-18 Team, Yale and Quinnipiac, coupled with the most recent tie to BU, marred weekends that also featured total domination of the Red’s other opponents. Stringing together a full 120 minutes of play is no easy task in the difficult ECACH, but for Cornell to compete nationally, consistent play throughout the entire weekend must be a fundamental rule.

We wrote last week that Cornell seems to play two entirely different games each weekend. That may be good enough for a top-3 position in the league but certainly will not sustain the Red as the season wears on. Focusing more on the basics, including simplifying defensive plays, staying out of the penalty box in critical situations, and getting more pucks to the net not only are easy goals to accomplish, but also will serve Cornell in the long term.

The first nine games of this season leave the fans with much to celebrate and the team with much to work on in practice. A prolific offense with 15 different scorers and an incredibly effective power play lead the way. In the 2004-05 season, the team started 6-2-2 before finishing the season with a 19-game unbeaten streak that carried it into the NCAA Regional Final. Given the talent on this year’s team, a similar second-half push is entirely possible. By tightening the defense, committing fewer careless penalties and closing some leaky holes in net, this team will be in phenomenal position to dominate the second half of the season.