Two seasons ago, women’s hockey finished fourth in ECAC Hockey behind a historic effort from Patty Kazmaier winner Izzy Daniel ’24. Last fall, the Daniel-less Red were picked third in the preseason coaches poll due to questions surrounding goal scoring, a lack of new incoming talent and an inability to beat Colgate.
“How can Cornell build on the success of 2023-2024 after losing the best player in college hockey?” The Sun asked in last year’s season preview.
It turns out the answer was scoring as a team, rather than banking on a single player. After relying so heavily on Daniel two seasons ago, last year’s Cornell squad broke through and claimed Ivy League, ECAC and NCAA regional titles thanks to an unmatched ability to have any player score on any night.
16 Cornell skaters notched five or more points and 18 scored a goal, tied for the most individual goal scorers on a team in ECAC Hockey.
Cornell’s offensive leader, then-sophomore forward Avi Adam, notched 29 points. To put that number in perspective, the last time a Cornell team was led by an under-30 point scorer was in the 2016-2017 season. That year, the team averaged nearly a full goal less per game than last season’s squad.
Despite the lack of a singular goal scoring threat, Cornell’s offense was still one of the best in the country. The Red’s 3.29 goals per game ranked eighth in the nation, and the team’s assists, power play percentage and points were all also top-10. This year, the ‘any player on any night’ strategy will be even more challenging due to Cornell not having the depth of seasons past.
When the Ivy League announced that it would not participate in the 2020-2021 NCAA hockey season, multiple Cornell players elected to delay their matriculation to Cornell or take a gap year if they had already played a season. This shift resulted in an abnormally large class of 11 seniors graduating last spring.
With six freshmen joining the team (and only three sophomores), Cornell’s roster size has shrunk from 27 to 21, the lowest it’s been since the 2017-2018 season. In fact, the Red’s 11 rostered forwards aren’t enough to fill out the standard four full lines.
Forwards
While the Red might not have offensive depth in terms of overall number of players, Cornell does have depth when it comes to goal-scoring talent. Adam is set to return after her breakout junior season, where she led the Red in points and assists en route to third-team all-ECAC honors. Her linemate, captain and fellow senior Mckenna Van Gelder, is the most experienced forward on the roster with 101 games played. Last season, the Ontario native notched 13 goals and 10 assists, while also winning the second most faceoffs on the team.
Other returning contributors include junior linemates Karel Prefontaine and Delaney Fleming — who combined for 18 goals and 16 assists last season — and sophomore Lindzi Avar. Avar is coming off an impressive rookie campaign in which she was Cornell’s leading goal scorer and was the ECAC Rookie of the Year.
For Cornell, the key to this season’s offense (outside of avoiding injuries) is contributions from players who were not double-digit scorers last season.
“Like last year, players are going to have to take on new roles and step up into new roles,” Derraugh said. “How they perform in those new roles is going to dictate how well we do.”
Junior Beatrice Perron-Roy spent most of her ice-time on the fourth line with senior Georgia Schiff last season. While both Schiff and Perron-Roy’s roles will dramatically increase, Schiff especially seems primed to have a big senior season. As a sophomore, the Vermont native scored eight goals, so hitting double digit scores this year would not be a surprise.
The Red’s offense will also be supplemented by four freshmen in London McDavid, Riley Scorgie, Shannon Pearson and Nora Curtis. While in some season’s head coach Doug Derraugh ’91 has had the luxury of allowing his freshman to slowly acclimate to college hockey, this is not one of those years. Instead, all four freshmen will be dressed, skating and asked to produce in the season opener.
“It’s going to be extremely important that our first year players learn how to play at this level quickly because they are going to be in large roles,” Derraugh said. “That’s just the reality of our forwards. We do not even have four forward lines total on the roster.”
Like last season, Derraugh will likely create three equal lines of forwards instead of a traditional high-scoring “top line” to help ease the pressure on the freshman.
It’s also worth noting how important Cornell’s forwards are to the team’s defense. The Red was one of the best defenses in the nation a season ago because all three position groups worked well together to shut down opponents. According to Derraugh, Cornell is at its best when its forwards are fully bought into its defensive identity.
“Generally speaking players enjoy the offensive side of things more than the defensive side, so you have to sometimes make them understand,” Derraugh said. “But our group, maybe based on last year too, saw the results you can have when you are committed to it.”
Defenders
On the defensive half of the ice, Cornell is in good shape. Last season the Red finished third in the nation in goals allowed per game and was even better against ECAC opponents, who averaged just 1.31 goals against Cornell. Five of the seven defenders who took the ice against Ohio State in the Frozen Four are set to return, four of whom played for either team USA or Canada in the Collegiate Series this summer.
“I do think you’ve got a strong senior core of [defenders] and some younger [defenders] that showed a lot of potential last year and hopefully make progress and step into even larger roles this year,” Derraugh said.
The only intact defensive pairing from the 2024-2025 season consists of senior Grace Dwyer and junior Piper Grober. Last season, the two combined for 28 points on the offensive end of the ice with Dwyer’s 16 assists being the fourth most on the team. Dwyer also had the most blocks of a returning defender with 36 and was selected by ECAC coaches to the preseason all-conference team.
Sophomore Rose Dwyer and senior Alyssa Regalado each lost their line-mates to graduation, but should continue to hold down the blueline. Despite scoring just a single goal, Dwyer was a +16 in her rookie season thanks to the shutdown nature of her pairing with PWHL first round draft pick Rory Guilday ’25. Regalado meanwhile was a major contributor offensively, notching a defense-leading 18 assists and scoring the lone goal in Cornell’s NCAA tournament regional final win over Minnesota Duluth.
Senior captain Sarah MacEachern and freshman Lily Pachl round out Cornell’s defense. MacEachern missed most of her junior and freshman seasons to injury, but looked solid her sophomore season. Pachl, a Ms. Hockey Minnesota semifinalist with impressive high school stats, will likely begin the season as Cornell’s extra skater.
“I think we’ll have to stay healthy, but if we do, we feel very comfortable about the defensive-corps as a whole,” Derraugh said.
Goaltending
While Cornell had an excellent cast of defensive players last season, any great defense starts in net. Luckily for fans of the Red, they get two more years of watching junior Annelies Bergmann. The best word to describe the goaltender's sophomore season was dominant, from her NCAA-leading 10 shutouts to a 54-save performance in the ECAC semifinals. The Detroit native ended last season as a second team All-American, the ECAC Goaltender of the Year and one of three Women’s Hockey Commissioners Association Goaltender of the Year Award finalists.
The lone non-Bergmann start last season came when then-freshman Jeanne Lortie got the nod in Cornell’s matchup with Syracuse. Joining Lortie and Bergmann is freshman Liv Ferebee, who comes to Ithaca from Lake Placid.
Schedule, Conference Opponents, and Closing Thoughts
Last season Cornell got off to a mediocre start, playing to a 1-2-1 record before falling to Union to open up conference play in a historic loss. This season, a point of emphasis will be getting off to a better start.
“I think that we learned a lot from those early-on defeats,” Derraugh said. “If it were to happen again, hopefully we would have that understanding that we would need to stick with things here and not lose faith.”
Cornell will open the season at Lynah Rink against Boston College, before facing Ivy League foes in each of the next two weekends. Then, on Nov. 14 and 15, Cornell will face off against 2024-2025 ECAC runner-up Colgate. Last season, the Red’s lone non-Union ECAC loss came against Colgate, so whoever wins this weekend could have an early inside track to the ECAC regular season title.
Last season Cornell and Colgate were joined by St. Lawrence, Clarkson, and Quinnipiac to form a clear top tier of conference teams. However, with many key players across the league graduating, it is unlikely that the top tier of teams in the conference will be as dominant as years past.
This year, no ECAC team on paper looks better than the Red, which is why Cornell was picked first in the pre-season coaches poll. With a roster of just 21 players, the key to Cornell’s season is staying healthy.
Eli Fastiff is a senior editor on the 143rd editorial board and a member of the class of 2026 in the College of Arts and Sciences. You can follow him on X @Eli_Fastiff and reach him at efastiff@cornellsun.com.
