As the snow pours down in Ithaca and finals week nears, No. 17 men’s hockey is grinding through the week to reach the end of the semester.
Standing between the Red and the holiday break, however, is a daunting task at hand.
This weekend, Cornell will take on Clarkson and St. Lawrence in the infamous North Country trip — trekking more than 170 miles up New York State and stopping a mere 85 or so miles from Ottawa, Ontario.
The Red has not swept this trip since 2020, and that stands as Cornell’s only sweep in the North Country in the last 20 years. Head coach Casey Jones ’90 will also return to Clarkson for the first time as head coach of Cornell.
“I knew that when I coached there, teams had a tough time coming in. I’m not sure what it is,” Jones said. “It's a mindset going in. It’s hard hockey, both teams play extremely hard. … We just got to finish out the first half. That's my biggest concern.”
Playing With An Edge
The Red was not satisfied after coming up short against Boston University on Saturday, falling 2-1 and surrendering the Kelley-Harkness Cup for the first time since 2013.
After a Sunday off day, the Red began practicing on Monday with one common mindset: finishing strong.
“You’re closing out the first half of ECAC games here. They're critical — you want to be playing well,” Jones said. “We get a while before [second-half] games, so you [have to] take advantage of this opportunity to finish your first half off on a positive note.”
Cornell’s youth — 12 freshmen and two sophomore transfers — is not so much showing on the ice, but off it. Finals week is approaching for Cornell students, and as classes wind down, off-ice distractions of final deliverables, exams and essays, are becoming more and more apparent.
After this weekend, Cornell won’t play again until Jan. 2, 2026. Jones is reminding his team of that.
“We get another week here that we get to grind through a little bit,” Jones said after Tuesday afternoon’s practice. “Really lay it on the line here for five more days [and then] take a mental break where we can just work on some development, work on getting our first semester done.”
But through it all, the mentality is strong.
“[Our guys] are excited about the week, coming out of a little bit of a frustrating loss on Saturday. There's a little bit more energy, a little bit more edge to us here this week, and so I'm excited about that.”
Perfecting The Power Play
Cornell was stymied by BU’s penalty kill on Saturday, going 0/4 after scoring in four consecutive games leading up to it.
It comes down to strategy, and particularly on the breakout, Jones says.
“We need to keep the puck off the yellow; we put it on the yellow a lot,” Jones said. “Gave them an opportunity to kind of squash us and not get into the setup we wanted to get into. We needed a little bit more poise to take control and settle it down.”
The “yellow” is the stripe painted on the boards where board meets ice. On Saturday, Jones mentioned, the Red was quick to simply dump the puck down low to the yellow. That allowed BU’s physical penalty killers to pin the puck low and prevent Cornell from setting up.
Taking a look at footage from the Red’s six-on-four advantage in the final 1:54 against BU, Cornell had five zone entries. The power play began with junior forward Jonathan Castagna winning the faceoff back to junior defenseman Hoyt Stanley, who wrung the iron on a shot that would have tied the game right up.
On the first entry at 1:36 of the period, Stanley dropped the puck back at center ice for Castagna, who fed freshman forward Aiden Long holding the blueline against the boards. He dumped the puck low, however, and BU’s phenom defenseman Cole Hutson was able to trap it at the yellow and clear it all the way out.
The next entry at 1:17 mirrored the first, only this time, the puck was dropped to sophomore forward Charlie Major, who took it himself straight down the middle and drove to the net. His shot attempt ricocheted off the skate of a Terrier defenseman, and the Red was able to retrieve the loose puck and establish its only substantial zone time.
The next entry came at 0:37, when Stanley took it himself all the way into the zone. Cornell entered its offensive zone well, but Stanley then got pinned up against the boards, and with the puck on the yellow, BU forced a turnover and cleared the puck all the way down.
With 0:11 left, Cornell iced the puck on its fourth attempted zone entry. The Red won the ensuing defensive zone faceoff and freshman forward Gio DiGiulian was able to cross the blueline for the fifth entry, but frantic play forced a turnover, and time ran out on junior forward Ryan Walsh helplessly shooting from the neutral zone.
“We could have settled that down. We could have just settled it down, and got over, not rushed. We seemed rushed at the time. We had plenty of time to take advantage of that,” Jones said after Saturday’s game.
Scouting The Opponents
On Friday, Cornell will take on Clarkson in a rematch of the 2025 ECAC Championship. The Golden Knights have dropped six of their last seven games, but boast wins this season over Penn State and North Dakota, both nationally ranked in the top-10.
“Clarkson has beaten good teams. They've been out-chancing most teams they’ve played, [when] you look at the InStat reports,” Jones said. “They've been a little snakebitten in terms of scoring, you know what I mean? And when they score, they can beat anybody when the puck goes in for them.”
Clarkson has struggled to score at points, as it has only twice tallied more than two goals in its six ECAC games so far this year. The Golden Knights lost four of its top-five scorers last season, including Aytron Martino, who led the way with 51 points in 39 games in 2024-2025.
However, aided by strong goaltending from junior transfer Shane Soderwall (who played Division III hockey last year for Curry College), Clarkson has shown spurts of why it was picked to finish second in the ECAC preseason poll.
And the atmosphere at Cheel Arena is a factor in itself.
“Cornell was always a draw,” Jones, who coached at Clarkson for 13 years, said. “It's one of their better crowds of the year. It always has been. I mean, it goes way back to the long history with tournament games and playoff games between the two programs. A lot of history to coach in that.”
St. Lawrence on Saturday — a 2024 ECAC Championship rematch — could be an equally tough task, though the Saints have struggled through much of the past two seasons. After all, Cornell dropped a 2-1 result to St. Lawrence at Appleton Arena last season.
The Saints’ are currently riding a seven-game losing streak. And although junior Mason Kucenski has largely gotten the nod between the pipes, it has been first-year Colin Winn starting in the Saints’ last two outings.
Records seem to go out the window when Cornell journeys north — Cornell has not won in regulation against either Clarkson or St. Lawrence on the road since the 2022-2023 campaign, and has only swept the series three times since the 1984-1984 season.
"I knew that when I coached there, teams had a tough time coming in. I'm not sure what it is,” Jones said. “Tough buildings to play in, but you kind of want to get in those environments. It's a little bit more fun."
At the very least, Cornell won’t have the distractions like it did last year on this road trip — after the Jan. 25 brawl with Dartmouth, multiple suspensions (coupled with existing injuries) left the Red with a depleted lineup of just eight forwards and ten defensemen, as opposed to the usual 12 and six, respectively. Last year, St. Lawrence secured its first home win over the Red since the 2015-2016 season.
“That adversity probably made us better at the end of the year, looking back at it. Didn’t seem like that at the time,” Jones said with a laugh. “Boy, oh boy. We were shaking our heads with what was going on.”
The Red will look to secure its first North Country sweep since 2020 this weekend, first taking on Clarkson at 7 p.m. Friday at Cheel Arena in Potsdam before making the quick trip to Canton for a 7 p.m. Saturday clash at Appleton Arena. All action will be streamed live on ESPN+.
Jane McNally is a senior editor on the 143rd editorial board and was the sports editor on the 142nd editorial board. She is a member of the Class of 2026 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. You can follow her on X @JaneMcNally_ and reach her at jmcnally@cornellsun.com.
