On Saturday, women’s hockey was shutout 4-0 by Quinnipiac, Cornell’s fifth time scoring one or fewer goals in its last 10 games.
“I think the effort and the energy was there, [just] the execution wasn’t great,” said head coach Doug Derraugh ’91 on the Quinnipiac loss.
“I thought we played a pretty good game, actually,” Derraugh said after a 3-2 defeat to Princeton on Dec. 6. “I thought we came with energy, I thought we were battling. … We had probably a 10 minute window where we let our foot off the gas a little bit.”
“I thought that was a hard-fought road game for us coming out of the break,” he said after a 1-0 loss to Penn State on Dec. 30. “I thought we played hard, [it] came down to special teams.”
There’s a specific reason why Derraugh’s interviews are becoming repetitive, and it helps explain the main difference so far between this season’s 13-9-2 record and last year's Frozen Four team.
The 2024-2025 and 2025-2026 squads’ winning recipe is similar. With junior goaltender Annelies Bergmann in net, and multiple highly touted defenders, all the Red need to do is find goals from across its roster and the wins will come. Last season, 16 skaters finished with seven or more points, 13 of them in double digits.
This year, the depth has receded. Thirteen skaters are roughly on-pace to reach that seven-point mark this season, while Bergmann is tied for 16th on the team in points after picking up an assist last weekend. Part of the loss of scoring flexibility comes from simple math: Cornell’s roster shrank from 27 to 21 and its 18 skaters are the fewest since 2018.
“I think the difference is we had a larger roster last year, there was more depth,” Derraugh said. “So it is very similar, but [this season] we are relying on the players that are getting the opportunity and you can’t go to sort of that second and third option.”
There are plenty of bright spots for Cornell offensively — for example junior defender Piper Grober and senior defender Grace Dwyer are both on track to both generate more offense than any blueliner last season — and the Red’s 3.1 goals per game is just .2 less than last season.
Still, it will likely take an uptick in contributions from both Cornell’s blue line and its five freshman skaters (who, excluding forward Nora Curtis, have combined for just three goals) for the Red to re-find its winning formula from a season ago.
Fortino is Fourth Olympian
Speaking of scoring defenders, Cornell’s all-time (NCAA-era) blueline points leader is headed to the Winter Olympics. Laura Fortino ’13 was named to the Italian team on Jan. 20, joining Canadians Brianne Jenner ’15 and Kristin O’Neill ’20 and American Rory Guilday ’25 as Cornell women’s hockey alumnae set to play in Milan.
Fortino was a transformational figure for the women’s hockey program. As a freshman, the Hamilton, Ontario native notched 34 points — the second most by any defender that season — and became the first Cornellian to earn All-American honors. Also named to that year’s All-Ivy and All-ECAC first teams, Fortino committed just a single penalty throughout the Red’s magical — and ultimately heartbreaking — season.
“She could do it at both ends, real dynamic [and] loved the game of hockey,” Derraugh — who coached Fortino throughout her time with the Red — said. “A real competitor, just a really skilled defenseman. [She] had a huge impact right off the bat.”
After ending her Cornell career with 133 points in 133 games, the three-time first-team All-American played five seasons in the now-defunct Canadian Women’s Hockey League and three with the Professional Women’s Hockey Player’s Association. Currently playing professionally in Italy, Fortino already has a pair of Olympic medals playing for the Canadian national team.
“Her family was a real Italian family, and I think she still had family in Italy, and so I can imagine how excited they are for her to be representing [Italy],” Derraugh said. “[I’m] really excited and happy for her.”
Scouting Dartmouth
Cornell will open its final homestand of the regular season Friday night against Dartmouth. The Red defeated the Big Green (4-17-3, 2-11-3 ECAC) 5-0 in October thanks to a trio of power-play goals and four multi-point performances.
Dartmouth enters the weekend coming off a pair of overtime losses to St. Lawrence and No. 11 Clarkson, and without its most-used goaltender Michaela Hesová. A member of Czechia national team, Hesová departed Hannover, New Hampshire, this week for the Winter Olympics. In her place will either be Jiahui Zhan — a freshman with six career starts — or Eleanor Rogers who has appeared in one game since the 2023-2024 season.
“No, not at all,” Derraugh answered when asked if his team will change their gameplan based on Hesová’s absence. “My experience as a coach over the years has been that when you put in your backup goaltender, or your second goaltender, it rallies the troops a bit, and rallies the team to put an extra effort in for that goalie. So sometimes that can boost a team and give them energy to compete even harder for the new goalie.”
Scouting Harvard
On paper, the Crimson (11-11-2, 5-9-2 ECAC) present much more of a threat for Cornell. Harvard has looked deadly in 2026, knocking off then-No. 5 Minnesota Duluth in Northern Ireland, before returning home and beating Boston College and Boston University to earn its 16th Beanpot championship.
After finishing last in the ECAC with a 1-20-1 conference record, the Crimson resurgence can be attributed to staunch goaltending from its trio of netminders and improved scoring from a young forward corps.
“They’ve really improved over the course of the season, [Harvard is] much better defensively than they were before,” Derraugh said. “It seems like some of the younger players that [were] getting the lay of the land in the ECAC and the Ivy League found their stride there now.”
Saturday’s bout with Harvard will conclude Cornell’s Ivy League season. The two-time defending champions currently sit in first place, but have played more games than some of the trailing teams.
“It’s one of the most balanced [and] most competitive years in the Ivy League that I've been a part of,” Derraugh said. “There’s still probably three teams — maybe four depending on how these games go — that still have a run at winning the Ivy League.”
Cornell will take on Dartmouth at 6 p.m. on Friday night at Lynah Rink. The next day, the Red will face off at 3 p.m. against Harvard. Both games will be streamed live on ESPN+.
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.
