For more information on both teams, check out this week’s women’s hockey Cornell Notes.
When No. 11 women’s hockey and No. 13 Colgate drop the puck this weekend in the ECAC tournament quarterfinals, it will mark another chapter in a struggle between two perpetually evenly matched teams.
It’s difficult to pinpoint when the Raiders started to become the Red’s biggest rival.
Maybe it began in 2016. Since then, Cornell has amassed a 13-14 record against Colgate, with 14 of the 27 matchups decided by a single goal. Despite seemingly every game being closely contested, the two teams have not tied in the last 10 years. So for the past decade, every time the squads matched up, someone always went home unhappy.
Maybe it was in the 2018 ECAC semifinals, when a Red three-goal comeback was dashed by a Raiders last-second goal.
Or maybe in 2022, when Colgate swept Cornell in the ECAC quarterfinals thanks to a pair of one-goal wins.
Or in 2024, when the Raiders beat the Red all four times they met, including knocking the Red out of the ECAC and NCAA tournaments.
These sour memories were at the front of the Cornell skaters’ minds last March, when the Red defeated Colgate in the ECAC championship game to claim its fifth conference title, flipping the recent scripts and giving the Raiders a fresh reason of their own to hate Cornell.
The rivalry has grown with each crushing hit from Rory Guilday ’25 or Kristýna Kaltounková, each picturesque goal from Izzy Daniel ’24 or Danielle Serdachny and each over-the-top celebration — like the one following then-junior forward Mckenna Van Gelder’s opening strike in last year’s championship game.
The most recent meeting between the two teams exemplified the emotion these squads evoke in one another. A day after Colgate handed Cornell its first loss of the 2025-2026 season — a 3-0 beat down in Hamilton, New York — the Red and the Raiders combined for 16 penalties (a season high for both teams) in an epic back-and-forth affair on Nov. 16.
While Colgate jumped out to 1-0 and 3-1 leads in that game, Cornell battled back to tie the game with less than six minutes remaining in regulation. Junior forward Karel Prefontaine fired a wrist shot into the Raiders net to give Cornell its first lead and win the game just two minutes into overtime.
The goal was not Prefontaine’s first overtime game-winner. In the 2024 ECAC quarterfinals, the then-freshman notched one of the strangest goals at Lynah Rink in recent memory, when a wayward pass took an unexpected bounce off the end boards right to Prefontaine’s stick. The Quebecer quickly buried it to secure a 1-0 series lead over Quinnipiac.
In fact, Cornell’s recent quarterfinal history is filled with thrilling wins.
In 2023, then-freshman Georgia Schiff kept the Red’s season alive when she lit the lamp in the second overtime of game two of the series. And the year after Prefontaine’s heroics, Cornell staged a late comeback against Union, scoring goals with 69 and 27.5 seconds remaining in the third period to snatch a 2-1 win. Once again, “Prime-Time-Prefo” lived up to her nickname, scoring the tying goal that kick-started the comeback.
Outside of Prefontaine, another player who has earned a reputation for thriving in the clutch is junior goaltender Annelies Bergmann. In last year’s playoff run — which ended at the Frozen Four — Bergmann posted an immaculate .957 save percentage. Her playoff success was headlined by a 54-save triple-overtime win over Clarkson in the ECAC semifinals. Bergmann earned a nickname of her own during the impressive stretch, with the Lynah Faithful repeatedly serenading her with chants of “Brick Wall Bergmann.”
Meanwhile, Colgate boasts an impressive playoff resume of its own, having reached the past five NCAA tournaments and posting a 17-2 record in ECAC postseason play since the pandemic. While this year’s Raiders squad owns the lowest winning percentage a Colgate team has seen since the 2019-2020 season, it is still a dangerous group.
Elyssa Biederman (41 points), Alexis Petford (31 points), Emma Pais (30 points) and Alexia Aubin (29 points) lead an offense that averages just under three goals per game. In net, freshman Brooke Davis looked solid in her postseason debut last weekend, making 23 saves in a 4-2 Colgate win over Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the opening round of the ECAC playoffs.
However, the winner of the best-of-three series might not be the more skilled team.
If history is any indication, closely contested and emotionally charged games are to be expected. If that is the case, puck-luck, sound goaltending, emotional discipline and a boisterous Lynah Rink environment will be the keys to the weekend.
The Red and Raiders will face off at 3 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, with a game Sunday at the same time to be played if necessary. Tickets are free for Cornell students, and all games will air 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.
