NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — Forwards Matt Buckles and Mitch Vanderlaan scored goals while goaltender Hayden Stewart stopped all 15 shots he saw Friday night, but the Cornell men’s hockey team couldn’t dig itself out of a three-goal hole in suffering a 3-2 loss to Merrimack in its season opener at Lawler Rink.
Playing against a Merrimack (3-3-1) squad that already had six games under its belt, the rust showed early for Cornell (0-1) when the home side’s forecheck created a turnover deep in Big Red territory and the Warriors’ Michael Babock banged home a second rebound just 2:39 into the game.
Over the next eight minutes, Cornell got its first taste of college hockey’s new norm when it was whistled for three penalties — the final two of which created a two-man advantage of 90 seconds for Merrimack. Moving from left to right, Cornell starting goalie Mitch Gillam made a terrific save on Mathieu Foget’s one-timer. But the puck worked its way back toward the right point and Alex Carle slid a long shot along the ice through traffic and under an unsuspecting Gillam to give Merrimack a 2-0 lead.
There were a total of 12 power plays awarded on the night, with each team scoring once on the man advantage.
“If you take bad penalties like grabbing a kid’s facemask or slashing a kid’s stick out of his hand and you don’t get great goaltending, on the road, then it’s tough to win,” said Mike Schafer, the Jay R. Bloom ’77 Head Coach of Men’s Hockey at Cornell. “I don’t care who you are or what team you’re playing, it’s tough to win.”
The Big Red came out with a charge in the second period with Jake Weidner firing a shot from the slot that Merrimack goalie Drew Vogler was able to smother. Just a few moments after the ensuing faceoff and still less than a minute into the frame, Anthony Angello hit the post on a chance from in tight. Dwyer Tschantz got off another clean shot off a faceoff with Vogler making a sprawling save at the 2:17 mark.
Gillam then made a pair of point-blank stops on Hampus Gustafsson’s shorthanded bids a couple minutes later to keep the Big Red in the game, but the visitors came up empty on a lengthy five-on-three a short time later. Fewer whistles allowed the game to get into a rhythm from there, though a turnover in the neutral zone led to a Merrimack three-on-two and Gustafsson’s goal at 11:24 to give the Warriors a 3-0 lead and chase Gillam from the game.
Cornell then started to take over territorially, finally breaking through with just 1:33 left in the period for its first goal of the year. Alex Rauter’s point-to-point pass for Alec McCrea set up a shot from distance that was tipped onto Vogler by Jared Fiegl from the top of the crease. The puck squirted loose into the middle, where Buckles swept it in the goal to cut Cornell’s deficit to 3-1 entering the third period.
A bizarre chain of events in the third period led to a video review on a near-goal in Stewart’s crease. While no goal was awarded through the replay process, a major penalty was assessed against the Big Red — a bad situation that worsened when another whistle left Cornell two men short again, this time for nearly a full two minutes. Units of primarily Holden Anderson, Yanni Kaldis, McCrea, Rauter, Weidner killed it off, and Cornell went back to work down by two with about four minutes remaining.
After pulling Stewart in favor of an extra attacker, the Big Red cut its deficit to one with 2:37 to play when Trevor Yates and Tschantz worked the puck to Vanderlaan in the slot, and he beat Vogler high to the glove side. But that’s as close as Cornell would get.
The Big Red ended up outshooting the Warriors, 35-33, with Vogler’s 33 saves proving to be the difference.
“I liked the fight in our hockey team. They kept plugging away and we had chance after chance, and I thought their goalie played really, really well. He made huge saves for them throughout the course of the night. They got that and we didn’t.”
Cornell continues its season-opening stretch of five straight road games next weekend with its ECAC Hockey and Ivy League openers against Dartmouth at 7 p.m. Friday and Harvard at 7 p.m. Saturday.
