HAMILTON — Senior defenseman Patrick McCarron scored two power-play goals, then senior forward Eric Freschi notched the eventual winner on a brilliant pass from freshman forward Jeff Malott to send the Cornell men’s hockey team to a 3-2 victory on Tuesday night at Class of 1965 Arena. The win is the Big Red’s fifth over its last six games.
McCarron’s first career multi-goal game stretched his points streak to seven games — the first for a Big Red skater since Nov. 22, 2011, when Brian Ferlin’s seven-game and Greg Miller’s eight-game points streaks ended. Perhaps more notable, though, is that fact that five of his eight collegiate goals have come against Colgate’s four-year starting goalie, Charlie Finn.
Cornell (5-3-1, 4-2-1 ECAC Hockey) played a very strong opening five minutes — perhaps its best start of the season — but it couldn’t strike before Colgate (3-8-4, 2-4-1). A turnover on a breakout led to Adam Dauda’s rebound goal at 8:13, marking the seventh time in nine games this season that Cornell has conceded the game’s first goal.
But the Big Red responded with a goal on a rare four-on-three power play. Sophomore forward Mitch Vanderlaan fed McCarron on the left wall and as the alternate captain swooped in toward the center point, he alertly took the surprising amount of space in front of him to enter the slot and snap a shot past Finn’s blocker.
Cornell outshot Colgate in the first period by a convincing 14-4 margin, and the Big Red started the middle frame equally strong. But the run of the play evened out later in the period with Cornell running into penalty trouble — though the penalty kill performed well. Gillam’s best stop perhaps wasn’t even officially a save, when he poke-checked Jared Cockrell on a breakaway. Sophomore defenseman Brendan Smith then came up with a big shot block on a two-on-one with just 38 seconds before the intermission.
“At 1-1, I thought we did a good job of getting above them and creating turnovers,” said Mike Schafer, the Jay R. Bloom ’77 Head Coach of Men’s Hockey at Cornell. “We had a lot of good opportunities in the second period to make it 2-1. We just couldn’t get it past (Finn).”
McCarron’s second goal broke a 1-all tie with 14:40 to play in the third period — a second rebound on shots from Freschi and Vanderlaan — then Freschi, playing in his 100th collegiate game, struck a little more than two minutes later. On the rush, Malott went wide on the right side to beat his defender, left the puck in his skates and then kicked it forward before sliding a cross-crease for Freschi to slam home and give Cornell a 3-1 lead.
“Finally we got that power-play goal by getting pucks down to the paint, which is something we’ve talked about,” Schafer said. “(McCarron) did a great job of being there.”
The Raiders responded by carrying play for most of the remaining time, drawing to within one on Bobby McCann’s goal with 8:17 remaining. But Cornell held on for the victory behind Gillam’s 20 saves.
Cornell wraps up the fall semester portion of its schedule this weekend with a pair of 7 p.m. games Friday and Saturday against Miami (Ohio).
