Ryan Scores as Big Red Suffer Second Consecutive Home Loss
ITHACA, N.Y. — Chris Pelosi scored a hat trick as No. 6 Quinnipiac (6-2-0, 1-0-0 ECAC Hockey) earned a 4-1 win over the No. 16 Cornell men’s hockey team (1-2-0, 0-1-0 ECAC Hockey) in the league opener for both teams Friday night at Lynah Rink.
Dylan Edwards also scored for the Bobcats, and Christian Kirsch made 19 saves. Sophomore forward Caton Ryan scored for Cornell, and sophomore goaltender Mathis Rousseau stopped 23 shots.
It was Cornell’s first loss in a league opener since a 3-2 setback at Harvard on Nov. 5, 2021. It was also the Big Red’s first ECAC Hockey opener lost at home since a 3-2 defeat to Princeton on Nov. 2, 2007.
“It’s a good hockey team,” said Casey Jones ’90, the Jay R. Bloom ’77 Head Coach of Cornell Men’s Ice Hockey. “I just thought they were better than us tonight.”
“We started the game a little bit slow,” said senior forward and captain Ryan Walsh. “Got to come out better at the start.”
Quinnipiac scored twice in 74 seconds midway through the first period. Pelosi opened the scoring on a 2-on-1 after a Cornell defender lost his footing. Edwards followed by taking a stretch pass, tipped ahead by Gabriel Frasca at center ice, and backhanding a breakaway past Rousseau for the eventual game-winner.
Jones said the early deficit came from a mental mistake: Cornell let Quinnipiac exit its zone in a way the staff had flagged in its pre-scout.
The Big Red pushed back in the second period. Walsh was stopped on a short-handed breakaway, and Cornell had 11 shot attempts in the final 2 1/2 minutes of the period, including a shot by senior defenseman George Fegaras that hit the post. Only three of the attempts reached Kirsch.
“We just started finally moving pucks,” Jones said. “All of a sudden, hesitation was gone from our game.”
“Honestly, I thought that we played a pretty good overall game,” Walsh said.
“Once we started playing a heavy Cornell hockey style game, I think that we started to take over,” he said. “We need to figure out a way to play 60 minutes of that, and not 50.”
Ryan pulled Cornell within 2-1 early in the third period. Walsh poked the puck free after a Quinnipiac faceoff win and chipped it toward the corner, and Ryan got Kirsch to overcommit before roofing his second goal of the season.
“He showed some poise, which I think we lacked a little bit today,” Walsh said.
Pelosi restored the two-goal lead nearly 3 1/2 minutes later. He started the rush from below the Quinnipiac goal line and finished a cross-slot pass from Ethan Wyttenbach, last season’s Division I leader in points.
Cornell got one more chance to trim the deficit when Elliott Groenewold was assessed a five-minute major for hitting from behind, after a Cornell challenge, with under three minutes left. The Big Red pulled Rousseau for a 6-on-4 advantage, but Pelosi sealed his hat trick with a short-handed empty-net goal with 1:30 to play. It was the first hat trick by a Cornell opponent at Lynah Rink since Union’s Brandon Buhr on Feb. 8, 2025.
Cornell went 0-for-4 on the power play, while the penalty kill stayed perfect on the season by killing both Quinnipiac chances. The Big Red has killed 10 straight opposing power plays, dating to last season’s ECAC Hockey semifinal against Princeton on March 20.
“We have a penalty kill coach, Chris Brown, who’s unbelievable,” Walsh said. “For us, it’s more than just not allowing them to score. It’s building momentum.”
The game matched Division I’s top two faceoff teams, and Quinnipiac narrowly won the faceoff battle, 37-35.
Quinnipiac has won three straight games at Lynah Rink, the last two by 4-1 scores. It’s the Bobcats’ longest road winning streak against Cornell since it won five straight in Ithaca from 2013 to 2016. The Big Red has lost consecutive home games for the first time since February 2025.
Cornell faces Princeton (2-1-0, 0-1-0 ECAC Hockey) on Saturday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at Lynah Rink to conclude a season-opening four-game homestand.
Princeton is coming off a 5-2 loss at Colgate on Friday night, when the Raiders scored three unanswered goals over the second and third periods. Malcolm Green and Shaan Kingwell each scored on the power play for the Tigers.
“We’ll have to move on to Princeton pretty quickly,” Jones said.
