PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Cornell men’s hockey team’s ‘JAM’ accounted for a lot of its offense a season ago, but a new wave of lifted the Big Red on Friday night at Brown. With a total of two collegiate goals between them entering the game, Beau Starrett, Connor Murphy and Alex Rauter all scored second-period goals to lead the Big Red to a 4-2 win over the Bears at Meehan Auditorium.
Starrett broke a 1-all tie just shy of the game’s midway point after Patrick McCarron maintained possession along the right wing and eventually set up a sharp-angle shot from Trevor Yates. The shot went off the back of Brown goalie Gavin Nieto, but Yates was able to put it back in front where Starrett sent a shot high into the net.
“We need all four lines rolling,” Starrett said. “I think that’s the thing that’s going to take us far this year. If we can have all 12 forwards and all six ‘D’ contributing in the goal column, we’ll keep it rolling.”
Murphy’s first collegiate in just his third game followed a little shy of three minutes later on a broken play where he sent a shot toward goal while being checked to the ice that bounced off a Brown stick and into the net. Rauter finished off a similar play with 1:35 left in the period with a quick wrister over Nieto’s glove. Noah Bauld had the lone assist on the play for his first collegiate point.
The goal capped a second period that was easily the Big Red’s most dominant to date.
“We played the type of hockey we want. We were up on the forecheck. We didn’t throw the pucks away, but we moved our feet and created some breakdowns on their part,” said Mike Schafer, the Jay R. Bloom ’77 Head Coach of Men’s Hockey at Cornell. “I was happy we followed the game plan we talked about.”
Brown actually opened the scoring on the night, taking advantage of the lively kick plates at its home rink. Defenseman Zach Giuttari intentionally shot wide from the right point to create a carom into the slot, where Trey Dodd was able to shovel a shot between Mitch Gillam’s legs 5:33 into the game. Worse yet for Cornell (1-2-1, 1-1-1 ECAC Hockey, 1-1-1 Ivy League), there was a delayed penalty at the time to give Brown (0-5, 0-3, 0-1) a power play on the ensuing faceoff.
But that’s when Cornell started to take control, building momentum by drawing hooking penalties on Eric Freschi and Rauter’s relentless forecheck, then by Murphy prolonged possession along the boards. The Big Red set up three shots by Matt Buckles on the 38-second two-man advantage — but Nieto was able to save one, and the other two went wide.
The Big Red eventually equalized at the 10:54 mark. Anthony Angello flagged down a pass and fought off a check while entering the zone, and Jake Weidner slid up the wall to tee up a one-timer from Alec McCrea that sailed through a screen and past Nieto.
Cornell carried the momentum into the second period and McCarron appeared to give the visitors the lead just 38 seconds after the break when he shoveled in a rebound off the back wall, but the goal was waved off after video review because of a Big Red player in the crease.
Though much of the third period was uneventful, Brown made things interesting with a six-on-four goal to cut its deficit to two goal with 5:35 to play. The Bears drew another Big Red penalty with less than two minutes to go and created another six-on-four, but Gillam stopped a deflected shot by Max Gottlieb and Brown would get no closer.
With the win, Cornell pushed its unbeaten streak in games against Brown to eight games (6-0-2). Schafer is 33-7-5 against the Bears in his 22 seasons at the helm at Cornell.
“It was good for our guys to see the result of our hard work through the last few weeks of becoming a better team,” Schafer said. “Tonight, we were better than we were at Harvard, and we were better than we were against Dartmouth. We’ve just got to keep going forward tomorrow night.”
The Big Red concludes its season-opening stretch of five straight road games at 7 p.m. Saturday when it takes on Yale.
