M. hockey performs unlikely split, beats Cornell, falls to Colgate

It has happened so often this season that, even the night before, the men's hockey team seemed to see it coming. Fresh off an important win over then-league leader Cornell on Friday, the Tigers were careful not to put too much stock in the victory.

"I don't expect anything [tomorrow night]," head coach Len Quesnelle '88 said on Friday night. "I expect these guys to show up tomorrow. I expect a new game, a new team, a new situation."

"We didn't prove anything this weekend," junior goalkeeper Dave Stathos said, echoing Quesnelle's reticence in prophecying his team's complete turnaround. "Even if we win tomorrow, we still have a lot to make up."

For the second week in a row, Princeton (7-13-3 overall, 6-8-2 Eastern College Athletic Confer-ence) upset the top team in the ECAC — beating St Lawrence, 6-4, last weekend and Cornell, 4-1, this past weekend. But a statistician would point to the numbers and sagely predict a letdown the following night.

Of their seven wins, the Tigers have earned five of them on Friday nights. Before playing Colgate (8-16-4, 6-9-1) on Saturday, their record was 0-3-1 on Saturday games following a Friday win. Princeton was outscored 16-4 in those games. The numbers seemed to fortell the outcome. The players hoped to stop the trend, but the numbers would prove right again.

Still hanging close midway through the first period, Princeton claimed a 2-1 lead on an unassisted goal from junior defender Dave Schneider. But Colgate went on to score six unanswered goals en route to a 7-3 routing of the now-hapless Tigers. And one day after the high of beating the Big Red, Princeton was back to ground zero, back to its old ways, back to the wall only one point above missing the playoffs.

"For the life of me I can't figure out how we can come out one night so strong but so flat the next," Quesnelle said. "If I had an answer to solve it, we'd be sitting here with a 'W.'

"Complacency might be part of it. They play well one night and think they can just lace up the skates and come out. It just doesn't work that way."

Princeton was anything but complacent on Friday night, when then-No. 10 Cornell (11-8-4, 9-5-2) skated into Baker Rink. The Big Red struck first five minutes and 54 seconds into the game. Sophomore defender Doug Murray one-timed a slapshot from the middle of the ice near the blue line, beating Stathos for the power-play goal. That would be the last time Cornell would break through the wall put up by the netminder in perhaps his best performance of the season.

"I felt great," Stathos said. "I really worked on not thinking, focusing on the puck, emptying my mind."

Down 1-0 after the first period, Princeton had the unenviable task of coming back against Big Red netminder Matt Underhill, whose miniscule 1.93 goals-against average and .923 save percentage had almost single-handedly led Cornell to its national prowess. The Tigers broke through in the only way imaginable — on a deflection that caught Underhill going the wrong way.

After killing almost four minutes of man-down play — including 21 seconds of five-on-three — the Tigers grabbed the momentum by creating a barrage of offensive chances. Senior left wing Shane Campbell finally capped the drive when his shot from the middle bounced off a Big Red defender. Underhill could do nothing but watch as the redirected shot floated over his shoulder and into the back of the net.

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Princeton then took the lead for a good 13 seconds before the end of the second period, capitalizing on a five-on-three chance of its own. With time running out on the two-man advantage, the Tigers were struggling to keep the puck in their offensive zone. As Cornell was about to kick the puck out past the blue line and kill the attack, Princeton saved it, and senior center Kirk Lamb threaded a pass to junior left wing Brad Parsons in front of the net. Parsons deflected the pass through Underhill's legs and into the net for the lead.

The following night, a different Princeton team skated onto the ice to take on the Red Raiders. Lamb connected with Parsons again to notch the first goal of the game, but after the first period's two goals the Princeton performance would leave the team as frustrated as it was during its eight-game losing streak earlier in the season.

"When you get beaten by a team three points behind you, that's frustrating," Lamb said. "They're not even in the playoffs.

"We're scoring four goals a game, but we're giving up a lot of goals. We have the talent to win, but we can't depend on the hard work and the heart. That's the most frustrating thing. Hard work is the one thing everyone can bring to the rink."