Team Notes: Raiders Set for Two with Rival Big Red

HAMILTON, N.Y. – The Colgate men's hockey team will be welcoming Cornell on Friday night at Starr Rink, before traveling to Ithaca on Saturday to face its long-time rival in the Big Red. 

Fans can access live video, live audio and live stats by logging onto the Men's Hockey Game Central link at gocolgateraiders.com

TICKETS ARE STILL AVAILABLE
Tickets for Friday's 7 p.m. start at Starr Rink are still available and can be purchase by calling the Colgate Ticket Office at 315-228-7600 or going onto gocolgateraiders.com. 

UPCOMING ALUMNI TAILGATE
Next weekend when the Raiders travel to Cambridge, Mass., to take on Harvard the Colgate Club of Boston will be hosting a tailgate at 5:30 p.m., prior to the Raiders taking on the Crimson on Jan. 28. For more information and to register, log onto www.colgateconnect.org/harvardhockey.

OPENING FACEOFF
Colgate and Cornell will be playing for the second time this season tonight at Starr Rink. The two teams are playing a home-and-home series this weekend after the Big Red came away with a 4-3 win at the Prudential Center on Nov. 27. Both teams enter with a sub .500 record.

RAIDERS DROP PAIR OF ONE-GOAL GAMES
Colgate returned home for the first time since Dec. 11 and fell in a pair of 2-1 games against two ranked teams. The first came on Friday night with a loss to #13/14 Union with the second coming in a tough overtime loss to RPI after Brian Day scored his 100th career point. Jack McNamara and Francois Brisebois scored the two goals for the Raiders during the weekend. Eric Mihalik got both starts in net and played well with 40 saves in the two games. 

TOUGH DEFEATS FOR THE RAIDERS RECENTLY
The Raiders have lost seven one-goal games in the last nine contests. Four losses have come in overtime. Colgate has also had leads in four of the last six games, including two-goal advantages against Boston College and Dartmouth. The Raiders had a one-goal lead against Princeton in the first period on Jan. 9. 

DOESN'T GET ANY EASIER
The schedule isn't on the Raiders' side as the team looks for its first conference win of the year. Colgate faces its rival in Cornell, a team that the Raiders have gone winless against in the last nine games with three of those games going to overtime. Colgate then has four ranked opponents in the next month in Dartmouth, Union and Rensselaer. 

DAY TALLIES 100TH POINT
Brian Day became the 48th Colgate skater to reach 100 points in his career after recording an assist in Saturday's lost to Renssealer. He reached the milestone in 131 games and averaged 0.76 points per game up to this point in his career. He has 52 goals and 48 assists and can become the 30th player in program history to reach 50 goals and 50 assists in his career with two more helpers. The senior forward became the 33rd skater in Colgate history to record his 50th career goal, which came on Nov. 23 at Niagara. 

McNAMARA TO PLAY 100TH GAME
Junior Kevin McNamara will play in his 100th career game on Saturday at Cornell. He started his Colgate career in 2007-08, but missed the 2008-09 season due to injury. He has four goals and 29 helpers in his career. His best season came as a freshman with two goals and 15 assists for 17 points. All three are his current career-highs. This season he has a goal and three assists for four points. 

BRISEBOIS MOVING UP 
The senior from Montreal currently leads the team in points and earned his 70th career point with the lone goal against Rensselaer on Saturday. He is sitting in 92nd on the all-time scoring list. He has scored four points in his career against the Big Red with a goal and three assists. 

RAIDERS UNDER VAUGHAN AGAINST CORNELL
Colgate has played 45 games against Cornell under head coach Don Vaughan since 1992. In those games, the Raiders at 15-22-8. The teams have played 12 overtime games since Vaughan took over and Colgate is 2-2-8. The Raiders went unbeaten in the first seven games against the Big Red with a 6-0-1 record from 1992-1996.

PRICE IS RIGHT
Sophomore Jeremy Price has been a consistent blueliner on the stat sheet with nine points this season after a career-high three assists in the loss to Princeton on Jan. 9. Two of the helpers came on the power play. The blueliner has had four of his eight assists against the Tigers this year. He posted two points in the weekend against Brown and fifth-ranked Yale on Nov. 19-20. His eight assists this year has equaled his output from a season ago and he has one goal to give him nine points on the year. 

SHOWING NO FAVORITES
Bourdon scored his first goal of the 2010-11 season in the second game at LSSU with a power play goal coming in the third period. He has now scored 16 goals in 16 different games in his career. He has the most against Brown and Yale with three goals apiece against the Bears and Bulldogs for six of his 16 goals. He is still searching for his first career multi-goal game and has not scored against Union and Rensselaer in his career. 

PUT THE PUCK ON NET
The Raiders have outshot their opponents in 15-of-22 games, but recently Colgate has gotten away from putting pucks on net. They have been outshot in the their last three games and four of their last seven contests. They have reached 30 or more shots 16 times this season, but have averaged 22 in the last three.

SCOUTING THE RAIDERS
Colgate enters the home-and-home weekend with a 3-18-1 mark and will facing rival and Cornell. The Raiders are still looking for their first conference victory after an 0-9-1 start to the ECAC Hockey season. Colgate is averaging 2.59 goals per game and is giving up 3.36 a contest. The two goals allowed in both games were the least amount of scores given up by the Raiders since a 3-0 shutout at Army on Dec. 4. 

Colgate has 21 different skaters with at least one point with 12 earning five or more points. Brisebois took over as the team's leading scorer after a two-point weekend with a goal and an assist. He has seven goals and 11 assists for 18 points. The senior has scored four points in his last three games. Austin Smith went scoreless in the two games and has 17 points on five goals and a team-leading 12 helpers. Robbie Bourdon tallied an assist against Union and has seven points and nine assists for 16 points. Day still leads the team with eight goals and has added seven assists for 15 points and tallied his 100th career point with an assist on Colgate's lone goal against RPI. Day had two points in the two games to reach 100. 

In net, junior Alex Evin has started 14-of-22 games for the Raiders and has a 3-10-1 mark. He added his second career shutout on Dec. 4 against Army with 24 saves and has recorded an .893 save percentage and a goals against average of 3.23. Rookie Eric Mihalik earned back-to-back starts for the second time this season last weekend. It was the first time since the two-game set at Robert Morris that he saw action. He is still searching for his first win as he is 0-6-0 this year with a 3.16 goals against average and a save percentage of .891. Junior Bryan Bessette earned starts in losses at Dartmouth and Quinnipiac and posted 39 saves in each contest. He is 0-2-0 and has a save percentage of .919 and a goals against average of 3.78. 

The Colgate power play continues to be hit or miss as the Raiders went 0-for-13 during the weekend after scoring two goals against Princeton on Jan. 9. Colgate dropped to a 13.3 success rate with 16 goals this season on the advantage. The kill gave up one goal in seven opportunities over the weekend to improve to 78.2 percent. Friday night's matchup against Union featured the only two teams without a shorthanded goal in the league.

SCOUTING THE BIG RED
Cornell comes to Hamilton with a 7-9-1 record after splitting last weekend's games with Rensselaer and Union. The Big Red beat up on the ninth-ranked Engineers on Friday night by a score of 5-1, thanks to three third period goals. The next night the 13th-ranked Dutchmen did the same to Cornell with five unanswered over the final 40 minutes to hand the Big Red a 5-1 loss. The Big Red is averaging 2.76 goals per game and is giving up 2.82 goals per contest. 

The leading scorer for Cornell is Greg Miller, who has 16 points on two goals and team-high 14 points. He is the only player that has reached double-digits in either scoring category. Just like the Raiders, the Big Red has multiple players chipping in points. Cornell has 20 different skaters with points and 12 with six or more. Joe Devin leads the team with seven goals and has six helpers for 13 points. Two of his goals have come on the power play and all seven are in league play. Brother Mike Devin leads the team in man advantage goals with three. Pittsburgh Penguins draft pick, Nick D'Agostino is tops among defensemen with 11 points on six goals and five assists. 

In net, Mike Garman has seen the most action lately because Andy Ilnes was selected to compete for the United States at the World Junior Championship last month in Buffalo. Garman made the most of his time and has a 4-5-0 record with a save percentage of .915 and a 2.46 goals against average. Ilnes has played in nine games with eight starts and has a 3-4-1 mark. He has a save percentage of .910 and a goals against of 2.56. He was taken out of the Union game after giving up four goals in 50 minutes of action and to that point he had 35 saves. 

On the power play, the Big Red has scored just 11 goals on the year, but has earned only 70 chances on the man advantage for a 15.7 percent success rate. On the kill, Cornell has allowed 11 goals to its opponents in 70 opportunities for a 86.2 success rate. 

SERIES HISTORY
Colgate and Cornell will be meeting for the 138th time in the series with the Big Red holding a 72-54-11 advantage. Cornell has gone unbeaten in the last five meetings with a 3-0-2 mark. The series is the second-longest for Colgate as Clarkson and the Raiders have played more games. Colgate and the Golden Knights have played 139 times since 1927-28. The first meeting for Cornell and Colgate came in 1920-21 on an outdoor rink in Ithaca.