Three Points Which Felt Like Four

Seventeen Cornell hockey players had the stomach flu, we skated five defensemen on Friday night, we hadn't won a game in North Country in five years, and faced nearly four minutes of 5x3 in the second period last night.

I will happily take a three-point weekend.

Some of the players I've criticized on this blog had great weekends. Brendon Nash seemed healthy and played very well on Friday night. He committed three penalties in the second period last night, but had a good game aside from that.

Locke Jillson followed up his strong performance in New Hampshire with some nice skating. He seems to be someone we can rely on to carry the puck into the offensive zone and skate around the goal to allow our guys to change and get into the zone themselves.

Justin Krueger made one bad play in each game -- the same one actually, in which he dumped the puck behind him, behind our goal. to an opposing player. But he blocked many, many shots last night and continues to be mostly reliable in a variety of situations.

Nick D'Agostino and Joe Devin also played well, as did Colin Greening and Blake Gallagher, but we've come to expect that.

However, the star of the weekend was Ben Scrivens, who stopped 53 of 55 shots. He made some very big saves in each game, especially during the 5x3 last night. This was the kind of play we saw early last season, when Scrivens was singlehandedly keeping the team competitive in games.

Cornell needs these next few days to recover, both from the flu and from injuries. Patrick Kennedy sat out last night's game, but should be fine in a day or so. Krueger, Riley Nash, Joe Scali and Gallagher all took some hard hits and shots last night, but returned to the ice shortly after.

Cornell is up to No. 17 in the pairwise. If they can secure three or four points against North Dakota (No. 12) next weekend, that might be enough of a boost to get them to No. 11 or 12, and on pace to make the NCAA tournament. Zero or one points, and Cornell will probably need to win the ECAC tournament to make the dance.

The key to everything at this point in the season is to win. Cornell is one point behind Union in the ECAC standings, and two points ahead of Yale, but Cornell has played one more game than those two schools. I do expect Union to falter at some point down the stretch, so there will be an opening for Cornell to get itself to the top.

It's not particularly important to secure a No. 1 seed, but it would be nice to finish in the top 2 or 3 to earn the first-round bye and a (likely) easier opponent in the quarterfinal round. Unless the Big Red win big next weekend, they're going to need a strong performance in the ECAC tournament.