After the Red narrowly edged out a 2-0 score on Friday night for its third straight win, the team’s momentum came to a screeching halt during Saturday’s matchup with Princeton. The Tigers built a 4-1 lead in the second period, forced senior goalie Ben Scrivens out of the game and survived a late comeback threat to skate to a 5-3 victory over the Red.

“[Princeton] played very hard and did a good job of executing on the offensive side,” said Cornell head coach Mike Schafer ’86. “We made some defensive mistakes. Some guys didn’t come ready to

play and we paid the price for that dearly.”

After Ben Scrivens’ shutout on Friday night, the senior goaltender had a much different experience on Saturday. Scrivens allowed four goals on 16 shots in just 26:36 seconds of play, before being pulled in favour of sophomore goaltender Mike Garman. The Tigers’ senior goaltender Zane Kalemba made 30 saves on the night to earn the win.Net minding: Sophomore Mike Garman took over when senior Ben Scrivens was pulled.

Princeton forward Mike Kramer opened the scoring just over 10 minutes into the first period on a Tigers powerplay, when he banged home a rebound to score his 10th goal of the season.

Before the first period was through, the Tigers extended their lead to 2-0. Freshman forward Will MacDonald picked up the puck in the Cornell zone, skated in between the circles and sent a shot on net. At first, it appeared as though Scrivens made the save, but the puck trickled by the netminder and across the goal line, giving the freshman attacker his first ever NCAA goal.

Cornell senior defenseman Justin Krueger expressed how disappointing it was to give up those two early goals.

“It’s definitely frustrating,” Krueger said. “We wanted to come out here strong, but we had a little bit of a rough start. We gave up a lead pretty early and basically had to play catch-up right away. It didn’t start the way we wanted to.”

Early in the second frame, the Red was finally answered with scoring of its own. When Princeton suffered a too-many-men penalty just one minute into the second period, the Cornell powerplay unit made the Tigers pay. At the 2:40 mark of the second, junior forward Joe Devin tipped home a junior forward Patrick Kennedy shot to cut the lead to 2-1.

However, Princeton soon responded when senior defenseman Jody Pederson scored a rebound goal at 5:50 of the second period to make it a 3-1 game. Just 46 seconds later, Princeton found itself with a 4-1 lead after Mark Magnowski sent a shot on net from just beyond the blue line. Scrivens went to catch the shot, but the puck slipped by him and into the back of the net. After Magnowski’s goal, Coach Schafer lifted Scrivens from the game and sent Garman in to man the pipes.

“Ben [Scrivens] gave up the one from just outside the blue line there,” Schafer said. “It was a shot from the blue-line, he lost focus on it, and even though the puck dipped on him he should have got his body across in front of it and take it off the chest. He tried to grab it, it his glove and dipped on him, and it ended up going in the net.”

The Tigers wasted no time in putting Garman to the test. The sophomore netminder was instrumental in killing off a pressing Princeton powerplay midway through the second period and impressed his coaches and teammates with a number of big saves. Garman stopped all 21 shots he faced in his first taste of action this season.

“Mike Garman was awesome,” Schafer said. “He went in for Ben and did a tremendous job. He really saved us in the second period; we gave up two or three really good scoring chances and he saved us and gave us an opportunity to get back into it.”

“He showed a ton of character stepping out,” Krueger explained. “It was a really tough time to step in and he played well. He made a lot of big saves and helped us stay in the game.”

Roughly seven minutes after the goaltending switch, the Red offensive attack made a game of it. During a 5-on-3 powerplay, the Red was cycling the puck around the Tigers’ zone. Senior defenseman Brendon Nash slid the puck over to senior forward Blake Gallagher at the face-off circle before Gallagher one-timed the puck towards the goal. Gallagher’s shot rang off the cross-bar and into the net, cutting the lead to 4-2.

Under four minutes later, senior forward Colin Greening trimmed the deficit to one, when he made a quick move to fake out Kalemba and sent the puck by the senior netminder, registering his eighth goal of the year.

“The play originally started in the corner,” Greening said. “Gallagher and I were barrelling down two-on-two, and we kind of exchanged a little bit, because he kind of set a little pick for me. I was able to take the puck out and wrap it around. My initial try was actually stopped by Kalemba, and then the puck squirted out. I kind of just hopped over it and waited until [Kalemba] went down a little bit, moved it to my backhand and put it in.”

Despite another 5-on-3 advantage in the waning minutes of the second frame, Cornell failed to tie the game up.

In the third period, the play tightened up a little. Cornell mustered several good scoring chances, but Kalemba was up to the task as he made six saves in the final stanza.

Schafer pulled Garman for an extra attacker in the final minutes of the game in hopes of notching the go-ahead goal, but Princeton sophomore forward Marc Hagel scored on the empty-net to give his team the 5-3 victory. Saturday’s loss made it just a two-point weekend for the Red, who now finds itself tied with Yale atop the ECAC standings.

“It was a pretty frustrating night overall,” Greening said. “Not getting that comeback, especially when we were on that 5-on-3 and not able to capitalize, was definitely very frustrating.”

“To lose the game tonight was really disappointing,” Schafer said. “We have high expectations for ourselves. We think we can win anywhere, all the time. So getting the split [this weekend] is obviously disappointing from that standpoint. But we need to get back to work next week and get ready for Brown and Yale coming to town.”