Princeton defeated Cornell 3-2 in the ECAC Hockey semifinal at the 1980 Rink — Herb Brooks Arena on March 20, with Joshua Karnish scoring the game-winning goal late in the third period.
The result sends Princeton to its first ECAC Hockey Championship game since 2018, while ending Cornell’s hopes of winning a third consecutive Whitelaw Cup. The Tigers improved their record to 18-12-3, and Cornell finished at 22-10-1 for the season.
“They had urgency. We lacked it,” said Casey Jones ’90, the Jay R. Bloom ’77 Head Coach of Cornell Men’s Ice Hockey. “They just seemed to want it more than us tonight. It was pretty apparent.”
Princeton’s David Jacobs and Julian Facchinelli also scored, with Kai Daniells providing two assists. For Cornell, Ryan Walsh recorded a goal and an assist, and George Fegaras added another goal. Arthur Smith made 21 saves for Princeton, while Alexis Cournoyer stopped 21 shots for Cornell.
Fegaras opened scoring early in the first period for Cornell, but Princeton responded in the second period with goals from Jacobs and Facchinelli. Walsh tied the game late in the second period on a power play goal. In a tense third period, Nick Marciano nearly put Princeton ahead twice before Karnish scored with under eight minutes remaining.
Cornell pressed hard in the final minutes but could not find an equalizer as Smith stopped all three shots on net during that stretch and Princeton blocked five other attempts. “One of our strengths is we can skate and they were beating us up ice a lot,” Jones said. “We talk about being a really good transitional team. Well, part of being a good transitional team is going from offense to defense. And we were poor with that tonight.” Walsh added: “We had a couple good shifts in a row, ended up drawing a penalty, scoring on the power play… I thought we had it going in the second period.”
This marks only the second consecutive loss by Cornell to Princeton since back-to-back defeats in November 2012 and February 2013; however, Cornell still leads their all-time series.
Looking ahead, Cornell will wait until Sunday, March 22 to learn if it will be selected for this year’s NCAA Division I Men’s Hockey Championship regional semifinals later this month. If chosen, it would mark their fourth straight appearance at nationals—a program record last matched between 1967 and 1970.
“You look at some of our best games have been after we’ve been taught hard lessons. We’re going to use a hard lesson here, use it to motivate us,” Jones said, “and hopefully propel us for what’s coming ahead.”
