Cornell University junior and men’s hockey captain Ryan Walsh has been selected to join the United States Collegiate Selects roster for the 2025 Spengler Cup. The announcement was made Thursday morning.
Walsh is among five new additions to the team, alongside Vinny Borgesi from Northeastern, Adam Gajan from Minnesota Duluth, Quinn Finley from Wisconsin, and Penn State’s JJ Wiebusch and Matt DiMarsico.
The 2025 Spengler Cup will take place from December 26 to 31 in Davos, Switzerland. This year marks the first time in the tournament’s 102-year history that a select team representing college hockey will participate. Previously, only two U.S.-based college programs—Minnesota in 1981 and North Dakota in 1982—have competed in the event.
“It’s well deserved. He’s a complete player and we’re excited about him being able to represent us and represent college athletics here at that highest level,” said Casey Jones ’90, the Jay R. Bloom ’77 Head Coach of Cornell Men’s Ice Hockey. “He deserves a spot and I’m really glad they zeroed in on him. It gives him an opportunity to get some international experience and he’ll bring that back to our team.”
“Obviously, it’s a big honor, something that I’m really excited for,” Walsh said. “It’s going to be a really cool experience — one of those things that you always hope to make, but you’re never sure. Being able to get the call and have the opportunity to go play on such an amazing team with a bunch of amazing players is going to be really fun.”
In Cornell’s first two games this season, Walsh recorded two assists during power-play goals in a win over UMass. Over his collegiate career so far, he has accumulated 55 points (29 goals, 26 assists) across 73 games for Cornell. He has also won nearly 54 percent of his faceoffs and has seven game-winning goals, ranking him ninth among active Division I players.
Last season as a sophomore, Walsh scored 17 goals—the most by any Big Red player since Joe Devin reached the same number in the 2010-11 season—and was just one shy of Matt Moulson’s sophomore record set in 2003-04.
Since the start of the 2023-24 season, Walsh’s goal tally ranks tied for twentieth among all active Division I players and fourteenth among juniors.
The Spengler Cup features six teams from Europe and North America each year. The U.S. Collegiate Selects roster consists of student-athletes from all six Division I conferences as well as independent programs.
Guy Gadowsky of Penn State will serve as head coach for the U.S. Collegiate Selects, assisted by Jason Lammers (Niagara) and Mike Souza (New Hampshire).
The team’s first game is scheduled against Team Canada on December 26 at 8:15 p.m. local time (2:15 p.m. ET). Each participating team will play at least three games during the six-day tournament.
Other competitors include HC Davos (host), HC Fribourg-Gottéron (Switzerland), Sparta Praha (Czech Republic), and IFK Helsinki (Finland). Broadcast details for viewers in more than twenty countries are expected soon; further information can be found at www.spenglercup.ch/en.
