NCAA Hockey: The Cornell-Harvard Rivalry You Haven’t Heard Of

With the annual Frozen Apple game at Madison Square Garden this Saturday, let us take a look back at Cornell-Harvard, one of NCAA Hockey’s biggest rivalries.

NCAA Hockey is quickly growing in profile amongst fans of the NHL, thanks to steadily rising numbers of high-end prospects that are playing for a college team. Schools like North Dakota, Denver, Boston College and others have proven that they can develop elite NHL players.

However, those elite schools can overshadow some other very successful college hockey programs that have the tradition and history of an Original Six NHL team. Naturally, such programs would also have heated rivalries with each other, just as the Original Six teams still do.

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Two of these schools, in particular, may not come immediately to mind when talking about athletics; after all, they are both members of the Ivy League. But alumni of these schools include Ken Dryden, Joe Nieuwendyk, Don Sweeney, and Jimmy Vesey, among other successful NHLers.

If you follow NCAA Hockey at all, then you must have guessed by now that the teams being described here are Cornell University and Harvard University. Not only are these two of the oldest college hockey schools in the country, the rivalry between the two runs just as deep.

Cornell and Harvard are both members of the Ivy League division of the ECAC Conference, a grouping that has been historically and recently dominated by these two powerhouses. They have combined for 36 conference championships, as well as three overall NCAA titles.

The early years of this rivalry was dominated by the Crimson of Harvard, until the Big Red of Cornell hired the legendary coach Ned Harkness, who would lead them to their two NCAA titles with the help of the aforementioned Dryden in net.

This period was really where the rivalry began to grow, with Harkness looking to recruit players from Canada, just a few hours from Ithaca, New York, while Harvard prided itself on playing America’s best hockey players. To this day, Cornell still plays “O Canada” before home games.

In the 1970’s, Cornell fans began throwing a dead fish onto the ice before their games against Harvard, a tradition that predates the similar ritual in Nashville. Sometimes, Harvard fans will respond with a dead chicken, an allusion to the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

In 1990, Cornell swept Harvard out of the ECAC tournament, ending the legendary coaching career of Bill Cleary, who told his team not to shake Cornell’s hands. Today, when Cornell wins the Cleary Cup as Ivy League regular season champions, they refuse to touch the trophy named after him.

These are just a few of the moments that have livened up this rivalry, one of the oldest in all of NCAA Hockey. It is a rivalry that the students and fans have happily bought into, leading to in-game atmospheres that are most comparable to the NHL playoffs.

As conference opponents, Cornell and Harvard face each other twice a year in the regular season, once in Cornell’s Lynah Rink and once in Harvard’s Bright-Landry Hockey Center. They have also met each other in the ECAC tournament 19 times, including the 2017 Finals, which Harvard won.

This year, however, these two rivals will face each other at least three times, with their first meeting coming this Saturday at Madison Square Garden. This is as part of the Frozen Apple game Cornell plays at MSG every year against a different opponent, such as Boston University last year.

Cornell is coming into this game with more of the momentum, both in this rivalry as well as overall this season. The Big Red swept both games from the Crimson last season, including a thrilling last-second 3-2 win at Lynah Rink.

Cornell would end up as regular season ECAC champions, while both teams would lose in the ECAC tournament to eventual champions Princeton. Expectations were high for both teams coming into this year, but they have both gotten off to slow starts so far.

Harvard is 2-3-2 overall entering Saturday’s game, and only 1-2-2 in league play, while Cornell is only slightly better, at 3-1 in the ECAC and 5-3 overall. The Big Red are ranked 15th in the country, while the Crimson have fallen out of their preseason Top 20 spot.

This is a very important game for both teams, who will be meeting each other again just one week from Saturday in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A win for Cornell could earn them a better ranking, while Harvard could use the boost to try and string some wins together.

Who do you think will win this big, Thanksgiving weekend, rivalry game between two of the most storied programs in NCAA Hockey? Be sure to stay tuned to Puck Prose for more college hockey content going forward!