The Red is preparing for a big weekend on the road, starting Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Troy, N.Y. and continuing on Saturday at 7 p.m. in Schenectady, N.Y. First, Cornell takes on Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in a game that will be televised by NBC sports network. This is the fourth time this season that Cornell hockey will be on national television.

“Every two points are valuable,” said head coach Mike Schafer ’86. “People just look at the Union game but RPI could be huge for us. They’ve won three of their last four [games], they’ve beaten some good teams, they’re playing well. We need to go in and really focus on the things we’ve talked about all year long and getting as many points as we can each game — and that starts with RPI and then carries over into Union.”

The Red is anxious to get back on the ice to try to overcome its trouble this past weekend, when it lost two games to Colgate and fell in the standings, according to senior defenseman Sean Whitney. For the first time since Nov. 11, Cornell is not first place in the ECAC league. The team also fell to 14 in both of the major national polls.

“We were unbeaten, but we weren’t playing exceptional hockey or the hockey we wanted to be playing, so it didn’t really carry into the weekend the way we wanted to play, and we suffered for it,” Whitney said. “But like always, we’ve been watching the videos, we’ve talked as a team … we are hoping to improve coming into this huge road weekend.”

Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that Union is the team that captured the Red’s previous spot at number one in ECAC hockey. The Dutchmen boast an impressive 6-1-1 record in their past eight games — all of which have been in-conference matches. Currently Union stands tied at 11th place in the USCHO.com poll and 12th in USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine. However coach Schafer and his players alike have constantly emphasized that they are not focusing on the standings right now. Instead, they are working on improving as a team.

“The same way we don’t overreact to a big win, a win or a tie, we don’t overreact to losing a couple of games,” Schafer said.

Cornell is 3-1-1 against ranked teams this season. Although the Red is currently two points behind Union on the boards, Cornell has played one fewer game. Despite the obvious importance of these two games, the Red is staying above all the hype.

“I think it wouldn’t really matter who we play — its on the road and its in our league,” Whitney said. “RPI, you can’t sell them short the way they’ve been playing lately and Union will obviously be a big game, but we just have to take one shift at a time, especially in our league with every game being so important.”

While much hype surrounds the Union game, RPI is not a team to be overlooked. The Engineers have gone 4-2-1 in the past seven games and boast some impressive skill in the net. Junior goaltender Bryce Merriam was named ECAC Hockey Goalie of the Week last week. Cornell has been practicing all week in preparation for the weekend, knowing these in-conference games are key.

“[We] really focus on the process of winning games, getting better through the course of the week, addressing issues we need to address within systems or lines or tinkering with different things in order to get better the next weekend,” Schafer said. “We want to focus on practice this week and getting ready to play against RPI and Union. Both those teams are on a roll right now.”

But the real defensive challenge will come from the Dutchmen, who hold the nation’s lowest goals-against average: 1.78 a game. This is not to say their offensive play should be cast aside, as Dutchmen junior center Jeremy Welsh stands at fifth in the country for goals and is tied for first in power play goals. Schafer has been prepping his team for this defensive style of play.

“[We] have to execute on special teams, find ways to win at different times,” he said. “Put pucks on the net, have traffic around the net, be hungry around the net — win battles. It’s all the little things that you need to do against any team [that] just get exaggerated when you play against a good defensive team. We’ve been there before. It will be important because it will be a tight game. And we’ve done pretty well in those one goal games throughout the course of the year.”

Although the Red struggled this past weekend, the team is fired up for the chance to turn things back around this weekend, and is not letting the Colgate losses affect them moving forward.

“I know that all the guys know what we are capable of, and it just takes a 60 minute effort,” Whitney said. “And that’s what brings confidence — its not a thing where we are worried about the standings or we’re worried about what teams we have to beat its … taking it one game at a time and if we can be confident in our abilities — and we know we have them because we have a good record — they will carry into this weekend. I think the confidence is okay; it’s tough to lose but it’s fine right now.”