Throughout the regular season, the brightest spot on Cornell's team was undoubtedly freshman goaltender Matthew Galajda. Leading the nation in goals against average and shutouts is no easy feat. But with the Big Red's early exists in the ECAC and NCAA tournaments, it begs the question, how good was Galajda's season if it didn't translate into post season success? Well, let's dive into it.
Ruler of the Regular Season
There were stretches of the regular season where no goaltender was better than Galajda. 6 of his 9 shutouts came within the six weeks of the start of the new year and the first two weeks of February, all of them against ECAC opponents. You could make the argument that would those six shutouts, Cornell wouldn't have earned the No. 1 seed in the ECAC tournament to begin with, or be ranked in the top five for all of 2018.
Galajda makes a save against Princeton en route to a 7-1 victory. Photo Courtesy: Cornell Athletics
If you break it down mathematically, that means of Cornell's 25 wins, over one-third of them came via shutout. That's not to say Cornell would have lost every one of those games if Galajda didn't get a shutout, but it is worth mentioning that sometimes outstanding play from a goaltender can overshadow some sub par offense.
Playoff Power Outage
After Cornell breezed through Quinnipiac in the ECAC quarterfinals, they were poised to claim another ECAC championship. But after going up 1-0 early on against Princeton, Cornell would suffer four unanswered goals to the soon-to be ECAC champions. It was a similar script in the first round the NCAA tournament, as Cornell would also suffer to the hands of Boston University, 3-1, after scoring first again.
Fingers were pointed quickly at Galajda, mostly because the expectations were sky high after all the regular season accolades he earned as a rookie goaltender. If you take away the empty netter in each game, that means Galajda let in five goals total. One of the goals against Princeton was on a breakaway after the Tigers blocked a Cornell shot in their own zone, so it's hard to peg that all on Galajda. So that's two goals a game you can blame the rookie for, which are still quality numbers.
The more glaring issue is that Cornell was anemic on offense in their two playoff games. They failed to score in the later stages of either game, and both of their goals came from Trevor Yates. Like I said before, sometimes a goalie standing on their head can win you more games than your offense earns. Granted, Cornell is a defense first team and the numbers show that. However, a late season injury to Mitch Vanderlaan and inconsistent play from upperclassmen like Anthony Angello and Alex Rauter really hurt the Big Red down the stretch.
The Big Red failed to score more than one goal in each of their playoff games. Photo Courtesy: NCAA
Rating the Rookie
How Cornell did in the playoffs will greatly impact Galajda's legacy on the program, but that does not take away what could possibly be the best rookie season for a goaltender in NCAA history. In fact, considering how exposed Cornell's offense was in the playoffs, it means Galajda was the difference between an average offensive team begin a bubble top ten squad to a consistent top five team. If Galajda can be this good for three more years and Cornell adds a few more goal scorers, the Big Red can be national contenders very soon.