What other rivalry still involves chucking fish at the opposing team every time they're in your building?
Big Red vs Crimson is must-see hockey no matter how good or bad either team is. The ferocity of the Lynah Faithful, Cornell’s student section, simply demands it. Nowhere else in NCAA hockey is a fanbase still chucking fish at opposing players.
The two teams first played in 1910, but given that Cornell’s home ice was an outdoor lake and the team was coached by a physics professor for many years, it wasn’t much of a rivalry in the early days; Harvard led the series 13-1 between January 1910 and February 1962. Big Red’s program struggled until Lynah Arena was constructed in 1957. Slowly, Cornell gained ground in the ECAC.
1962 marked the sparking point of the rivalry. The Red was finally in contention for a winning season, but it would certainly need to beat the powerhouse of the Ivy League — Harvard — on Feb. 3. Anticipation on Cornell’s side was so great that fans lined up for hours for tickets, a tradition known, fittingly, as “The Line” (though The Line was discontinued more than a decade ago). Cornell won the game, 2-1, and the rivalry was born.
Ned Harkness poured gasoline on the animosity when he was hired away from Rensselaer in 1963. Harkness recruited heavily from Canada, much to the chagrin of the other Ivy League schools.
“Some athletic authorities at Harvard, Yale and the other Ivy League schools discuss his recruiting methods with snide allusions to the quality of education at Cornell’s agricultural college,” Mark Mulvoy wrote in the Jan. 2, 1967, Sports Illustrated issue.
Harkness didn’t much care about the criticism as his team became one of the most dominant forces in college hockey. The Big Red won the NCAA tournament later that year and again in 1970, and finished as the runner-up in 1969 and 1972. Between 1967 and 1973, Cornell made the Frozen Four five out of six times. Players like Cornell goaltending legend Ken Dryden were among those that Harkness lured to Ithaca — and who played instrumental roles in defeating the Crimson during those years.
But the snide comments that Cornell was a substandard school did not dissipate, and Harvard was among the chief commenters. In 1973, the comments took on the physical form of a chicken tossed onto the ice at Harvard’s Watson Rink, right at the feet of Cornell goaltender Dave Elenbaas. 1973 was the year the ECAC banned Canadians who’d played Junior A and any who had received expenses paid at a lower level, and Harvard took great delight in seeing Cornell lose its big recruiting pool.
Elenbaas wasn’t phased, though, as the Big Red won the game, 5-2. A month later, the Lynah Faithful paid the Crimson back threefold when they ventured to Ithaca, tying a live chicken to the goalposts. Soon after, the tradition of chucking dead fish at Harvard when the team entered was born. Despite the administration’s best efforts to stop it, it very much continues to this day. While some say the fish were chosen in allusion to Boston’s fishing industry, its creator contends that he simply sought the smelliest thing he could find to chuck at the hated Crimson.
The 70s and 80s were hard times for Cornell, but Harvard never managed to rise to the occasion, either. The Crimson would finish as NCAA runners-up in 1983 and 1986 and claim their lone title in 1989, but the Red still found plenty of success against their rivals during this era. Former coach Mike Schafer, who retired in 2025, as a player in 1983, waved a hockey stick with the words “Harvard Sucks” emblazoned on it before breaking it, whipping the Lynah Faithful into a frenzy. Even more remarkably, the Crimson blew a 4-0 lead in that game to lose 6-5.
Schafer played in Harvard’s Bob Cleary era, a coach who remains among the most loathed figures in Cornell hockey lore (Schafer once shot a puck at Cleary’s head.) Cleary’s final act as head coach in 1990 was to walk off the ice after losing to Cornell in the ECAC tournament, telling his team not to shake hands. The Cleary Cup is awarded each year to the ECAC team with the best regular season conference record. Cornell refuses to touch it whenever it wins it because of the slight.
Perhaps the peak of the rivalry came in the 2003 ECAC championship. With 37 seconds remaining, Harvard missed an empty net, bringing the faceoff back into their zone. Seconds after, Mark McRae took a slapshot from the top of the offensive zone that beat Harvard goaltender Dov Grumet-Morris to tie the game.
The drama wasn’t over yet. Less than a minute and a half into overtime, Sam Paolini beat Grumet-Morris on a closer-range slapshot to win the game — and the ECAC championship.
Today, the rivalry is still as ferocious as ever. The Lynah Faithful remain among the best student sections in college hockey, with a variety of inventive cheers to bash Harvard fans. “Harvard Sucks” is always a classic, but “Give me an A, give me another A, give me another A, give me another A, welcome to Harvard” has been increasingly popular recently as Harvard battles grade inflation allegations. It should be noted that Cornell is also among the worst schools in terms of grade inflation. The Big Red Pep Band also plays the Love Story theme song multiple times during the game to remind Harvard that their team lost the movie’s central game.
You may have noticed that most of the traditions are on Cornell’s side. That is because, as Offside News writer Lindy Nelson once said on an episode of the podcast Boarding School, “Harvard doesn’t even show up.” Unfortunately for Harvard fans, when I Googled “Harvard hockey fan cheers,” the first link that came up was to the r/Cornell subreddit with links to their cheers. The next closest option was a variety of long fight songs or an article sermonizing about the moral degradation of chanting swear words. Harvard fans do apparently call Cornell a “safety school” and also yell about grade inflation, and clearly, there is affection for the rivalry on the part of the players. That being said, the Crimson fans should really step up their game.