ITHACA, N.Y. — It was a night to celebrate the Cornell men's hockey team's seniors, but a freshman stole the show.
 
After sitting out Friday's game, freshman forward Ben Berard returned to the lineup Saturday and posted his first collegiate hat trick to lead the Big Red to a resounding 5-1 victory over Clarkson in front of a raucous sold-out crowd at Lynah Rink.
 
While Cornell (23-2-4, 18-2-2 ECAC Hockey) had already clinched the Cleary Cup for the league's best regular-season record a night earlier, a match-up of the two teams in the circuit still lived up to its billing on Saturday. Both teams are ranked in the top 10 nationally, meaning the Pairwise Comparison Ratings implications kept the game relevent. Beyond that, this was a rematch of the 2019 ECAC Hockey Championship game, so there was a matter of pride at stake.
 
"I think these guys knew how big this game was, and they came out and played really well and played hard," said senior tri-captain Yanni Kaldis. "A guy like Berard – he gets taken out of the lineup, then comes back in and scores a hat trick. Can't say enough about that, but that's just the way this team is."
 
True to its billing, the game started out at a ferocious pace in a highly entertaining first period. Clarkson (23-8-3, 16-5-1), which is ranked seventh nationally in the USCHO.com poll, actually struck first with Adam Tisdale's strike on the power play just 5 minutes, 25 seconds into the game. The goal ended Cornell junior goaltender Matthew Galajda's shutout streak at 202:50, which is the second-longest in his collegiate career and the sixth-longest in progame history.
 
But the Big Red, ranked first in the USCHO.com poll for a fourth week this season, continued its first-period proficency to take the lead less than 10 minutes later on a pair of power-play goals. Berard's first strike came at the 8:39 mark, then junior forward Tristan Mullin's team-leading seventh goal on the man advantage gave Cornell its first lead. Cornell closed out the month of February with 21 first-period goals in nine games – by far the most in the country.
 
"Getting the puck down to the goal line and working up from there worked really well tonight," Berard said. "The last one was different, but at the start of the game we were just threw it down to me and (Cam Donaldson) at the net and seemed to open up a lot against them."
 
After a scoreless second period, Berard's second goal loomed large with 11:55 to play. He cashed in a rebound of junior defenseman Cody Haiskanen strong move to the net, then sophomore forward Michael Regush's 11th goal of the season gave the Big Red even more breathing room with just under four minutes to play.
 
A major penalty put Cornell on the power play for the last 2:57 of the game. While deploying a bunch of players who don't typically see the ice for power plays at the later stages of a game that's outcome had essentially been decided, Berard remained on the ice. The reason: A chance at a hat trick, which came to fruition after a perfect goal-mouth feed from freshman defenseman Travis Mitchell with 9.4 seconds remaining. It was essentially a reward for a strong return to the lineup
 
"He responded exactly how you would want a good player to respond," said Mike Schafer '86, the Jay R. Bloom '77 Head Coach of Men's Hockey. "He worked hard; he was around the net; he created some good scoring chances."
 
Cornell wrapped up its regular season on a nine-game winning streak, which is the longest active streak in the nation. The Big Red has earned a bye through the first round of the ECAC Hockey Championship playoffs, leading up the team's best-of-three quarterfinal series March 13-15 at Lynah Rink. While Cornell will have to wait until the completion of next weekend's first-round series, it knows its only possible opponents for the quarterfinals are – in order of likelihood according to seeding – Colgate, Brown, Union, Princeton and St. Lawrence.
 
"I thought tonight, the power play showed a lot of poise and didn't rush things. They waited and we were more patient on the power play tonight. Things that we didn't do very well on the power play last night, they just came right out tonight and had their head up and just get to moving pucks and finding lanes that were going to open things up. And that's hard against them. They're a really good penalty-killing hockey team."