ITHACA, N.Y. — ECAC Hockey announced Monday that Cornell men's hockey freshman forward Ben Berard has been named the Rookie of the Week.
 
Berard made the most of his one game over the weekend, becoming ECAC Hockey's first freshman to record a hat trick in a league game this year — and he did it against a fellow top-10 team, to boot. Two of Berard's three goals came on the power play, pacing the Big Red to a 5-1 victory over Clarkson in the teams' regular-season finale on Saturday at Lynah Rink.
 
Berard tied the game at 1 at the 8:39 mark of the first period, then he scored the dagger at even strength 8:05 into the third period to give Cornell its first multiple-goal lead of the night. All that was left was the exclamation point, which came with 9.4 seconds on the clock on a tap-in of a beautiful feed from classmate Travis Mitchell.
 
The rookie of the week honor was the Big Red's second in a row, with Berard following in the footsteps of freshman forward Matt Stienburg's honor last week. Cornell has now won nine of the league's weekly honors this season, with this marking Berard's second time garnering the accolade.
 
Also on Monday, Cornell (23-2-4) remained #1 in the USCHO.com poll for a second straight week and ascended back to the top of the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll. Riding the nation's longest active winning streak at nine games, the Big Red has earned a bye through the first round of the ECAC Hockey Championship playoffs and will host a best-of-three quarterfinal series against an opponent to be determined March 13-15 at Lynah Rink. Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Tuesday at bigredtix.com.