SCHENECTADY, N.Y. – The Cornell men's hockey team rattled off four third period goals on Saturday night, including the second strike of the night from senior tri-captain Kyle Betts, to record a 5-2 victory over Union at Messa Rink and extinguish a winless skid that had reached six games.
 
The victory not only stemmed the tide of the Big Red's longest stretch without a win since 2016, it helped the team keep its distance from the chase pack in the race for fourth place in the ECAC Hockey standings – which comes with a highly-coveted bye through the first round of the ECAC Hockey Championship playoffs. Cornell is up to 29 points, four points clear of Colgate (which has a game in hand, to be played Monday at Brown), five clear of Rensselaer and six ahead of Princeton.
 
With those ramifications in mind, Union's strong start to Saturday's game surely raised a pulse or two. The Dutchmen struck first when Josh Kosack speared a loose puck near the post to the left of Big Red senior Nate McDonald that popped up and over the goaltender's shoulder at the 6:16 mark in the first period.
 
Union then carried much of the play until Cornell gained some traction with a late power play. While nothing came of that chance on the man advantage, the momentum carried over into the second period. That's when junior defenseman Sam Malinski threaded a perfect pass through multiple defenders from the center point to Betts, posted crease-side, for a tap-in to tie the game at 1.
 
While that capped the scoring for the middle frame, Cornell (14-7-4, 9-5-4 ECAC Hockey) largely started to dictate play and set the stage for its big third period. Like he had early in the previous period, Betts struck again in the opening moments of the third. The play started when he won a faceoff to the right of Union goalie Connor Murphy, then he crashed the net to swat in a rebound of junior defenseman Travis Mitchell's point shot that leaked behind Murphy at the 37-second mark.
 
Defenseman Cody Haiskanen, another one of Cornell's tri-captains, gave the visitors their first two-goal lead of the night. He smashed in a shot from the high slot through agitated traffic off a behind-the-net feed from freshman Ondrej Psenicka, who kept the play alive after hitting the post with his own offering seconds earlier.
 
Thomas Richter trimmed Cornell's lead to one with his goal from the slot with 8:50 to play, but junior forward Ben Tupker restored the lead 2:25 later on a goal set up by a ferocious forecheck by sophomore forward Kyle Penney. Malinski then capped the scoring by splashing an empty net from 80 feet with 57.3 seconds to play. It was the first time since Nov. 27 that Cornell scored five times – a span of 16 games.
 
The Big Red returns to Ithaca for its final two home games of the regular season, when it hosts St. Lawrence at 7 p.m. Friday and Clarkson at 7 p.m. Saturday.