Benilde-St. Margaret's Boys' Hockey

Benilde-St. Margaret's broke open a tight game with a four-goal third period and the Red Knights garnered a share of their sixth consecutive North Suburban Conference title with a 6-1 win over Totino-Grace.

"You have to like how the guys responded in the third period," BSM head coach Ken Pauly said. "We expected a big effort from Totino-Grace tonight and I think they gave us that, but we really separated oureselves from them right at the drop of the puck in the last period."

That third period effort was sparked by the line of Mike Blessing, Chris Flood and Nick Lauth.

Lauth scored three minutes, five seconds into the third period, making the score 3-1, and sealed the win with his fifth goal of the season with 3:04 to play.

“Blessing, Flood, and Lauth really energized our team tonight," Pauly said. "They gave us both energy shifts and goals, and that was the difference.”

The Red Knights' power play, which entered the game 27-for-50 over the last 12 games, provided the home team with its first two goals.

The lone goal of the opening period came when Christian Horn put a shot on goal from the right point. Eagle goalie Nick DeMuth stopped that shot and Grant Besse's subsequent rebound but Jake Horton found the back of the net with a third shot for his 18th goal of the season.

Xavier Fust scored 3:15 into the second period for Totino-Grace to tie the score but the game remained 1-1 less than three minutes.

The Eagles iced the puck while killing a penalty and Patrick Daly retrieved the puck out of the Red Knights' end of the ice. He carried the puck the length of the ice along the left side, circled behind the net and came out to the top of the right faceoff circle and made a pass to Horn, whose shot through traffic got past DeMuth to break the tie.

Until that point, Totino-Grace had outshot BSM, 8-1, through the first six minutes of the middle stanza but, over the game's final 28 minutes, the Red Knights would own a 31-9 advantage in shots on goal.

Once the home team had taken a two-goal lead, its big guns put the game away as Grant Besse scored his team leading 29th goal of the season at 7:35 and team scoring leader Pat Steinhauser notched his 22nd of the season between Lauth's two third-period goals.

Although they doubled their opponents' shot total, 47-23, the Red Knights got some clutch goaltending from Anders Jecha when they need it early in the game.

“He had several key saves in the first and second periods," Pauly said. "Without those, we would have been looking at a different game.”

According to Pauly, the contributions from his three top lines was also a key factory in the team's 20th win of the season.

“All three lines scored tonight and whenever you get that then you have a great chance of winning the big games.

"While we don’t like the idea of 'co-champions' with the same point totals, we still only lost one NSC game and we beat Totino-Grace twice, so our sixth conference title in this league certainly has our stamp all over it.”

BSM has one game remaining on its regular-season slate before beginning Section 6AA play next week. Saturday, the Red Knights travel to Stillwater for a 7:30 p.m. game with the Ponies at the St. Croix Valley Rec Center.