Benilde-St. Margaret's Boys' Hockey

Grant Besse scored four goals, including a natural hat trick in the second period, as Benilde-St. Margaret's defeated Robbinsdale Armstrong, 7-0, in a Section 6AA quarterfinal game.

Besse reached the 30-goal plateau for the second consecutive season, capping his evening with his 33rd of the season.

His efforts sealed a win in which the Red Knights took a 3-0 lead before Besse potted his first goal.

The game, however, got off to a slow start. Neither team managed a shot on goal  until BSM's Tyler Ellegard was stopped by Michael Greenberg, five minutes, four seconds into the game.

:Whenever you start tournament play there are always some nerves and I thought that we played a little jumpy to start with," Red Knight head coach Ken Pauly said. "However, when we got our feet under us it was very clear that we had a big advantage in terms of depth. Our team speed overwhelmed Armstrong tonight."

T.J. Moore got the only goal BSM would need when he grabbed a loose puck behind the Falcon net, came around to the net and stuffed the puck inside the left post before Greenberg could go post-to-post to stop the play at the 8:32 mark of the first period.

"T.J. Moore was a catalyst tonight," Pauly said. "It’s always a relief to see that first goal go in when you are playing in a one-game elimination tournament."

Pat Steinhauser, the Red Knights' scoring leader, saw only four shifts on the night but capped his second shift with his 24th goal of the season with 7:11 to play in the first period.

Tyler Ellegard put BSM up, 3-0, when he tipped a Jake Horton shot past Greenberg with 4:06 to play in the period and Besse sent the home team into the first intermission with a 4-0 lead when he scored with nine seconds on the clock.

The Red Knights' only power-play of the game started four seconds into the second period and Besse scored from the goalline to the right of the Armstrong goal 51 seconds into the middle frame, giving him 100 career points.

His third goal came 85 seconds later when he ripped a shot from the bottom of the right circle and his fourth goal came on and end-to-end rush at 4:48 of the second period when he carried the puck up the right wing boards, cut to the net in the right circle and beat Greenberg over his blocker.

"It was another incredible performance by Grant Besse," Pauly said. "It’s pretty fitting that he joined the career hundred-point club by scoring four goals."

After a seven-goal win in the quarterfinals, Pauly knows the playoff road becomes hard to navigate as his fifth-ranked Red Knights face third-ranked Wayzata in the section semifinals.

"We play a great team on Saturday in a game that would be worthy of a championship final in any other section in the state," Pauly said. "If we want to advance to Mariucci next week we will need to find a way to shut down two of the state’s top forwards.

"I fully expect Wayzata to come out hitting in an attempt to slow us down. We’ll have to be ready for that."

Saturday's match up is slated for a 7:30 p.m. faceoff at the Bloomington Ice Gardens.