Box Score Game Summary vs. UW-EC / GameDay Online

WINONA, Minn. — It was a good news, bad news type of day for the Saint Mary's University women's hockey team Friday evening.

The bad news: After giving up three goals to UW-Eau Claire in a season-opening 3-1 loss last Saturday, the Cardinals surrendered four goals to the Blugolds Friday evening in the teams' rematch at the SMU Ice Arena.

The good news: After managing just one goal in that season-opening loss, the Cardinals erupted for five goals Friday — including the overtime game-winner by Sheree Haslemore (Gore, New Zealand) — as SMU snapped a six-game losing streak vs. UW-Eau Claire with a 5-4 victory.

“This was a great win,” said SMU coach Terry Mannor, whose team not only snapped their six-game losing streak vs. UW-Eau Claire with the victory, but also put an end to a 12-game nonconference winless streak (0-10-2) that stretched back to a 4-2 win over Finlandia on Feb. 4, 2006. “This team has worked hard from Day 1, and that hard work paid off tonight.

“We still made our share of mistakes, but that's going to happen early in the season,” Mannor added. “There were more than a few occasions tonight where this team could have given up, but they didn't — they kept battling from start to finish, and that was the difference.”

Kelli Johnson gave UW-Eau Claire a 1-0 advantage, scoring the only goal of the opening 20 minutes, before SMU's Madison Sienko (Mendota Heights, Minn.) and Ingrid Klockars (Wheaton, Ill.) sandwiched their first goals of the season around a goal by UW-EC's Lauren Havard, as the two teams heading into the third period tied 2-2.

And what a third period it turned out to be.

Katie Cachey (Orland Park, Ill.) gave SMU its first lead of the season with her first goal of the year three minutes into the final period, only to have UW-Eau Claire answer with back-to-back goals two minutes apart to regain the lead 4-3.

Ashley Mileykovsky (Northbrook, Ill.) pulled SMU even, taking the puck behind the UW-Eau Claire net and beating Blugold goalie Danika Porter to the post for the wrap-around goal with less than three minutes remaining in regulation.

Then came Haselmore's OT heroics, as the Cardinal freshman picked up a loose puck in front of the UW-Eau Claire net and beat Porter stick side just two minutes into the five-minute extra session.

“Eau Claire is a very good team, and I think we learned a little something about ourselves tonight,” said Mannor, whose team is back in action Saturday, playing host to Lake Forest in a 2 p.m. nonconference game at the SMU Ice Arena. “We learned that if we play together, and play hard for 60 minutes, good things will happen.”

Make that 62 minutes.