Box Score

	vs.
3		6

Game Summary / GameDay Online

BLAINE, Minn. — Mathematically, there's still hope.

But the road just got a lot of tougher.

The Saint Mary's University women's hockey team's bid of an eighth straight trip to the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference playoffs was dealt another blow Saturday evening, as Bethel completed its first-ever conference sweep of the Cardinals with a 6-3 victory.

With the loss, the Cardinal fall to 5-8-1in conference play and dip one point behind Bethel and Hamline for the fifth and final playoff berth with four games to play.

Not to mention a date with the conference's second-place team — St. Thomas — next weekend.

There's still hope, but …

"We can't afford another loss,," said SMU coach Terry Mannor. "We knew this was going to be a big weekend for us — it's not that we played all that poorly, we just weren't able to shut (Bethel) down the way we needed to."

The Cardinals, who dropped a 3-0 decision to the Royals on Friday evening at the SMU Ice Arena, scored single goals in all three periods in Saturday's rematch.

The problem was, the Royals scored more goals in the second period alone — four — than SMU did the entire game.

The  Royals jumped out to a 2-0 lead — scoring their first goal just 39 seconds in — before Ingrid Klockars (Wheaton, Ill.) got the Cardinals on the board midway through the period, netting her team-leading sixth goal of the season.

Amy Zimniewicz (River Falls, Wis.) pulled the Cardinals even eight minutes into the second period, but then the roof caved in on the Cardinals, as Bethel rattled off four unanswered goals in a span of eight minutes to put the game out of reach.

"It's tough," Mannor admitted. "We created some good chances, we just couldn't cash them in."