Taylor Heise's hat trick leads No. 5 Gophers over Merrimack in East/West Showcase

Fifth-year senior Taylor Heise scored three goals in her second consecutive game as the No. 5 Gophers women's hockey team routed Merrimack 9-2 on Friday night at Ridder Arena in the second game of the East/West Showcase.

Minnesota scored six goals in the third period to pull away, the first four in a stretch of 77 seconds.

"It was cool to see us come back from a shaky first period," said Heise, who has 18 points in her past five games. "We made some mistakes that we don't normally make, but we came back much better in the third. We knew after the second period that people were feeling it now."

"First period was a little sloppy," Gophers coach Brad Frost said, agreeing with Heise. "It was our worst period in a long time and we obviously got better as the game progressed. We talked about shot volume in between the second and third period after only getting 12 in the first two periods."

Sophomore goalie Skylar Vetter, who came in with three straight shutouts for Minnesota, had that streak ended when Katie Kaufman, a former Mounds View standout, scored at 15 minutes, 21 seconds of the second period on a power play.

Her final shutout total of 261 minutes, 30 seconds is the third longest streak in program history.

Freshman defenseman Nelli Laitinen put the Gophers (15-3-2) ahead almost nine minutes into the game. Heise's rebound in front made it 2-0 Minnesota early in the second period and Abigial Boreen made it 3-0 midway through the period on a power play.

Catie Skaja, Heise, Grace Zumwinkle and Madison Kaiser had first four goals in the final period in a quick span. Peyton Hemp and Heise the final two.

Zumwinkle's goal was the 98th of her career, moving her into sole possession of sixth place in program history.

And Heise, with three goals, passed Gigi Marvin for ninth place in program history in points with 197.

Vetter finished with 14 saves. Two goalies for the Warriors (7-14-1) combined for 33 saves.

"[Skylar] played really well I thought," Frost said. "It's hard when you aren't getting a ton of action in some of these games and a puck hits you in the shoulder and you have to figure out where that is."

No. 15 St. Cloud State 3, New Hampshire 0: JoJo Chobak stopped 24 shots for her third shutout of the season and Allie Cornelius scored twice, the second time on a late empty-netter, as the Huskies (12-10) beat the Wildcats (7-15) in the first game of the East/West Showcase. Klara Hymlarova gave SCSU a 1-0 lead on a power-play goal 13 minutes into the game. It was her team-leading 13th goal this season.