HARRISVILLE, R.I. - The Saint Michael's College women's ice hockey team scored all of its goals on the power play to knock off Nichols College, 3-2, on Saturday during New England Hockey Conference (NEHC) action at Levy Arena. The Purple Knights, who have won two of their past three games, move to 5-16-1 overall and 3-12 in league play, while the Bison are 3-20 and 1-14. Saint Michael's has won the last five meetings against Nichols.

Junior Kayla Kee (Newton, Mass./Newton South) and sophomore Ashley Dineen (Somers, N.Y./Canterbury School) both had a goal and an assist for the Purple Knights, while junior Sarah Bagley (Concord, Mass./Concord-Carlisle) also tallied. Classmate Abby Burke (Bedford, Mass./The Rivers School) made 13 saves. Senior Kaly Spilhaus (Bourne, Mass./Groton School) went 11-for-22 on faceoffs, and junior Carolyn Avery (Lexington, Mass./Lexington) was 9-of-15.

Nichols senior Julia Mastrototaro and first-year Kelly Ferreira scored, and sophomore Lindsay O'Connell made 55 stops.

Nichols scored on its first shot of the game at 5:28 of the opening period with Ferreira potting her first collegiate goal. The Purple Knights then killed off a penalty shortly thereafter thanks to a pair of blocked shots and a Burke stop, and O'Connell kept the visitors at bay with a trio of stops on the Purple and Gold's first power-play opportunity midway through the period. Saint Michael's capitalized on its second player-advantage bid as Dineen found the back of the net for the equalizer at 14:06. Kee and junior Lauren Sullivan (Wakefield, Mass./Middlesex Islanders) assisted. The teams ended the opening period tied at one, but Nichols carried over a power-play chance into the next stanza.

The player advantage favored Nichols as Mastrototaro scored just 1:09 into the second period, but Saint Michael's netted a pair of woman-up tallies of its own during the stanza. Kee scored off of Avery's feed for the equalizer at 5:18 before Bagley tallied 49 seconds into a power play, at 10:06, thanks to dishes from Dineen and Spilhaus. During one four-minute stretch immediately following the goal, Purple Knights blocked five shots while Burke added three saves. Burke came up with another stop later in the period during a Bison power play, when Saint Michael's had a pair of short-handed bids denied.

O'Connell came up with 12 saves while helping Nichols kill a pair of Purple Knight power plays in the third period, when she had 23 stops, and the visitors were assessed a penalty at 17:43 of the stanza while looking to tie the game. However, Burke turned aside the lone shot sent on net in that woman advantage, and the Bison were unable to get another shot on net despite playing the last 21 seconds of the contest with the goalie pulled for an extra skater.

Saint Michael's rounds out its regular-season schedule next weekend with a pair of road games, beginning with Manhattanville College at 7 p.m. on Friday.