Staff photo by Travis Rosenau New Ulm’s Abby Forstner watches her shot get past Mankato East goalie Jordan Thomas in the first period of a nonconference girls hockey game at the New Ulm Civic Center on Friday.

NEW ULM — It is not often that a hockey team outshoots another team 62-20 and comes up on the short end of the scoreboard.

But Friday night, New Ulm’s Ava Brennan stopped 61 of 62 Mankato East shots and the Eagles got first- and second-period goals as they stopped the Cougars 2-1 in a nonconference girls hockey game at the New Ulm Civic Center.

Abby Forstner and Madalynn Olson scored goals for New Ulm now 6-9-1 on the season.

Brielynn Weston had the assists on both scores.

Ella Fugazzi scored the lone goal for the Cougars, who fell to 10-6-1.

East netminder Jordan Thomas stopped 18 of 20 New Um shots.

“This is a big win for us,” New Ulm head coach Jeremy Reed said about the victory over a Class AA and Big Nine opponent. “This was huge — tonight was the start of the next three games against quality opponents (at Albert Lea, at Delano and home to Mankato West), so it was a good way to start that stretch off.”

The Eagles got on the board at the 6:29 mark of the first period.

New Ulm pressured the Cougars with shots — with two of the Eagles shots hitting pipes — before freshman Abby Forstner beat Thomas on the first assist from Weston.

It was a period where the Cougars doubled their shots on goal over New Ulm 18-9.

Just over four minutes into the second 17 minutes, Olson gave the Eagles a 2-0 lead on a shot that got by Thomas high on her glove side.

But it was also a period where Brennan stopped all 24 Cougars shots.

Brennan lost her shutout at the 2:24 mark of the third period when Fugazzi made it 2-1 but would get no closer.

“They did have 62 shots on goal in the game but if you look at that area we kind of clogged up the middle where they got high scoring chances,” Reed said. “We did a good job of clogging that up and that was one of the things I was pretty proud of the girls is that they did a good job of communicating and picking up girls in the defensive zone. We did have that one breakdown where they sent the girl to the backdoor and they scored their goal. But we got good goaltending and defended well.”

Reed added that Brennan made some huge saves in the game, especially in that second period.

The Cougars had a chance to tie the game with 1:03 left in the third period when they went on a 5-on-4 power play that turned into a 6-on-4 advantage when East pulled Thomas for an extra attacker.

But New Ulm killed the third Cougars power play to close out the win.

“That last one was really big,” Reed said. “It is not one that we practice often. Maddi Olson and Mya Hornick are on the sidewall and did a nice job of moving the puck so it did not freeze. It was a smart play on their parts.”