NEW ULM — In span of eight minutes, a close boys’ hockey game became a running-time contest.

New Ulm scored six goals midway through the final period to turn a tight 3-1 game into an 8-1 win for the Eagles Saturday afternoon in a Big South Conference game over Minnesota River.

Glavine Schugel recorded a hat trick for New Ulm and now leads the Eagles with 12 goals.

Cade Bushard added two goals with Josh Gulden, Braxten Hoffmann and Nolan Drill each adding a goal for New Ulm, who improves to 8-1 in the conference and 10-4-1 overall.

Gulden added two helpers with Schugel, Jace Addy, Jacob Berg, A.J. Arneson, Sam Keckeisen, Kedar Schmitz and Ethan O’Connor all getting assists.

Eagles’ goalie Kyle Esser stopped 19 of 20 Bulldogs’ shots.

New Ulm coach Ryan Neuman said that the third-period goal barrage by his team came from doing something that he had stressed to them.

“We just got pucks to the net,” Neuman said about the third period that saw the Eagles outshoot the Bulldogs 12-3. “We were cycling and controlling them. We just weren’t getting pucks to the net. Once we started throwing pucks to the net we started scoring goals.”

New Ulm started the flood of goals in that third period after it successfully killed a 5-minute Bulldogs’ power play before Schugel got his hat trick with a short-handed goal at the 8:32 mark on a Bulldogs turnover in their own end.

It was Schugel’s second goal that came due in large part because of his extremely quick hands.

“He has very quick hands,” Neuman said. “He does a good job with that.”

Hoffmann made it 5-1 four minutes later before Schugel earned his hat trick one minute later for a 6-1 lead.

Drill made it a 7-1 contest with an unassisted goal at the 14:37 mark before Schugel assisted on a Bushard shot that got by Bulldogs’ goalie Logan Moe for an 8-1 lead.

New Ulm took a 2-1 lead after the first period when Schugel used his quick hands to put a video game-type goal past Moe.

Gulden then added a goal two minutes later before Brendan O’Keefe got the only Minnesota River goal of the game at the 13:35 mark.

Bushard got the only goal of the second period on an assist from Berg.

“They had that five-on-three in the third period on a five minute major on us and only got one or two shots and once we tightened up defensively they did not do much,” Neuman said.