NEW ULM — Madalyn O’Connor recorded a hat trick and Emma Brudelie added two goals as the New Ulm Eagles improved to 21-3 on the season with a 5-1 win over Litchfield/Dassel-Cokato Thursday night in a nonconference girls’ hockey game.

Julia Helget had three assists with O’Connor and Jada Rahe each adding a helper.

New Ulm goaltender Ava Brennen stopped 17 of 18 L/D-C shots.

New Ulm head coach Kristen Faber said that she was pleased with the play of her top line in the game.

“They moved the puck well and Ava made some great saves — we made some bad [line] changes and she came up big,” Faber said. “This was not our best effort but it is good to come out with a win.”

And it was the tandem of O’Connor and Brudelie that doomed the Dragons.

“Between Brooke Arneson, Julia Helget and O’Connor, they were really cycling the puck around and moving it,” Faber said. “They found Maddi a couple of times for some nice goals. And it was nice for Emma to get in the goal column [four goals on the season now].”

New Ulm took a 1-0 lead at the 13:03 mark of the first period when found O’Connor wide open in front of Dragons goalie Janelle Quast for an easy goal.

Brudelie made it 2-0 at the 5:41 mark of the second period before L/D-C cut the lead to 2-1 less than a minute later.

But goals from Brudelie and O’Connor coming just over a minute apart moved the Eagles to a 4-1 lead heading into the third period where O’Connor collected her hat trick for her 19th goal of the season.

New Um closes out its regular season schedule when it hosts Windom at 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

“We want to keep things going on Tuesday and then into sectionals,” Faber said.