The Albert Lea girls’ hockey team traveled to Mankato East High School Thursday night for the final game in the regular season.

The Tigers not only won the game — they shut the Cougars out, earning a 4-0 win. Senior Mia Fjelsta was the key to the win, scoring a hat trick before the end of the second period.

Albert Lea took the lead in the seventh minute of the first period and never looked back. Fjelsta scored the goal off assists from senior Katelyn Steven and junior Alli Dulitz.

The score remained 1-0 until the eighth minute in the second period, when Steven scored a goal of her own, unassisted.

Roughly two minutes later, Fjelsta scored her second goal of the game, this time unassisted.

Fjelsta was not done just yet. With under two minutes remaining, Fjelsta scored another unassisted goal to record the hat trick and put Albert Lea up 4-0.

The Tigers defense closed out the rest of the game, not allowing the Cougars to start any sort of a comeback.

The Cougars did outshoot the Tigers, tallying 45 shots on goal to the Tigers 29. However, junior Maddie Schneider deflected everything that came her way to record the shutout.

The Tigers improve to 11-14 to end the regular season and will likely be the No. 3 seed in the Section 1A tournament.

The rest of the teams in the section still have at least one game on their schedules.

If the standings remain the same, the Tigers would host the Bluejays of Waseca Wednesday night. The Tigers beat the Bluejays 11-4 in their only previous meeting of the season.