First-years Brooke Mulvihill and Meghan Crowley scored, and Kassidy Lawrence made 32 saves for the Saints, but the St. Lawrence University women's hockey team was edged by Brown 3-2, despite a late comeback effort, on Friday night in Providence, R.I.

Mulvihill put the Saints on the board first, as she collected the puck at Brown's blue line, she put on the moves against the Bears defense and fired a wrister past Rory Edwards for the 1-0 lead.

Just a little over two minutes later, the Bears responded to knot the game at 1-1. Margot Norehad redirected a shot from India McDadi, that beat a sliding Lawrence.

Shots on goal were an even 10 apiece after the first 20 minutes.

The Bears struck twice in the second, to build a 3-1 lead over the Saints.

With 4:20 to play in the second, the Bears extended their lead to 2-1, as Monique Lyons fired a shot from just above the left circle, beating the glove of Lawrence.

With 36.1 seconds left on the clock and after three straight saves from Lawrence, Isabella Gratzl was able to put home the rebound to make it 3-1 heading into the second intermission.  

After the second, Brown held a 27-24 advantage in shots on goal.

Crowley brought the game back within one with her third goal of the season. Cheyenne Degeer cleanly won the faceoff and Crowley rifled a one-timer past Edwards to make it 3-2.

With 2:20 to play, Lawrence headed to the bench to give the Saints an extra skater.

The Saints sent a flurry of shots on net, but just couldn't get the right bounce, as the Bears held on for the 3-2 win.

"I think that was our 20th one goal game of the season," said head coach Chris Wells. "Minus some empty net goal games. We had some great spurts and a few lapses. I thought we took control of the game with a nice 4 /5 shift segment in the second, but Edwards made two huge saves to keep it 1-1."



"There isn't any quit in this team and we did our best to try and send it into OT, but couldn't get the equalizer. Tall task tomorrow vs. Yale, who is undefeated since the new year," Wells added.
 
Lawrence recorded 32 saves between the pipes, while Edwards finished with 36.

St. Lawrence finished with a 38-35 edge in shots on goal, while both teams recorded 56 shots each.

SLU moved to 11-17-3 on the season and 8-10-1 in conference play, while Brown improved to 15-10-2 and 11-6-2.

The Saints will make their way to New Haven, Conn. for their last road game of the regular season against No. 9 Yale, tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m.