Photos courtesy of Travis Rosenau/The Journal, New Ulm Marshall’s Kendal Beernaert skates into the faceoff circle before firing a shot during a Section 3A semifinal girls hockey game against New Ulm on Saturday night at the New Ulm Civic Center.

NEW ULM — Despite Belle Deutz’s 39 saves, the Marshall girls hockey team’s season came to an end Saturday night with a 1-0 loss in triple overtime to New Ulm in the Section 3A semifinals.

New Ulm’s Michelle Smith scored the game-winning goal at 3:31 of the third overtime.

The win propels New Ulm to Tuesday night at Don Roberts Arena at Gustavus Adolphus College, where they will face top-seeded Luverne at 7 p.m.

Luverne defeated Windom 8-1 in the other semifinal game.

“All of the respect goes to Marshall,” New Ulm head coach Jeremy Reed said. “This was a really good girls high school hockey game — this is how the playoffs should be — with two teams playing and all of it on the line. Both teams did that tonight.”

New Ulm got the game-wining goal in the third extra session and the 80th minute of play when Smith lofted a backhander past Deutz, who stopped 39 of 40 New Ulm shots.

“We were all really tired,” Smith said after scoring her 19th goal of the season. “As a team, we all put it in together. This was my top-tier goal this season.”

And Smith’s goal was the first scored by either team in the last 11 periods they have faced each other.

New Ulm beat Marshall 2-1 on Dec. 1, with all goals coming in the second period.

In a rematch in New Ulm on Jan. 5, the teams battled to a scoreless game in overtime.

“I have to give a hats off to our goaltender [Ava Brennan], who made some big saves and she stood big back there.” Reed said. “She made some key saves at big moments.”

Brennan stopped all 35 Tigers shots.

“This is a huge win for us,” Smith said. “We came in thinking that Marshall was going to be a pretty tough opponent and they were.”

Reed now takes the Eagles (17-8-1) into their third meeting with Luverne that has a pair of 4-1 regular season wins against them.

“It will be really important for us to get that puck down low against them — work that puck down low,” Reed said. “We recognized some things the last time we played them and we can focus on.”