Spencer Naas scored a hat trick and Benilde-St. Margaret's gave coach Ken Pauly his 400th career victory on Friday night with a 7-2 win at Duluth Denfeld.

"There's a lot of satisfaction in it," Pauly said of his milestone win. "I think it speaks of the quality of the program, especially over the last 15 years. After the first seven or eight years, I thought it would have taken 40 years to get here."

The Hunters weren't going to hand over the win easily. Nick Thompson scored just 20 seconds into the game and Wyatt Wutz's power-play tally 3:30 into the second period gave the hosts a 2-1 lead.

Carter Roo's unassisted goal less than two minutes later tied the game and, with 7:58 to play in the stanza, Chase Jungels' power-play goal proved to be the game winner.

However, it was the final minutes of the period which put the Red Knights in the driver's seat.

With Jack Lawton off for BSM's third major penalty of the game, Naas scored a pair of short-handed goals in the final 2:04 of the middle period and Jerry Calengor's first career goal came just 1:38 into the final period.

Naas then capped his hat trick with a third short-handed tally with 8:11 to play.

After the game, Pauly, who is 400-190-23 in his 24th season and 356-159-16 in his 21st season at BSM, reminisced about where the program has come from.

"It's been fun to see where this program has come from since I started as a JV coach (in 1986-87)," he said. "It took a while to go from where we were in those first eight or nine years to become one of the powerhouses in the state in recent years.

"Those wins haven't just come during the regular season, either. We've won some big games in sections and at state. But to win 400 games it really takes longevity and I've been fortunate."