Top-seeded Warroad was up by a goal late in the third period against South St. Paul. That doesn’t explain the 5-0 final score.

This does:

A flurry of goals in about two minutes, highlighted by junior Lila Lanctot’s first career hat trick in a record-quick 1 minute, 38 seconds.

“I didn’t even care that I was the one that put it away,” Lanctot said. “We all worked together to find the back of the net.”

Warroad’s “hot line,” as coach Dave Marvin called Madison Lavergne, Kaiya Sandy and Lanctot after the game, helped seal the team’s Class 1A girls’ hockey state tournament semifinal victory Friday afternoon at Xcel Energy Center.

Talya Hendrickson gave Warroad (25-3-1) a 1-0 lead midway through the second period.

Then Lanctot and her linemates decided at the second intermission to be the grinding line, she said. They’ve never been the “fancy line,” Lavergne said. They’ve “always just been the little rats,” Sandy said.

What resulted in the third period was Warroad offensive pressure, which reached its peak with a four-goal outburst in a 2:08 span. They played gritty and crashed the net, Sandy said.

“That’s how we scored almost every single goal, was just crashing the net, putting pucks to the net,” Lavergne said.

Fourth seed South St. Paul (16-11-2) is 0-10-1 this season when its opponent scores first. The Packers went 0-for-3 on the power play, lost opportunities that coach Dave Palmquist lamented.

“Those first couple, we did have some looks and had a chance to go up 1-0, actually, and just didn’t capitalize,” he said.