GREAT FALLS, Mont. – The University of Providence men's hockey team fell to the top-seeded University of Mary in a tightly contested battle Friday evening 4-3.

"I thought we played a good game," head coach Jeff Heimel said. "Shots were almost even. We went down 2-0 early which is something we did not want to do, but we fought back and tied the game."

The Marauders (33-3-6-1) got on the board first, scoring two quick goals in the first ten minutes. Nearly 30 minutes went by before anyone scored again, until Tyler McCarry found the back of the net with 2:16 left in the second period off of the assist from Erik Gatson.

Leo Felt evened the score early in the third period with a goal off of Cody Hendrickson's assist, but the Marauders scored with a goal of their own with 14:48 left in the game. Kyler Mack tied the game a little over a minute later of the assist from McCarry.

The game went back and fourth the remainder of the final period until the Marauders scored a goal off an unusual deflection with 4:14 remaining. Though the Argos (5-8) had several chances down the stretch, they weren't able to even the game.

"It was just a horrible bounce," Heimel said of the final goal. "We had a power play at the end of the game where we pulled the goalie, we hit the crossbar, we hit another post, literally had pucks laying on the goal line. We were right there. We felt like we were due."

The loss marks the sixth time the Argos have fell to the Marauders this season. However, tonight's loss has only increased the team's hunger to take on the Marauders again tomorrow.

"We've played this team well this year," Heimel said. "We've played this team tough. We've had a number of one goal games. We've played well enough several times to win games and it just hasn't gone our way. We need to find a way to finish. We know we're due. The thought is for tomorrow is that it's time to finish off a game against these guys."

To do that, the Argos will need to capitalize on their opportunities, which begins with cleaning up the attack.

"We need to be a little bit better at breaking pucks out," Heimel said. "We need to get going on the forward attack a little bit. I'd like to see our first guy in the forward attack out there a little bit quicker and try to put their defense under a little bit of pressure. We scored a power play goal but we had a lot of power play opportunities that we didn't convert. We just need to bury our chances."

The Argos will play the Marauders tomorrow at 3 p.m. in the final game of the regular season.