NORTH BAY, Ont. – A four goal first period led the Western Mustangs to a season opening 6-3 win over the Nipissing Lakers on Friday afternoon at North Bay Gardens.
 
Six different players all marked their name on the scoresheet in the victory for Western, with Shailyn Waites, Amanda Pereira, April Clark, Brianna Rice, Beatrice Dufour, and Edie Levesque all finding the back of the net on Friday.
 
Carmen Lasis got the win for the purple and white, turning aside 23 shots in her first career OUA regular season contest. Veteran Jacqueline Rochefort got the start for Nipissing and made five saves in the first period before giving way to Danika Ranger at the start of the second who stopped eight shots over the remaining two periods.
 
Western got the offence going early on Friday, with Waites putting Western up 1-0 just over four minutes in thanks to an assist from Ali Beres. Pereira extended the Mustangs lead just under six minutes later, with assists coming from Clark and Megan Taylor.
 
Things would quiet down a bit until the 16-minute mark when the Mustangs took advantage of a penalty to the Lakers with Clark scoring a power play marker off assists from Alyssa Chiarello and Taylor.
 
Nipissing got on the board a little over a minute later thanks to a goal from Jade Gauthier, however the Mustangs responded in the final minute of the frame with a goal from Rice to take a 4-1 lead after the opening period.
 
After neither team was able to solve the other in the second, Gauthier scored her second goal of the night to cut the Western lead to 4-2 less than two minutes into the final frame.
 
The scoreboard remained the same until Dufour scored her first career OUA goal on an empty net marker with 3:55 left in the contest. That set the stage for an exciting final minute that saw Maria Dominico score on the power play for the Lakers with 30 seconds left before Edie Levesque iced it for the Mustangs with an empty net goal at 19:45 to give Western a 6-3 win.
 
Western will be back in action on Saturday afternoon when they head to Sudbury to take on the Laurentian Voyageurs. Game time is set for 3:50 p.m. at the Countryside Arena and will be streamed live on OUA.tv