NORTH ANDOVER, MA -- Niagara ended its three-game losing streak in convincing fashion, blanking Merrimack, 3-0, Tuesday. Greg Gardner recorded his fifth shutout of the season while Kyle Martin's two goals and Jay Kasperek's two key assists paced the Purple Eagle offense.

"We're a team that can skate with some of the best teams in the country," said Niagara coach Blaise MacDonald. "When we utilize that asset of speed, excitement and execution, we're very difficult to beat and we had all three components going tonight."

The Purple Eagles had toppled #5 Rensselaer and #8 Boston University early in the season, but stumbled into the break with consecutive losses to Colgate, Vermont and Union.

"This is only our second year of playing a full Division I schedule," said MacDonald. "The margin of error for our team is very, very slim. We played well enough in all of those games to win. But it's a slippery game played on ice and for some reason we didn't win those games. We didn't play as well in some of them as we should have.

"Our modus operandi is to focus on the process and the plan and not the results. I think we may have gotten that a little bit backwards.

"[But] tonight I thought we played excellent."

Merrimack, on the other hand, suffered its first back-to-back shutouts in team history and has now gone 142 minutes and 12 seconds without scoring.

"We played very, very poorly," said Warrior coach Chris Serino. "We broke down defensively. We didn't move the puck. We played better in the third period, but in the first two periods we just didn't play."

Martin put Niagara on top just 1:25 into the game on a shot from high along the right boards that probably would have gone wide, but deflected off defenseman Andrew Fox past goaltender Tom Welby.

Less than a minute later, the Purple Eagles went on the power play, where they had converted an impressive 27.8 percent of their chances. They moved the puck effectively, generating several strong chances, but Welby made the saves just when it appeared that Niagara might be poised to put Merrimack away early.

The rest of the period proved mostly uneventful until Merrimack's lone power play of the game commenced at 16:20 and the Warriors generated five shots. As the man advantage ended, John Pyliotis and Greg Classen peppered Gardner with rapid-fire shots from point-blank range that could have turned the game around if not the netminder's big stops.

"That was a turning point for the team," said Gardner, "because if they'd scored a quick goal there, it would have been a completely different ball game."

At 1:53 of the second, Niagara took a 2-0 lead on Martin's second of the game. The senior, who entered the game tied for eighth among Division I scorers with 11 goals and 12 assists, converted a perfect feed on the weak-side post from Kasperek and one-timed it into the net.

Welby then kept Merrimack in the game with nice saves on John Marshall and Chris MacKensie in rapid succession and a minute later on Peter DeSantis.

The Warriors countered by sneaking behind the Niagara defensemen twice, although neither resulted in a goal. Chris Halecki sent Nick Torretti in all alone with a nice saucer pass, but Garner made the stop. A minute later, Classen made almost as nice of a pass to Pyliotis on the left wing, but the junior couldn't cut in and had to settle for a slapshot.

Niagara controlled most of the rest of the period, finishing with a 16-7 shot advantage, but even more importantly added a back-breaking goal by DeSantis at 18:22. Kasperek furnished a near carbon-copy of his pass on Martin's goal and while Welby made the first stop on DeSantis, the senior buried the rebound for a 3-0 lead.

Neither team scored in a third period in which most of the suspense involved whether Gardner would get the shutout. When he did, it was the ninth of his career and his fifth this season.

Niagara moves to 12-5-1 with the win while Merrimack falls to 7-9-1. Both teams resume play on Jan. 2-3. Niagara hosts Air Force; Merrimack travels to Minnesota State.