MANCHESTER, NH –Center Patrick O’Sullivan collected his first career natural hat trick and goaltender Jason LaBarbera stopped all 46 shots he faced in the Manchester Monarchs 5-0 shutout of the Toronto Marlies in front of 6,605 fans at the Verizon Wireless Arena on Saturday afternoon.

Manchester (7-5-3-1) moves into third place in the Atlantic Division with 18 points.  Toronto (5-10-1-1) are in fifth place in the North Division with 12 points.

O’Sullivan picked up his third goal of the season at 13:32 of the first period in a one-man effort.  O’Sullivan stole the puck from the Marlies deep in the right corner, turned and roofed it over goaltender Justin Pogge to give the Monarchs a 1-0 lead.

O’Sullivan collected his second of the night on the power play at 3:46 of the middle period.  Defenseman Eric Werner started the attack by carrying the puck into the Marlies zone.  Werner sent the puck to the hash marks and center Greg Hogeboom redirected it toward Pogge who made the initial save.  The rebound bounced to O’Sullivan on the right doorstep and he flipped it over the sprawling netminder.

The third time was a charm as O’Sullivan scored his third goal of the night, his first professional natural hat trick (three goals scored in a row by the same player) at 14:05 of the second period.  Pogge skated behind the net to stop the puck but it hopped over his stick and onto Monarchs left wing Matt Moulson’s tape.  With the net wide open, Moulson handed the puck over to O’Sullivan for the trio.  The second year center collected three hat tricks during his rookie season with Houston last year, a 7-2 win over Cleveland on November 30, 2005, a 5-3 win over San Antonio on January 5, 2006 and a 5-4 shootout win over Chicago on March 7, 2006.  The Monarchs last hat trick was on home ice with a 6-1 win over San Antonio with the three goals coming from right wing Konstantin Pushkarev on February 8, 2006.

Left wing Noah Clarke went to work next with two tallies of his own.  At 19:24 of the second period, defenseman T.J. Kemp fired the puck at Pogge and Clarke was on the right doorstep to chip in the rebound for his sixth goal of the season.

Pogge was replaced by Jean-Francois Racine for the third period of action.

Clarke’s second goal of the night came at the 41-seccond mark of the final period.  Right wing John Zeiler had the puck in the left corner of the Marlies zone and passed it up to O’Sullivan at the left face-off dot.  O’Sullivan’s one-timer didn’t make it through traffic but the puck trickled toward the crease.  Clarke picked up the puck and flipped it over Racine for his second goal of the night to make it 5-0.

LaBarbera earned his first shutout of the season with a season-high 46 saves.  Pogge took his sixth loss of the season stopping 18 of 22 shots through two periods of play.  Racine stopped six of seven shots in the third period.

Manchester went 1-for-6 on the power play.  Toronto was 0-for-6 with the man advantage.

Playing in their fourth game in five days, the Monarchs travel to Maine to play the Portland Pirates at 4:05 p.m. on Sunday, November 19 at the Cumberland County Civic Center.  Catch all of the play-by-play action of Monarchs hockey with Ken Cail on the Monarchs Radio Network WGIR-AM 610 and at www.monarchshockey.com.  Watch the game live on B2 Networks for just $6 per game.  Log onto www.monarchshockey.com and click on the link to B2 Networks ten minutes prior to each Monarchs game to watch the game live.