WATERTOWN – The belief for the defensively loaded Notre Dame Academy of Hingham girls hockey team is always that the goals it needs to win will come.

Despite a clinic from Peabody/Lynnfield/North Reading goalie Alyse Mutti, that’s exactly what it got Wednesday night to get back to the Div. 1 state semifinals for a second straight year.

Two goals in the second period from Sarah White and Caroline Hartnett were all that Mutti (33 saves) would allow, but they paired with another defensive showcase from the No. 1 Cougars (17-4-2) to power a 2-0 win over the No. 9 Tanners in a state quarterfinal at John A. Ryan Arena.

Notre Dame allowed just 11 shots on goalie Ava Larkin in the shutout and will face No. 4 Malden Catholic in hopes of avenging a loss in last year’s state semifinals to Shrewsbury.

“We layered the ice really well against that team,” said NDA head coach John Findley. “The (PLNR) goalie played great, she was awesome. … It’ll be nice if we could somehow, on St. Patrick’s Day, win the state title. You never know. I said to the girls, ‘Why couldn’t it be us?’ Just keep working at it, you never know.”

“(Senior defender Lucy DelGallo and I) have been on the team for a while now,” said fellow senior defender Sarah Francis. “We’re really trying to get to the Garden this year and get the job done. It’s both of our last year, we really want to go out on top.”

Findley felt scoring once would’ve been enough to edge out a win with how well the defense seemed to cut off PLNR’s own scoring opportunities, but it was a matter of how against Mutti.

Even when NDA peppered Mutti for 16 shots in the first period, she held strong to keep the game scoreless after one. It wasn’t until White and Devon Moore executed a flawless give-and-go at the right wing that the Cougars finally hit twine, with Moore setting up White for the go-ahead early in the second.

Mutti and the defense kept it a one-goal deficit for much of the way to close out the frame, up until Hartnett’s pass to Emily Coughlin generated a shot and rebound with 17 seconds left in it. Hartnett finished it off for the 2-0 advantage.

“I told the girls we’ve got to get shots to the net and just look for rebounds,” Findley said. “And Devon and Sarah, they just put on a show on that goal. … We just had to maintain the level that we kept going at.”

For as stingy as PLNR was to limit NDA to two goals, the Cougars were stingier – even with three penalties.

Defense has been the calling card for them all year behind Francis and DelGallo, so it was only fitting it got them one step closer to TD Garden.

“I just think we all know that we can trust each other,” DelGallo said. “We’re all confident in each other, so I just think we build each other up.”