St. Mary’s drops Division 1 opener at Kasabuski tournament

SAUGUS – St. Mary’s coach Mark Lee knew that his team was going to have its share of growing pains early this season. On Tuesday at Kasabuski Arena, his Spartans went through some of those against a talented Austin Prep team.The Cougars dominated the play from the opening face-off to the final buzzer to advance to tonight’s (4) Division 1 final at the Kasabuski Arena Holiday Hockey Classic with a 3-0 win over the Spartans.Click here for a photo gallery.Austin will face Malden Catholic in the title game tonight. The Lancers, despite a 40-14 shots on goal advantage, were in a fight with Wakefield for two periods before blowing the game open with three goals in the third to take a 4-0 win over the Warriors.For AP, the win was doubly sweet. It got the Cougars back to the tournament finals again and it also counted as a win in the Catholic Central League/Large standings.”St. Mary’s is a pretty good team and they had already beaten one of the better teams in our league in Arlington Catholic,” Austin Prep coach Lou Finocchiaro said. “I’m happy with the way the kids played. It’s a big win for us because it’s a league game.”St. Mary’s (3-1-0, 1-1-0 CCL) managed only seven shots in the game as the Cougars used their physical defense to continuously frustrate Lee’s team.”We showed a lot of our youth (Tuesday),” Lee said. “They set the pace early and we never were able to respond. They had us on our heels for most of the game.”The Cougars took the play to St. Mary’s from the outset, holding a 14-2 shots advantage in the first period alone. Just two minutes in, Brendan Silk got AP on the board when he deflected Cam Gaudet’s point shot past Donald Hesse to make it 1-0.St. Mary’s held the gap to a goal until the final seconds of the period when Brandon Hartt took a Casey Miller pass and ripped a backhander past Hesse with 11.8 ticks remaining to send the Cougars to the dressing room with a 2-0 lead.The second period was dominated by defense as the teams combined for a total of seven shots on net and no goals.Early in the third, St. Mary’s got a power play when Tim Benedetto was called for tripping at 1:55. Once again, though, the Austin defense was on the ball and easily killed the man advantage.Midway through the final period, Lou Caraglia picked up a Brian Wright rebound and ripped a shot past Hesse to give AP a 3-0 lead. The Cougars breezed home from there to get the win.”We did a good job in the neutral zone of defending our blue line and not giving it up,” Finocchiaro said.For MC and its youth-laden roster, it was a tough challenge against the Division 1 North runners-up from last spring. Despite the shots on goal disparity, the Lancers got all they could handle from Wakefield before finding their scoring touch in the third.”We dominated that game for the most part,” MC coach Chris Serino said. “The difference was that we finally finished in the third period. We allowed them to hang around and it could have gotten interesting.”James Castrucci gave MC a 1-0 lead late in the first period when he converted off assists from Peabody’s Alex Minter and Saugus’ Mike Vecchione.The Lancers were all over the Wakefield goal in the second period but rang a pair of posts and missed a pair of open nets to keep it a 1-0 game into the third.Standout freshman Ryan Fitzgerald gave MC some breathing room early in the third when he scored to make it 2-0 at 1:14. Twenty-one seconds later, Brendan Collier took a Vecchione pass and made it 3-0, Lancers.Vecchione closed the scoring with a goal late in the third.