Scituate ends Marblehead’s Garden dreams

CAMBRIDGE – For the second time in three seasons, the Marblehead hockey team’s dream of reaching TD Garden was halted by South sectional champion Scituate in the Division 3 state semifinals.The Headers had the better of the play for most of the night against Scituate, but it was the Sailors who took advantage of their opportunities, breaking a 1-1 tie with two goals in the second and third periods of a 5-2 win at Harvard University’s Bright Hockey Center.”They’ve been on this stage before in recent years and it kind of showed,” Marblehead coach Bob Jackson said. “Some of the things we haven’t been doing all year kind of reared their ugly head (Wednesday).”Marblehead (20-3-3) outshot the South sectional champs 34-25 in the game, but ran into a buzz saw in Sailor goaltender Jamie Murray.The senior captain made countless crucial saves in a tie game and then stonewalled the Headers comeback try in the third.”(Murray) is a very good goalie,” Jackson said. “And then we started to get a little tight and missing the puck and other things.”Marblehead came out and outplayed the Sailors for most of the opening period, but actually found themselves down a goal midway through when Matt Mitchell picked up a Brian Pratt drop pass and roofed a shot over Tony Cuzner’s shoulder for a 1-0 Sailors lead.Playing from behind for the second straight game, Marblehead picked up its play and went on the power play when Mike Cook was called for interference at 9:15.Marblehead would take advantage of the opportunity just after time expired as defenseman Jake Kulevich netted his 12th goal of the season at 10:46, shoveling an Anders Gundersen rebound past Jamie Murray to deadlock things at 1-1 after one.”I really think their experience paid off,” Jackson said of Scituate’s start.The second period would see the Headers continue to dominate the offensive zone play, but run into a brick wall in Murray. Marblehead put 12 shots on the Scituate netminder in the second, but he stopped every one of them, including Chris McLeod’s point blank shot late in the second to turn the momentum to the Sailors.Scituate would respond as Devon Flynn got a third whack at a Brendan O’Neil rebound and batted it past Cuzner to make it 2-1 with 3:35 left in the period.Two minutes later, the Headers were shorthanded as Jay King was called for interference. Scituate made Marblehead pay for the mistake as Brian Collins won a faceoff and Johnny Callanan fired a quick shot past Cuzner with 59.1 seconds left to send the Sailors off to the second intermission up two.”They caused us to have some mental breakdowns in that second period,” Jackson said. “And that’s uncharacteristic for this team.”The Headers came out with a purpose in the third, bombarding Murray with a ton of frozen rubber from the opening face off.Murray stood tall and then got a little help from the iron behind him when second liner Austin Haley’s shot clanged off the left post with 12:30 left. Afterwards, Jackson saw that as a huge momentum shift.”If we get that and make it 3-2, it’s a whole different game,” Jackson said. “Then the pressure goes on to them. We came out attacking on thefirst three or four shifts and couldn’t get one.”Scituate took full advantage of the momentum shift as Pratt scored a carbon copy goal of Flynn’s in the second as Cuzner stopped two point blank chances, but couldn’t get a third.”That hasn’t happened to us all season,” Jackson said. “They won a lot of the 1-on-1 battles.”Mitchell salted away the Sailors return trip to Boston when he scored an empty-netter with 43 ticks remaining. Kulevich’s second goal of the night closed the scoring with eight seconds left.