St. Mary’s girls hockey overtakes Duxbury

LYNN – It took a good long while for the St. Mary’s girls hockey team to find its legs on Wednesday at Connery Rink. In fact, it took Duxbury taking a 1-0 lead to sound the alarm for the Spartans to come alive.Tying the game late in the second period, St. Mary’s broke a 1-1 tie on Allison Butler’s second goal of the game and got an empty net tally from Marisa Maccario with 12 seconds left to insure a 3-1 win.”Duxbury is a very good team,” St. Mary’s coach Frank Pagliuca said. “For some reason, we didn’t come out ready to play (Wednesday) and they outskated us for the first half of the game. But we were able to step up and make some plays when we had to.”The Dragons were swarming relentlessly around the St. Mary’s net for the bulk of the first period but couldn’t get anything past Spartan netminder Sarah Foss. St. Mary’s, meanwhile, was just as snake bit at the other end of the rink and the two teams skated off the ice in a scoreless deadlock after one.It was more of the same to begin the second period before St. Mary’s got its first power play of the night but failed to convert. Seconds late, the Dragons were in front when Lily Connolly finished off the rebound of a shot from her sister, Briana, and Duxbury had the lead and a real chance to hand the Spartans their first loss since 2007.”Goals aren’t going to fall out of trees for us this year,” Pagliuca said. “And once the girls realized that we’re going to have to work hard for our chances, they played much better.”St. Mary’s picked up its game following Connolly’s goal and Butler made the pressure pay off with 13 seconds left in the period when she one-timed home a perfect pass by Sabrina Iannetti to tie the game.Most times a goal in the final seconds of a period would be a blow to a team’s psyche but the Dragons instead came out flying and put its most sustained pressure on Foss of the game. But once again came up with nothing.”We popped that one in there at the end of the second and that usually takes the wind out of a team’s sails,” Pagliuca said. “But Duxbury came out flying at the start of the third. Sarah made some stellar saves for us.”With just over 5:00 left, Jacqui Nolan was called for tripping and the Spartans got a power play and took full advantage when Butler finished off a rush with Marisa Maccario on her backhand for a 2-1 lead.Maccario’s empty netter in the final seconds finally insured a Spartan win and a huge sigh of relief.”Allison really stepped it up for us (Wednesday),” Pagliuca said. “And we responded well to Duxbury’s pressure in the third.”