Top-ranked Malden Catholic steams past St. Mary’s

SAUGUS – Simply put, the Malden Catholic hockey team is the top ranked hockey team in Division 1 for a reason ? the Lancers are “wicked good.”On Wednesday at Kasabuski Arena, St. Mary’s got an up close look at No. 1 and had no answer for Hurricane Lancer. MC potted five first period goals and never looked back en route to an 8-0 win over the Spartans in the Division 1 final of the Kasabuski Christmas Classic.”That is as good a hockey team as I’ve seen,” St. Mary’s coach Mark Lee said. “Every mistake we made, they jumped on and put it in the net.”MC (4-0-0) laid on the lumber early and often Wednesday as it outshot the Spartans (2-1-2) 30-10 in the game and turned a competitive game early into a runaway with a four goal outburst midway through the first period.”Funny thing is we only played about seven or eight good minutes in that first period,” MC coach Chris Serino said. “But we were fortunate to get five goals in that stretch.”St. Mary’s hung in early and was down only 1-0 through the first five minutes after Brendan Collier took advantage of a defensive zone turnover to beat Donald Hesse at 2:23. Midway through the period, though, the wheels came off the Spartan wagon in one fell swoop.Mike Iovanna made it 2-0 at 7:02 off another St. Mary’s turnover before Collier finished off a 3-on-2 down low at 7:24, assisted by Mike Vecchione, for a 3-0 lead. Seconds later, Collier sprung Ryan Fitzgerald and he made it 4-0 to cap a 32 second stretch of disaster for St. Mary’s.”We came out tentative and they jumped on everything we did wrong,” Lee said. “And you can’t do those things against a team as good as they are.”MC made it a 5-0 lead before period’s end as Iovanna picked off a pass and set up Nick Roberto for a shorthanded goal at 10:18.More dominance would follow in the second as St. Mary’s could not get a shot on Pat Young’s net. Roberto’s second of the game, assisted by Aaron White and Peabody’s Colin McGillivray, made it 6-0. Fitzgerald and Vecchione added goals later in the period and MC headed off to the second intermission up 8-0.Facing a nearly impossible task of coming back, St. Mary’s regrouped in the third and played the Lancers dead even in terms of shots (6-6) and quality chances. But they couldn’t get anything past Young and MC closed out its shutout.”I thought in the third period we came out and played like men and skated right with them,” Lee said. “We had opportunities to score and I was happy with how we finished the game.”