St. Mary’s boys hockey holds off Austin Prep

TEWKSBURY – Though it might be only the midpoint of the season, Thursday’s game for the St. Mary’s hockey team against Austin Prep had a lot of importance.Coming in, the two teams sat atop the Catholic Central League/Large standings as the Spartans were the lone unbeaten team in league play. When they left Breakaway Ice Center, it was still that way.Putting on a defensive clinic for 45 minutes, the Spartans held Austin to only 14 shots on net and used goals from Derek Stella, Bobby Mullins and Jordan Manthorne to best the Cougars, 3-0, and take a firm hold on first in the CCL.”This was a big game for this point in the season,” St. Mary’s coach Mark Lee said. “And it was the first time all year that we played three complete periods of hockey. I am proud of the guys in our dressing room. They deserve this win.”It was a very un-Austin-like effort from the Cougars on Thursday as they were held to only four shots on goal in the first period and had only one in the first 10 minutes of the middle period. Afterwards, coach Lou Finocchiaro was quite honest with his thoughts on his team’s effort.”I can accept that maybe we don’t have the skill level we’ve had in the past years but what I can’t accept is not doing all the things that we talk about and work on in practice,” Finocchiaro said. “It seemed like my guys were on their own agenda (Thursday). But take nothing away from St. Mary’s. They absolutely deserved to win this game.”The tone was set on the game’s first shift when AP defenseman Ryley MacEachern was called for an interference penalty. St. Mary’s (4-1-3, 3-0-3) wouldn’t score on that power play or another one later in the first but would break the ice just after the second power play ended.With another penalty set to be called on the Cougars, Derek Stella took a long pass from Cam O’Neill and tucked a backhand between the pads of Nick Luise for a 1-0 lead.Half a minute later, the Spartans struck again as Bobby Mullins finished off a Julian Yourawski pass at the left post and St. Mary’s headed to the first intermission up two and in complete control of play.”We’ve had to play from behind in a lot of our games so it was nice to come out and get a couple early,” Lee said.The second period seemed to play out much like the first did ? only this time the Spartans would wait until the final moments to capitalize.Each team missed converting on a pair of power plays in the period before St. Mary’s scored a backbreaking goal with 1:55 left on the clock as Jordan Manthorne scored on his third whack at a Tim Aylward rebound to make it 3-0.”It seemed like there were a lot more blue jerseys than white ones out there at times,” Finocchiaro said. “And that was because they wanted it more than we did and outworked us.”Austin (4-2-1, 2-1-1) came out and put together a solid third period but the Spartan defense and goalie Donald Hesse kept the Cougars pinned along the boards for most of the final 15 minutes. AP would come closest to breaking up the shutout late when Tim Benedetto rang a shot off the right post.”I feel like Donald is one of the best goalies in the state and we expect this from him,” Lee said. “Our defense played outstanding. We did a great job of covering in front of the net and keeping it clear there.”