St. Mary’s girls hockey wins city battle

LYNN – Two of the top ranked teams in Division 1 girls hockey met at Connery Rink on Wednesday as No. 2 St. Mary’s hosted No. 3 Winthrop/Lynn.The Spartans big game experience proved to be too much for the Bulldogs to over come as St. Mary’s powered its way to a 5-0 win, its seventh shutout in a row.Click here for a photo gallery of this game”We started off a little slow in the first period but in the second and third I thought we really played well,” St. Mary’s coach Frank Pagliuca said. “They were a quality team and we knew that we had to come out and play well from the start.”The Bulldogs (9-2-0) came in as one of the hottest teams in the state, having won nine straight, but on Wednesday they were simply overwhelmed by St. Mary’s. Katie Burt was outstanding in goal, making 38 saves, to keep her team in the game.”St. Mary’s is a very disciplined, well coached hockey team,” Bulldogs coach Anthony Martucci said. “We came out nervous and tentative in the first period and were a little bit in awe of them.”St. Mary’s (10-0-3) had an early power play when Caroline McKinnon was called for tripping at 2:29 but failed to convert. A little over a minute later they would break the ice off a Bulldog turnover that resulted in Bridget Donovan snapping a shot past Burt at 5:17.The Spartans continued to swarm the Winthrop end but Burt held up the fort nicely until late in the first when Allison Butler picked up a loose puck and banked an acute angle backhander off Burt’s pads and in for a 2-0 lead after one.”The one thing we couldn’t do is get behind early,” Martucci said. “One goal was OK but two goals wasn’t so good. That’s like climbing a mountain against them.”An early Bulldog power play in the second went by the boards and the Spartans would strike a killing blow seconds after getting Sabrina Iannetti out of the box. Hannah Quin made a perfect length of the ice pass to Iannetti, who flipped a backhander over Burt’s glove for her 13th goal of the season.”Once we started getting our legs moving and skating, we were able to take control of the game a little bit,” Pagliuca said.The onslaught of shots continued throughout the middle period, where the Spartans finished with a 17-1 shots on goal advantage, and culminated with 1:16 left when Marisa Maccario banged in a third chance at Butler’s initial shot to make it 4-0 after two..The sophomore from Marblehead would cap the scoring in the third with a power play goal at 9:40, assisted by Donovan and Angela Dandreo.”In a way, this is a good loss for us,” Martucci said. “We had come in having won nine in a row and this kind of gets us back to reality a little bit. Now we just have to go out and take care of business in the rest of our games.”