St. Mary’s closes out regular season with Newburyport tourney title

NEWBURYPORT – The St. Mary’s hockey team has done everything possible to earn its first trip to the Super Eight tournament this season. Now all the Spartans can do is wait to find out their fate this morning when the selection committee meets in Franklin.On Friday, St. Mary’s completed a dominating performance in the Bresnahan Division of the Newburyport Bank Classic at Graf Rink. The Spartans rolled past Newburyport, 5-1, on the back of two goals from Bucky Surette and a four assist game from Cam Kennedy.After the game, Spartan coach Mark Lee was confident his team had done enough to warrant a trip to the Division 1A tourney.”I believe that we belong there. But I don’t have a vote,” Lee said jokingly. “What a great year this has been with a great group of players.”The Clippers (12-4-4) had been St. Mary’s (13-5-3) nemesis recently in the tournament. That wasn’t to be the case on Friday as the Spartans had a 26-12 shots on goal advantage and kept a potent Newburyport offense at bay most of the way.”St. Mary’s is a very good team,” Newburyport coach Paul Yameen said. “I was happy with our effort and we can take a lot of positives out of a game like this.”The Spartans controlled the play most of the first period but the game was scoreless until 4:23 was left when Surette took a Kennedy pass and snapped a shot over Alex Buckley’s shoulder.Less than two minutes later, Julian Yourawski went hard to the net and jammed home the rebound of a Kennedy slap shot to send St. Mary’s to the first intermission up 2-0.The physical play picked up in the second period with bodies flying into the glass on both sides with regularity. The Spartans extended their lead to 3-0 just past the midpoint of the second as Tommy Braswell roofed a James Perkins pass at 8:31.Just over a minute later, Surette picked up his second of the night, assisted by Andrew Dimaiti and Kennedy, for a 4-0 lead.The Clippers didn’t go away as David Cusack scored only his second goal of the season 39 seconds later and the team’s headed to the second intermission with St. Mary’s up 4-1.”It wasn’t perfect at times (Friday) but our effort was great,” Lee said. “Newburyport is a good team that they’ve always given us good games.”Perkins would close out the scoring at 1:52 of the third with a power play goal, assisted by Braswell.”We had some opportunities early but didn’t take advantage of them,” Yameen said. “St. Mary’s has a great program and we will be rooting for them to make the Super Eight.”