St. Mary’s girls hockey unbeaten streak reaches 100 games

LYNN – One hundred games and counting.That’s where the St. Mary’s girls hockey team’s unbeaten streak now sits as the three-time defending Division 1 champs opened their quest for a fourth title with a commanding 8-0 win over No. 17 seed Shrewsbury at Connery Rink on Saturday.Click here for a photo gallery.The top seeded Spartans (20-0-3) move on to take on Hingham, who they’ve beaten five times the last two seasons, on Thursday (at Stoneham, 8) in the quarterfinals.”We came out and played a strong first period and it was good to see us do that,” St. Mary’s coach Frank Pagliuca said. “We played really well.”This one really never was in doubt for St. Mary’s as it controlled the game from the outset against the Colonials. Sabrina Iannetti gave her club a 1-0 lead at 3:26 with her 30th goal of the season.Marisa Maccario (goal, three assists) and Allison Butler (two goals, assist) added goals at 5:26 and 8:10 respectively to send the Spartans to the locker room with a 3-0 lead after one.The dominance continued in the second frame where St. Mary’s had an 11-1 shots on goal advantage and pushed its lead to 6-0.Iannetti got her second of the game on a power play at 3:28 before Genevieve Benoit and Rachel Donahoe had unassisted goals 49 seconds apart late in the period.”We skated really well (Saturday),” Pagliuca said. “Everyone played well, from the defense out to the forwards and the goaltenders.”Lauren Skinnion replaced Sarah Foss in the Spartan goal for the third as the game began to get chippy. The Spartans would close the scoring with goals from Benoit at 9:25 and Butler at 12:08 while Skinnion stopped the five shots she faced.”We’ve played Hingham six times in two years now and we pretty much know how the game is going to be,” Pagliuca said. “It’s going to take the type of game we played (Saturday) to have success against them.”