Swampscott boys hockey surges into first place

SALEM – It had been nearly two years since the Swampscott hockey team had scored a victory over Marblehead. During that time, the Headers had become the team to beat in the Northeastern Conference’s South division.On Wednesday at Rockett Arena, the Big Blue put forth notice that they are ready to wrest that top spot away from their rivals. Swampscott netted a pair of power play goals and held off a late Marblehead charge to seal a 3-2 win and take over first place in the NEC South.Click here for a photo gallery.”It’s a big win for us,” Swampscott coach Gino Faia said outside of an expectedly jubilant locker room. “We hadn’t beaten them in a couple of years and we needed to win to keep pace in the league.”Swampscott (5-1-1, 3-1-1 NEC South) was more physical than the Headers (3-3-1, 3-1-0) for most of the night and took advantage of two of its three chances with the extra man.”We have to go back to the drawing board,” Marblehead coach Bob Jackson said. “Swampscott is a good, hard-working team and they created chances and took advantage of them.”The first period was the game in a microcosm as the Big Blue held an 11-2 shots on goal advantage but were stymied by Marblehead goalie Mike Harper until the final minutes when Trevor Gelineau was sent off for roughing.The Headers had two chances to get the puck out of their zone but failed to do so. Swampscott made them pay as Matt Videtta made a slick pass to Gino Cresta at the left post to give the Big Blue a 1-0 lead on his ninth goal of the season.”We didn’t win a lot of the one-on-one battles for the puck,” Jackson said. “We had two chances to clear the puck on that first goal and we hit bodies with the puck.”Early in the second period, the Big Blue were able to push the lead to a pair as Videtta found himself in the perfect place when Cresta’s shot broke off the catching glove of Harper and came to rest just outside of the crease.The Headers seemed to get their wake-up call after Videtta’s goal as they began to take control of the play. And late in the second, they wrested some of the momentum away from Swampscott as Liam Gillis’ drive off Ty Bates’ face-off win on a power play cut the lead to 2-1 at 11:35.”The first period has been the best for us for most of the year,” Faia said. “But the second period has seemed to give us problems a little bit.”The Big Blue began the third on the power play and took full advantage of the chance as Nunzio Morretti finished off a 2-on-1 with Cresta at 37 seconds to restore the two-goal cushion.Marblehead wasn’t through yet, though as it picked up the game’s fourth power play goal just shy of the five-minute mark when Ian Maag blasted a shot through traffic and past Patrick Sheehan to make it 3-2.The Headers kept attacking but couldn’t get the tying goal past Sheehan as the Big Blue sealed the huge win.