Spartans stymied by AC’s forecheck

BOSTON – Forechecking was the name of the game Sunday at the Boston Garden.Arlington Catholic had its game going while St. Mary’s did not. So it shouldn’t be a shock, then, that it was the Cougars, and not the Spartans, skating away with the 2012 Division 1 girls hockey state championship.AC, which won the game 3-1, was relentless in the St. Mary’s end, making sure the Spartans couldn’t get anything going.”We couldn’t get any rhythm at all,” St. Mary’s coach Frank Pagliuca said. “It was like we were skating on quicksand.””Both (teams) wanted it,” senior co-captain Rachael Donahoe said afterward, “but they just wanted it more.””They came out flying,” said Genevieve Benoit, the other senior co-captain. “And we came out flat. I don’t know why. Maybe it was a case of nerves, because so many of us hadn’t been here before.”I thought they outplayed us for the whole first period,” Benoit said, “and for half of the second.””Then,” said Pagliuca, “we had a little spurt. But it was brief, and after that we reverted back to puck-watching. We weren’t aggressive. We were back on our heels.”That brief spurt came after Brittani Lanzilli scored the Spartans’ lone goal at 11:09 of the middle period after the Cougars had taken a 3-0 lead. It came on a great individual effort in which she skated the length of the ice, faked a Cougar skater out at her own blue line, and bore in on goalie Megan Messuri, beating her on a wrist shot that Tim Thomas couldn’t have stopped.Other than that, though, it was a tough slog for the Spartans, who were bottled up all morning long by a ferociously aggressive AC forechecking game that had them baffled. The biggest problem, for the whole game, was that St. Mary’s wanted to shoot the puck around the boards to clear it out, and there was always an AC player to pinch and keep it in. St. Mary’s spent large amounts of time trying to skate out of its own end. And while St. Mary’s outshot AC, 29-22, “it didn’t seem that way,” Pagliuca said. “Most of our shots were from the perimeter, and we didn’t get any good rebounds.”We didn’t have any solutions for anything we did,” said Pagliuca. “You have to give credit to Arlington Catholic. They played well. They wanted it more than we did.”We had our chances,” Pagliuca said, “but to be truthful, we didn’t deserve to win the game. We didn’t play well at all. And (Arlington Catholic) played great.”The game turned early in the second period when AC scored two quick goals. The first, by Adrieana Rossini at 1:47, made it 2-0, and it happened while the Cougars were short a skater.”It always seems to come down to special teams,” Pagliuca said. “They took advantage of what they had, and we didn’t (St. Mary’s was 0-6 on the power play).”That one,” Pagliuca said, “was a backbreaker.”But the second one, on a shot that broke through goalie Lauren Skinnion and trickled in moments later (at 2:05 by Allyson Cunningham), hurt even more. That made it 3-0, and it meant a pretty steep climb for St. Mary’s.Still, Pagliuca gave credit to his team for progressing to the point of making the finals. The Spartans had only two seniors (Rachel Donahoe and Benoit), “and I’m sorry for them, because they worked so hard for this team,” Pagliuca said. “But we have a good corps of players coming back. You just have to learn from your mistakes.””We really wanted this,” said Benoit. “We worked hard. We practiced hard. We skated hard. For some reason, we just couldn’t get it done.”Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].