Prep hockey closes regular season with a bang

WILMINGTON – Circumstances gave Wakefield a 15-minute head start.Considering that St. John’s Prep had to journey to Worcester Tuesday night for a makeup game against St. John’s of Shrewsbury, not getting back home until close to midnight, a slow start in yesterday’s 1:30 p.m. contest was understandable.The visiting Warriors, returning from a week off, did everything right in the first period. Kyle Leone and Dan Cardillo were buzzing in the offensive zone, and Michael Wheeler capped the powerful period with a clean breakaway with 14 seconds left.Only the sturdiness of goalie Billy Price kept the game scoreless, and a reenergized Eagles squad thanked him for his efforts. Owning the final two frames, the Prep closed out its regular season with a 6-2 victory and a 17-2-1 record for the Super 8 committee to consider during its seeding meeting.”Wakefield came out hard, physical, and frustrated us,” said St. John’s head coach Kristian Hanson. “We knew we’d be challenged early and they had a good game plan.”But when the Eagles turned up their forechecking behind seniors Mark Azarian and Brian Pinho to start the second, the switch was definitely turned on.”The coaches, the players, the captains, we all stressed energy during the break,” said Azarian, who was so pesky that he had the lone quality scoring opportunity during a second-period Prep penalty. “Billy made an unbelievable save on the breakaway and we can’t leave him out to dry like that. We had to forecheck hard, get them to make mistakes and get pucks to the net.”The Prep did just that, sending 24 shots at netminder Elton Sawyer in the final two frames.That onslaught created a statistical rarity – a natural hat trick in goals and assists. Over a 10-minute span, junior second-line winger James Currier set up Andrew Brandano three times and each time the senior buried the shot.”James goes to whoever’s open and he gave me some great passes,” said Brandano. “Last year, I would have shot and hoped for a rebound, but this year I’m hitting my spots. I saw the left side of the net was open (twice) and went for it.”Pinho added a pair of goals and an assist to raise his point total to 39 while junior Jack McCarthy had three assists.”This season’s gone by quickly, and now we wait to see where we get seeded,” concluded Hanson. “We anticipate being a top-three seed but one never knows. And as you saw (yesterday with Wakefield), anybody can beat anybody. We’ve got to earn what we get.”