Danvers icemen blank Saugus in Newburyport tournament

NEWBURYPORT – The Danvers High hockey team has been playing for its post-season life for the past three weeks. That perseverance paid off Friday night as they qualified by shutting out Saugus, 2-0, to capture the Fournier Division championship of the 19th annual Newburyport Bank Classic.Danvers went 4-1-1 down the stretch to finish 10-10-1 overall (including an exclusionary game loss to St. John’s Prep). All-Tourney selection Steve Ganley scored the game-winner in the second period, Tournament MVP Sean Lundergan provided the insurance late in the third period, and All-Tourney goalie Alex Taylor had 17 saves for the shutout.”In a lot of way this feels a little more special. We had to reach down a lot more. Maybe we hit bottom a couple of times but we kept climbing back. That says a lot about our senior leadership and it spread through the room,” said coach Kevin Brown.Meanwhile, Saugus finished 6-13-1, including a robust 5-4-2 second half that coach Jeff Natalucci said points to a promising future.”We were a much better team in the second half. It would have been easy to quit after starting 1-9 but we fought to the end and beat some tournament teams. The young guys really started to get it and worked well with our seniors. It’s something to build on,” he said.Offense lacked in the first period as many of Danvers’ best attempts were blocked by the active sticks of Saugus defenders and most of the Sachems’ bids came from the perimeter.The physicality picked up in the second period and Danvers fed off it, buzzing the offensive zone in the early stages. Ganley found iron the left of Sachems’ goalie David Aiken (24 saves), also an all-tourney selection, but shortly thereafter a second Ganley bomb from the right point deflected up an over Aiken for a 1-0 Danvers lead at 6:04.Taylor kept it that way with 3:50 left in the period, blocking down Jimmy Alcott’s shot from the high slot, then smothering Pat Cross’s rebound chip.Danvers executed an epic kill of a four-minute major assessed Kyle D’Orlando for a hit to the head early in the third period, including 30 seconds of one-on-three persistence by Matt Flynn, who refused to yield the puck along the rear wall in the offensive zone.With Ganley and Ryan Cassidy seemingly not leaving the ice, the Danvers defense clamped down until Lundergan buried a backhander off Robert Tibbetts’ deft dish from behind the net, stretching the lead to 2-0 with 2:25 left.”Sean has been playing well since coming back from injury and he deserved the Tournament MVP,” Brown said. “We’ll see how it (the tournament) goes but it’s good to play these tough games in a tournament atmosphere.’Saugus senior forward Steve Kay was also an all-tournament selection.