LYNN — It certainly wasn’t the way St. Mary’s boys hockey coach Mark Lee wanted to begin defense of his team’s Division 1 state title.
St. Mary’s opened its boys hockey season Wednesday night at Connery Rink with a 4-3 loss over a Franklin team that has high hopes for the new season.
The Panthers defeated St. Mary’s two years ago in double overtime to win the Division 1 hockey championship — a title the Spartans came back to win last winter.
Now, it looks like the Panthers are primed to get back to the TD Garden.
“They’re a veteran team,” said Lee. “They have mostly juniors and seniors on their team. We’re young. By the end of the game, we were playing a lot of eighth and ninth graders. I mean, they’re good players, but they’re inexperienced.”
The game started ominously, with the Panthers jumping out to a 1-0 lead 18 seconds into the game with Jack McGrath, with assists from Dan Magazu and Zac Falvy. However, at the 10:40 mark, Anthony Bono and Jaiden Moriello worked a perfect give-and-go, with Bono’s shot beating Franklin goalie Owen Ginley.
St. Mary’s took a 2-1 lead with the only goal in the second period, this one by Colby Magliozzi with the helper from Jared Coppola.
But the third period was the killer. It started off well enough, with a long stretch of sustained action in the Franklin end. But St. Mary’s couldn’t convert, and when Franklin finally moved the puck into the Spartans’ end, the score was tied in a flash.
Luke Downie got the game-tying goal, with an assist from Tom Tasker, 1:52 into the period.
Less than two minutes later, the Panthers got the lead back. Just like the last one, it came at the end of an end-to-end rush. Falvy took a goalmouth pass from Jeremy Miller and put it behind goalie Kevin McMullen.
St. Mary’s came up with some good chances to re-tie the score, but couldn’t put the equalizer across. And when Matt Holmes scored off a faceoff in the St. Mary’s end to McMullan’s right, with assists from CJ Spillane and Connor Norton, with 4:27 to go, it looked as if it was curtains for the Spartans.
But they wouldn’t go quietly. With only 57.3 seconds left and McMullan pulled, Colin Reddy backhanded one past Ginley coming out of a scramble in front of the net. Assisting were Kyle Ouellette and Bono.
“We’ll get better,” said Lee. “But right now, we’re really young. And Franklin is going to be very, very tough this season.
“I liked that fact that even though we got behind, we still had some good chances.”
St. Mary’s may have lost senior forward Jason Loeser for the time being, tough, as he went down in pain after hurting his knee in the third period. He had to be helped off the ice.
