SALEM — The Marblehead boys hockey team scored four third-period goals to clinch the Northeastern Conference/North title and cap an unbeaten season in the league with a 5-3 win over South champion Swampscott at Salem State’s Rockett Arena.
After two periods, the Big Blue, playing on their senior day, led 2-1 on the strength of two power-play goals. But the Magicians cranked it up in the final period to cap the come-from-behind win.
The Big Blue finish their regular season at 10-10 and need to regroup for the playoffs. Big Blue coach Gino Faia thinks his team just ran out of steam in the final 15 minutes.
“I think we just ran out of gas there,” he said. “We started losing races in the third, we were getting beaten to pucks.
“But you’ve got to love the effort in the first two periods,” Faia said. “We’ve been kind of struggling lately, we’re finally getting some guys back healthy, that’s a great D2 team over there, we battled but came up short.”
Swampscott’s three goals came on power plays — something that concerned Marblehead coach Chris Wells very much.
“Maybe a couple of the penalties were marginal, but some of them were just blatant penalties, even though we made a point to the guys before the game that we can not let this team get on the power play,” Wells said.
“We did come out and play very well in the third period, but at this time of year if you play one bad period your season is over,” he said. “Three of their goals were on the power play, we got away with it for two periods and were able to play a great third.
“We came out maybe a little emotional with senior day for both teams,” he said. “We were pretty pumped up, big rivalry game, we had a rough first two periods, but we took control in the third period.”
The Magicians got on the board first with Colin Hart tipping a Mike Flaherty shot home four minutes into the game. Swampscott responded with its first man-up goal, the first of Drew Olivieri’s two strikes to tie it up. Olivieri scored the only goal of the second from Liam Locke for Swampscott’s only lead of the game.
Marblehead blitzed the Blue with four straight in the third before Liam Locke made it 5-3 with 1:13 left. Zach Piersol scored twice, Hart scored his second of the game and Will Shull put home the fifth Header goal.
Marblehead finished 10-0-2 in the NEC and will take their 13-3-3 overall record to the Cape for the Jeff Hayes Memorial Tournament with two games next weekend.
