LYNN — In sports, the phrase “A strong defense is the best offense” usually rings true. However, the opposite happened Tuesday night for the Saugus boys hockey team with a 6-0 win over the Lynn Jets.
The Sachems came out incredibly aggressive early in the first period, and that set the tone for the whole game. Early on, Ryan Ragucci got the scoring started when a shot of his took a weird bounce and the puck found its way into the net, trickling by Lynn goalie Stephen Difilippo. This is what began the unending momentum for Saugus and its overwhelming offense.
Ragucci scored two goals, Jason Monahan scored one goal, Massey Ventre scored one goal off an assist by Monahan, Dante Mauro scored one goal off assists by both Ryan Jones and Jason Caron, and Evan Toto scored a goal off an assist by Jake Ferraro.
What really crushed the Jets’ hopes during the game was the absolute stellar performance by the Sachems’ freshman goalie Anthony Poccio in his first career start. While the aggressive play of Saugus didn’t leave much room for the Jets to breathe, any signs of life that the Jets did show were dashed by the lights-out performance of Poccio.
“You know, I just kind of replayed in my head ‘it’s just like practice,’” said Poccio, when talking about his first start. “It helped put less pressure on me.”
Saugus head coach Jeff Natalucci was very impressed with his goalie’s performance and was happy to see him get the shutout win for his first start. He mentioned that Poccio had been working incredibly hard in practice.
As the old saying goes, “practice makes perfect,” and for Poccio and the Sachems, that was absolutely the case.
