DANVERS — On Wednesday night at the Essex Sports Center, the No. 1 St. John’s Prep Eagles faced off against the No. 9 Saint John’s Pioneers with the winner punching their ticket to the Division I semifinals. The Eagles were victorious, winning 5-1.
Eagles’ head coach Kristian Hanson said scoring first was one of his talking points heading in.
Well, he got his wish as junior forward Jake Vana fired a shot past the Pioneers’ goalie to ignite the home crowd. Hanson said “it was nice to see Vana bury that.”
“We wanted to score first tonight,” Hanson said. “We felt that it would be important to us to score first and let them chase us – especially since we beat them twice. We thought we may get a mental advantage if we scored first.”
With 3:46 remaining in the first period, the Eagles got their first of many power play opportunities. And within seven seconds of the advantage, they doubled their lead.
Right from the face-off, senior forward Aidan Holland took a shot from distance and the puck was loose in front of the goal. Fellow senior Ben McGilvray was the quickest to react, poking things home for a 2-0 lead.
“To get the second one – I really think, mentally, it gave us an edge,” Hanson said.
The Eagles scored four of their five goals on the power play – much to the delight of Hanson.
“The power play was huge today,” Hanson said. “Their [Pioneers] five minute major penalty to start the third period, where we scored twice, essentially ended the game. To win in the tournament, you need to be strong on special teams. I thought our PK (penalty kill) was good and our PP (power play) was good.”
Both teams entered the penalty box their fair share on Wednesday, as both sides were playing with lots of physicality. Hanson said “games are won in the trenches.”
“We won a lot of one-on-one battles,” Hanson said. “Jake Vana is such a strong guy, Ben McGilvray, Will [Van Sicklin], and Cole [Blaeser] are big strong kids. We tend to have an advantage on the corners and we used it tonight.”
The highlight of the night came from junior forward Cam Noyes Umlah, who took a shot from outside the faceoff dot before rifling one past the goaltender. The puck pinged the crossbar before crossing the line, giving the Eagles a 4-0 lead in the third period.
With a 5-0 lead, the Eagles were hit with two interference penalties, giving the Pioneers a 5-on-3 advantage. The Pioneers were peppering Eagles’ goalie Brian Cronin with shots, and eventually got one goal back.
“Obviously for Brian, we wanted to get that shutout, but they [Pioneers] were bound to get one. They were putting a lot of pucks on our net,” Hanson said.
The Eagles will take on Pope Francis in the semifinals with the date and location TBD.
“Pope is a great team. They’re really good offensively, they move the puck well, [and] they are a really dangerous team,” Hanson said. “We have our work cut out for us this weekend.”
