LYNN — It’s not often when a coach looks on the bright side after a shutout loss at home, but St. Mary’s girls hockey coach Frank Pagliuca wasn’t too worried about a 2-0 final against Archbishop Williams.
“One of our better overall games in about a month,” said Pagliuca, whose Spartans won the Division 1 state championship last season. “We played a good team and we battled hard.”
The Bishops – who avenged their 3-1 loss to St. Mary’s from earlier this season – opened the scoring with a first-period goal from Shea Nolan. Just like that, it was 1-0 with 3:49 remaining in the period.
Pagliuca opted to start freshman goalie Avery Sisco – her first varsity start – and she didn’t disappoint. The netminder kept the Spartans close from beginning to end.
“She’s a freshman, got a chance, and played well tonight,” Pagliuca said. “A couple of times, we didn’t get the puck out of our zone and they took advantage of it.”
Despite being shut out, the Spartans had their chances to score.
In the second period, Alyssa Norden had a breakaway, but right when she was about to pull the trigger, the puck was poked away. Then, in the third, Keira Twomey spotted Norden for another point-blank chance, but to no avail.
“We had several opportunities to score tonight, but couldn’t get the finish. I thought we did a better job on our forecheck and creating some turnovers. We just have to finish the opportunities and tonight, we didn’t,” Pagliuca said. “We gave the other team too many opportunities and they took advantage.”
The Bishops scored a third-period insurance goal through Julie Murphy to make it 2-0.
“I saw improvement and that’s what I wanted against a good team,” Pagliuca said. “We beat them earlier in the year, 3-1, so we knew they were going to come in extra motivated. If we play like that the rest of the year, I’ll be fine with that. We just had some odd-man rushes we didn’t execute on, but we’ve got to be more consistent offensively.”
Pagliuca credited a handful of his skaters.
“I thought DeeDee (Deirdre) McCarron, our senior captain, played really well and gave us a burst of energy. Alyssa Norden had a good game as well,” Pagliuca said. “Our defense, as a whole, did a solid job. Shaye Denning, Camdyn Driscoll, our captain Abby Malcuit, and Kaylee Dinkel, as well as Sam Swim got a couple of shifts. It was much better today with their decision-making, especially coming out of the zone.”
The Spartans will enjoy a week-long break before they’re back at Connery Rink next Wednesday against Malden Catholic (6 p.m.).
