LYNN — St. Mary’s girls hockey coach Frank Pagliuca enters his 20th season looking for a bounce-back year after last winter’s 9-12-2 season — one that came with a first-round tournament exit.
With a solid core returning, Pagliuca likes his team’s potential ahead of Wednesday’s season-opener against Archbishop Williams at 5:10 p.m. The teams split matchups 1-1 last season.
“We were disappointed with how we finished last year,” Pagliuca said. “We had a lot of good kids on the team; we just couldn’t connect as a group and were very inconsistent on the ice. This year, we’ve been focusing more on attention to detail and having a little more focus in practices and scrimmages as we try to develop consistency.”
Speaking of consistency, St. Mary’s still has players from the 2023-24 state championship team.
“Some of them were around two years ago with the state championship team and a lot of them were around last year, so they’ve seen both sides of the coin,” Pagliuca said. “Hopefully, we can get back to playing with more consistency and being better mentally-prepared for games.”
A lack of focus hurt the Spartans in close games last season, according to Pagliuca.
“We were 0-8 in one-goal games last year. That shows when games got close, we weren’t putting in the necessary work in the focus and intensity departments.”
Two key returners are Alyssa Norden and Keira Twomey. Norden led St. Mary’s with 19 goals and six assists last winter, while Twomey finished with a team-high 13 assists and three goals.
“Alyssa and Keira have been around the last couple of years, so they’re players who played major contributions on the state championship team, but also were part of last year’s team. I think it’s important for them and several others who have been around for a couple of years to deliver that message that we’re moving on this year. It’s a new opportunity and everybody’s excited,” Pagliuca said. “We just want to keep the energy up and the focus where it needs to be and learn from last year. It’s a totally different team from last year and although we have a good core, we have several newcomers as well.”
Pagliuca is doing something new this year: No captains.
“We’re just going into the season expecting everybody to be leaders and everybody to contribute in that leadership front. We want everyone to speak their mind freely and not worry about who’s wearing a letter and who’s not,” he said. “We want that open dialogue where anybody can speak up. This is the first time I’m going into a season without captains, but I think we’ve got good leadership. We have two seniors on the team this year and a decent-sized junior class with several sophomores and younger players who have played at least a year or two in the program. I think, this year, we’re going to rely on everybody to step up and be leaders at one point during the season.”
