Roles reversed the wrong way for Headers on this night

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March 11, 2010

On Hockey

Phil Stacey The Salem News Thu Mar 11, 2010, 07:04 AM EST

CAMBRIDGE — Other teams suffered defensive breakdowns and mental mistakes — not Marblehead.

It was the Headers who turned up the heat on teams and took advantage of the slightest opening you gave them — not the other way around.

At least, that’s how it went for the majority of this season.

But not on this night.

The Scituate Sailors are by no means your average hockey program. They are what you’d call a small school buzzsaw, a club that has played in six consecutive Division 3 South title games and plays with the poise, confidence and panache of a team that knows it’s good.

The Sailors turned the tide, so to speak, on Marblehead last night. It was Scituate that was pouncing on mistakes and turning them into goals. It was the guys in white jerseys with blue trim who carved out space for themselves in front of the Headers’ net and constantly attacked it all night. And it was unflappable goaltender Jamie Murray, the senior on a mission, who stopped 36 shots last night.

In the end, it all added up to a decisive 5-2 victory by the Sailors in the Division 3 state semifinals at Harvard’s Bright Center.

Think of it this way: it wasn’t so much what Marblehead didn’t do — although there are certain instances in last night’s contest they’d love to have back — but rather what Scituate did do that made the final outcome what it was.

“They were a big, strong team, and for us that’s always hard to contain,” said senior captain Anders Gundersen of his speedy, yet smaller, team. “We don’t have the biggest kids in the world. And their forechecking was strong. We had trouble at times getting the puck out of our zone.”

Scituate’s senior first line of burly right winger Matt Mitchell with talented center Brian Collins and left winger Brian Pratt caused problems for the Headers all night. When they weren’t cycling down low and wreaking havoc in the offensive zone, Mitchell was using his big frame to park himself in front of Header netminder Tony Cuzner (23 saves) and serve as a human mountain.

The final tally for that trio was three goals and nine points on the night. In other words, what you expect from your big guns in a big game.

“They were opportunistic,” added Gundersen, who has been accepted at Berkshire prep school and is waiting to hear on Tilton. “They didn’t have great rebounds, but they made the most of the ones they did.”

At the other end of the ice, a problem that the Headers thought they had rid themselves of about halfway through the season — peppering a goalie with shots, but having scant few goals to show for it — “reared its ugly head”, said head coach Bob Jackson, at the worst possible time.

Ten shots were fired at Murray in the first period; junior defenseman Jake Kulevich batted a power play rebound by him to make it 1-1 at the first intermission. Ten more shots in the second resulted in no goals, and a plethora of firepower came his way over the final 15 minutes — 18 shots — but only a final minute tally from Kulevich, with the game already decided, got by the keeper.

“They didn’t give us many second chance shots,” said Kulevich, “and their D-men did a good job clearing us out. I think they had a little more mental toughness than we did.”

Jackson agreed. “We lost some 1-on-1 battles that allowed them to get shots on net. We haven’t done that all year,” he said. “Plus we were outshot in the second period (14-10), which we’re not used to.”

So now, one of the greatest seasons in the long and illustrious history of Marblehead hockey is officially in the books. A sterling 20-3-3 record, along with a Northeastern Conference Small title and the program’s second Division 3 North championship in three years, not to mention the second-most wins in school history, are the pleasant footnotes that will go along with it.

But they came up one game short of their final destination, and it was an opportunistic Scituate team that is the reason why.

Phil Stacey is the sports editor of The Salem News. Contact him at pstacey@salemnews.com or 978-338-2650.