Tewksbury, MA – We made the trip over to Breakaway Ice Center for a look at the D1 Round of 16 matchup between 5 seeded Austin Prep Cougars the 21 seeded Archbishop Williams Bishops. There was plenty of energy in the building tonight and players from lots of local area teams dropped by to watch and support their friends. Both teams competing brought solid fan sections and this game was sold out with fans taking every seat in the bleachers and even lining the back glass 2-3 people deep. It was a USA theme for the Archies Nation, who brought a giant USA flag, and an Archbishop Williams flag to boot, and sang the National Anthem along with the PA system to start us off…and away we went, fully juiced up for this one.
In the first period, it was a well-played, solid defensive battle. There was some nervous energy to start but once everybody was warmed up the play started to get crisper. We noticed both teams executing their layers effectively and both teams were finishing checks and using their sticks as the primary point of contact. It was tough to get anything going near the net because the defense was tight to protect the netminders. As you can imagine – neither side was able to score in the first, and the goalies played well, but you got the sense that someone was ready to break through soon in this one. Onto the second period…
In the second period, the game pace began to pick up and we saw both teams creating more up the ice off the rush. Both teams collectively were taking more chances and that led to more odd-man rushes. It didn’t take long for someone to break the seal on this game as two and a half minutes in senior Brendan Ardito sent a pass to the bottom of the right circle for sophomore forward Derek Daley who deposited it top shelf to give the Cougars a 1-0 lead. Three minutes later they would continue to capitalize on that momentum, despite a push by Archies. Austin Prep went on the power play and junior defender Robby McDonald took a shot from the point that freshman sniper Jacob Duval was able to tip home for the score at the netfront: 2-0 Austin Prep. From that point on, this became a battle of the goaltenders: Anthony Beaulieu and Nick Buccella were both great in the back half of the frame – owning their creases and playing aggressively to take away netfront tap-ins. 15 minutes will decide who moves on to the Round of 8.
The third period is where this game really took off offensively. The play was fairly even in the first couple of minutes until one play swung the momentum to the Cougars’ side. Duval made a nice steal in the neutral zone and gained separation on the breakaway shorthanded, slipping the puck five hole to put Austin Prep up 3-0. At the time, it looked like a dagger, but not so fast said Archies as they came back on the power play with senior Jackson Sylvester parked in the Ovechkin spot where he ripped a tracer of a one-timer home on the power play in a 5-on-3 situation: 3-1 was the score. Austin Prep came back with a response just two minutes later on a great effort by Duval again, this time waiting out the netminder and flipping it past him for the hat trick. Footnote to that hat trick, the student section tried to throw their hats over the high netting but were unable to clear it, so one of the students snuck it over the glass and under the netting before a faceoff. An eagle-eyed ref saw it, grabbed the hat and gave it right back to the kid over the glass, under the net….that is a first that we’ve ever seen: getting back the hat that you threw on the ice for a hat trick. In any event, on the game went and from there, Austin Prep turned up the heat offensively, peppering Buccella with shots and crashing the crease regularly. Things got a little chippy towards the end of the game and there was an ejection late but fortunately cooler heads did prevail after a couple of extracurricular scrums. Austin Prep rounded out the scoring with two tallies in the final two minutes of play. First, with a minute and a half left, it was a nice lateral move from left to right across the slot by Daley, changing the shot angle as he moved, firing across his body to make it 5-1. About a minute after that there was another tally on the man advantage as Anthony DiVito took the initial shot from the point and senior forward Nick Saunders tapped it in on the weak side: 6-1 was your final from Breakaway Ice Center.
The Cougars advance to the Round of 8 to take on either Catholic Memorial or BC High in the next round, pending tomorrow’s results.
Three Stars:
- F Jacob Duval, Austin Prep
- G Anthony Beaulieu, Austin Prep
- F Derek Daley, Austin Prep