You could say, it seemed like just yesterday when Marblehead’s boys hockey team took down Nauset, 1-0, in the state championship game at TD Garden.
A celebration tour was well-deserved, but Saturday, it was time to hit the ice in scrimmage No. 1. Despite a 5-2 defeat to Lynnfield at McVann-O’Keefe Rink in Peabody, it wasn’t all about the scoreboard in this one.
“It’s good,” said Marblehead coach Mark Marfione. “We’re still in tryouts and we still have kids who are trying to get a spot on the team, so they saw a lot of ice and I think everyone kind of looked good and didn’t look like they didn’t belong. … Obviously, we need to bury our chances and have our sticks down on rebounds, but overall, the forecheck was pretty good and we kept it in their zone a lot.”
Adding that all of his skaters looked pretty good, Marfione made sure to reiterate the fact that, “We don’t see ourselves as defending champs.
“We are starting from zero,” he said. “We are just one of 50 teams and we just have to work every day and get better.”
Leo Burdge, last year’s starting netminder, and backup Bowdoin Laramie split time between the pipes on Saturday.
“All the goalies played well in the game,” Marfione said. “We just needed to be better at burying our chances. Their No. 3 (Owen Considine) is very good and we needed to do a better job identifying other teams’ best players to make sure they’re not getting those chances.
“Overall, we were encouraged because we knew we had probably only six kids from last year’s team who played,” he added. “We were encouraged that no one looked out of place.”
Captains are Kyle Hart, Sean Dolan, Crew Monaco – fresh off a stellar football campaign – and Burdge.
“All of our captains were key contributors last year and earned their captaincies this year as seniors,” Marfione said. “We lost Hogan Sedky and Charlie Grenier, our captain and assistant captain, so we talked about filling the void of their leadership that they brought and their different characteristics. We have to bring those same characteristics. … They may not be the same personalities, but it’s the things that are important to the team.”
The Headers start with Shawsheen Tech (Thursday at 7:10 p.m.), then take on the Gloucester Tournament, Malden Catholic, and Hopkinton.
“We play them both (Shawsheen and Malden Catholic) away, so it’s always good going into an unknown, which really replicates tournament games,” Marfione said.