BOURNE – A five-point night from Logan Poulin steered Nauset to a dominant 8-0 victory over Scituate to secure a spot in the Division 3 boys hockey state championship.
The Warriors hung three on the Sailors in the first, three more in the second and added two more in the third to keep their undefeated season alive. The victory sets up a date with Medfield in the title game. Head coach Connor Brickley credited his team’s drive and hunger to return to TD Garden as motivating factors.
“We’re going for it, every single shift of the whole season,” Brickley said. “We’re going for a state championship. We’re not going to change anything, we’re going to play the exact same way we have played all year. The job is not done, we are going after it.”
The Warriors got going right away when Sam Mayhew fired home the opening goal, with Poulin assisting on it. Minutes later, Max Lanzetta scored from the slot after a pass from Poulin and then Colin Ward made it 3-0 after a dangle in the slot.
“The whole team has the same mentality,” Ward said. “We want to get on them early and then keep going.”
Brickley noted that the makeup of the team made it so grabbing the early lead put them completely in the driver’s seat.
“We’re an extremely hard team to beat,” Brickley said. “We have a great goalie, a great defense and a great team identity. If we get the goals early on we are a very hard team to come back against.”
Poulin opened the scoring in the second period with a strong wraparound goal, signaling to the crowd that the Warriors were not going to get conservative.
“We try to play three 15-minute periods,” Poulin said. “We try to win every period and if you win every period, you will win the game. That’s how we go out there and play.”
Poulin then set up Jake Eldridge for a fifth Warriors goal before getting his fifth point on a coast-to-coast snipe.
“I think we were moving our feet really well,” Poulin said. “We were really fired up for this game and had a lot of jazz. We were ready for this game for a while and were chomping at the bit.”
Colin Sullivan and Owen Escher added tallies in the third to round out the scoring.
Nauset fell 1-0 to Marblehead in the 2024 final and Poulin said the team does not intend on letting that happen again.
“We are consistent,” Poulin said. “We have had a great year, but we do not think the job is done. We made it there last year and got kicked off the mountain. We wanted to get back there and finish on top of the mountain this time.”