This semifinal was running out of minutes at Long Beach Municipal Ice Arena Friday night, and there was no doubt which team had a ticket to the Nassau boys hockey championship round.<\/p>\n
Then Michael Calvi put an exclamation point on a convincing victory.<\/p>\n
After setting up three goals, the senior center scored one of his own with 2:35 left. That meant Long Beach owned seven goals from seven different players.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just score,\u201d Calvi said. \u201cWe have no problem scoring. This is the closest and most-skilled team I\u2019ve been on. We move the puck very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second-seeded Marines won for the 11th straight time with a 7-2 decision over No. 3 Manhasset\/Great Neck\/Port Washington that moved them to 15-2-1.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got everything that we need,\u201d Calvi said.<\/p>\n
They got what they wanted. The best-of-three finals will be a rematch of last season\u2019s finals against top-seeded Bellmore-Merrick, which swept them to take the title. Game 1 is scheduled for 7:45 p.m. Monday on this same slice of ice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want Bellmore this year,\u201d senior left wing Luke Pichichero said before the Bulldogs (15-1-2) advanced to the finals for the fourth straight year via a 5-2 win over No. 4 Syosset\/Jericho in Friday night\u2019s second semi. \u201cWe want to get them back for what they did to us last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pichichero also helped the Marines get the rematch with one goal and two assists. They received the same production from Liam Young. Caleb Kallelis, Miles Siegel, Kelly Cardo and Cody Pichichero, Luke\u2019s brother, also scored.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, we had a lot of second place,\u201d Long Beach coach Rob Carson said. \u201cWe were second in counties, second in states. So all my returning players, they wear that on their sleeve. They want to avenge it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their hunger was noticeable.<\/p>\n
\u201cLong Beach played great,\u201d Manhasset coach Will Sylvia said. \u201cThey played very physical. They played with a ton of effort. They just showed tonight that they wanted it more than us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Marines quickly applied pressure in the offensive zone. Kallelis converted just 3:33 in, the lone goal of the opening period, although they had a 10-3 edge in shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey controlled their emotions at the beginning,\u201d Carson said. \u201cThey started hitting and picked up the pace a little bit as it went on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Siegel scored off a rebound, Luke Pichichero scored off a deflection and Cardo scored from the left circle \u2014 4-0 after two.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have guys that can score from everywhere on the ice,\u201d Luke Pichichero said.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t all about the offense.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur defense has stepped up this year,\u201d Calvi said.<\/p>\n
After Brian Mayer scored for Manhasset (11-7) 2:01 into the third to halt Justin Mele\u2019s shutout bid, Cody Pichichero and Young each delivered a power-play goal in a 12-second span \u2014 6-1.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud of our team, our coaches, our players for making it to the final four two years in a row,\u201d Sylvia said. \u201cThat in itself is a great accomplishment. Unfortunately, we got outworked tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBrian Heyman covers high school, college and pro sports. He joined\u00a0Newsday\u00a0in 2021 and previously worked as a sportswriter for The Journal News in White Plains and The Hudson Dispatch in Union City, New Jersey. His work has appeared in\u00a0The New York Times, MLB.com and Baseball Digest magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This semifinal was running out of minutes at Long Beach Municipal Ice Arena Friday night, and there was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[951,4629,131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-168470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-high-school","9":"tag-ice-hockey","10":"tag-long-beach","11":"tag-long-beach-headlines","12":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}