Last year was a bit of a mixed bag for the Carey Division of Bay State Conference boys hockey.
Just one team, Natick, earned a home game in the Division I state tournament, and just one other team, Wellesley, qualified at all.
Brookline, Framingham, and Newton North all ended the year just out of the mix for the playoffs but this season looks brighter for the field.
Natick and Wellesley both should be in the playoffs again, Brookline has a new, championship winning coach, and Framingham coach Adam Aguilar is entering his second year with his group.
Although it’s no guarantee that all five teams in the division will make the tournament this year, heading into the season it projects to be a solid group of Division I boys hockey teams.
For how they stack up against one another, here are the Carey Division preseason power rankings.
1. Natick
Though they lost two of the best goal scorers in the conference in Alex Peck and Sam Hubbard, Natick has high expectations again for the upcoming season.
“I like our team, we have a lot returning,” Redhawks coach Karl Infanger said. “Obviously losing people like Peck and Hubbard who were two of the better players in the state, you got some big shoes to fill on the scoring end but we have our two goalies coming back, both of them were fantastic last year.
“There is a nice class of seniors that I’ve had since they were sophomores. I’ve had them for two years now so I’m excited to see what they can do.”
Last season Hubbard and Peck combined for over 40 goals. That’s not something that Infanger is expecting from just one or two of his returners this year, he knows it’ll be more of a group effort.
“Our message to them was I don’t need someone to get 30 goals like Hubby but I need four people to pitch in seven,” Infanger said. “I think we’re gonna be spread out a little bit more, I think we’re going to be able to run three or four highly competitive, solid lines and I think we’ll be able to get scoring from all three of those lines.
“Our biggest asset is going to be our defense, a real strong core coming back of talented blue liners, plus our goalies. We were tough to score on last year, we didn’t give up.”
A part of this year’s identity is related to the losses of last year’s stars. Each season the team’s captains pick a mantra, Infanger said this year it’s “all in.”
“They said listen, ‘We’re losing Hubby, we’re losing Peck, we lost a lot of scoring. If we’re going to be successful, it’s going to take every single person here to be all in, everyone here buying in to our core values as a team and it needs to come from everybody,’” Infanger said. “So I thought that mantra was pretty fitting for the team we’re going to have.”
Natick will open the season on the road against Pope Francis, last year’s No. 1 seed in Division I, at 6:40 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 11.
“We can compete with those Catholic schools and when I told the kids, we’re opening our season at Pope, against Pope, it wasn’t ‘Oh my God,’ it was, ‘Let’s go, giddy up, we got these guys,’” Infanger said. “I love that atittidue. They feel they can play with anyone. Last year we opened up some eyes and showed the rest of the state that Natick hockey is back.”
2. Framingham
While Natick has the best playmakers in the league last year, Framingham may have the best returning stars in Adam Kornbau and Colin Walsh.
“(Kornbau) had 32 points last year playing alongside Colin Walsh who also had 32 points as a freshman‚” Aguilar said. “He’s coming back, he’s back as a sophomore, we expect really big things out of hum. I got Ryan McAuliffe, a senior with a lot of tools. It just didn’t come together for him last year but expecting a big bounce back year for him for sure.”
Behind Kornbau and Walsh, Aguilar is relying on a pair of returners to lead the defense.
“We lost a few D last year so that’s something we had to tinker with a little bit,” Aguilar said. “We have Grady Idelson returning as a senior. Looking forward to him and we had a freshman last year Tyler McLaughlin who actually started as a forward.
“He’s six foot, six foot two, big frame, super strong kid. He played fall hockey and he played defense for the Framingham Flames team that we had and it really was night and day compared to what we saw from him trying to play forward as a freshman last year.”
In net, Aguilar has plenty of options to choose from, which is a blessing and a curse this season.
“When there’s one net and you have a really good goalie, a really, really good goalie and then two good goalies, for a coach it’s kind of simple but for kids it’s harder to see I think,” Aguilar said. We have a good problem to have.”
The Flyers will start the season a bit later than others, hosting the Redhawks on Wednesday, Dec. 17 at 6 p.m.
Last year, Natick swept the rivalry series with Framingham.
“Definitely some emotional games but they always are,” Aguilar said of playing Natick. “That schedule posted on Arbiter for the first time and I start getting texts from the boys like, ‘This is the best way to open.’ And I’m like, ”It’s only the best if you do one thing with it. You got to win it.’
“It’s a big, big statement game so when we saw that we were pretty excited.”
3. Brookline
After successful stops at Cambridge Rindge & Latin and Marblehead, including a state championship with the Magicians, Mark Marfione is taking over as the new head coach at Brookline.
He understands that with a new team and new group of players, comes a more gentle progression of the on-ice product.
“I’m not going to ask the world of them,” Marfione said. “Just to show up, be on time, and be coachable, be team first, work hard. If you have that, then we just gradually build throughout the year and keep getting better.
“I think you start as basic as we can then once we build day-by-day we get into more details and more details, and hopefully by the time tournament comes around we’re really good on the details and we’re ascending.”
One player that will help with the transition is junior captain Owen Lacy, the team’s lone captain entering tryouts.
“I know he’s a good player just from hearing from other people,” Marfione said of Lacy. “I think he’s just someone that all the kids respect and seems like he does things the right way. He takes care of his schoolwork, he treats everyone with respect, he’s nice to the younger kids, the older kids, and everyone just kind of follows his lead.
“So he seems like he has a lot of the characteristics you’re looking for in a leader.”
Lacy, along with seniors Eitan Khait and Craig Haas will be key if the Warriors want to make the postseason in Marfione’s first year.
Brookline begins the season on Saturday, Dec. 13 at 3 p.m. Before that, the Warriors will have scrimmages on back-to-back days to get ready.
“It’s a little tricky having them back to back, we don’t want to try to throw too much at them,” Marfione said of his scrimmages. “We’re not going to come in for a scrimmage with every system in place, every detail in place. Maybe install one or two things before the first scrimmage and gradually grow.
“Then after that you get the game tape and then we’ll have five or six ice times in between the last scrimmage and the first regular season games… Just really start with the basics and the foundations and then kind of build up from there and hopefully be ready for Algonquin.”
4. Wellesley
Over the last two years, few schools have been hit harder by students transferring to prep schools than Wellesley.
After winning the conference MVP as a junior two years ago, Brody Sharpe left the program for Milton Academy last year.
Similarly, Beckham Gould, who had a solid junior season for the Raiders and would’ve been one of their top returners this season, is at Philip Exeter now.
The loss of Gould and seniors Aiden Reilly and Patrick Maxwell leave Wellesley looking for a star for this season.
What the Raiders do have is one of the best coaching staffs in the area. Led by Paul Donato, Wellesley has won at least 10 games and qualified for the postseason each of the last seven full seasons.
This year, Donato will have to rely on players like Aiden O’Donnell, Finn Reilly, Connor Meyers, Matias Demeo, and Conor Foley if he wants to keep that streak alive.
Wellesley kicks things off by hosting North attleboro on Thursday, Dec. 11 at 6:10 p.m.
5. Newton North
With the Tigers, coach Dan Doucette has tried to steadily rebuild the program since taking over in 2019. After winning just two games between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons, Newton North has won six each of the last two years.
Graduating just six players from last year’s squad, the Tigers have a chance for even more wins this season. Doucette’s squad got great production from his younger players, carrying seven juniors and nine sophomores last season.
Leading the returners is senior defenseman Brody King and junior forwards Derek McAuliffe and Gus Wallask.
In net, Newton North will need to find a replacement for seniors Barnabe Dano and Mike Wheeler.
The Tigers will begin the year on the road against the Cambridge Rindge & Latin Falcons on Saturday, Dec. 13 at 3 p.m.
