By MICHAEL PARENTE

Sports writer

PROVIDENCE – Match the two top lines against one another, and you could make a case for the underdog Hawks in this week’s long-awaited Division I boys’ hockey championship series.

Bishop Hendricken’s trio of Peter Taylor, Stephen Buco and Noel Acciari combined for 158 points in 16 regular-season games, easily out-scoring Mount Saint Charles’ top line of John Guay, Jim Fuoroli and Tim Coffey (106).
What makes the Mounties the overwhelming favorite is their depth. Nine of their players finished in double figures in scoring this season, led by Guay with 43 points and Fuoroli with 36. The difference between their top and mid-range scorers is practically unnoticeable; Coffey, Josh Fattore, Peter DeAngelo and Kyle Beauchamp each scored between 20 and 27 points, whereas the Hawks suffered a significant drop-off beyond their top line. Acciari finished third on Hendricken with 40 points; the team’s next highest scorer was Tom Powers with 17.
The Hawks need to close the gap next week and get more production from their second and third lines if they’re going to pull off the upset against the undefeated Mounties.
“We’ve been saying that from Day 1,” Hendricken head coach Jim Creamer said. “We’ve adjusted lines. Ultimately, our top three guys are going to play together – Buco, Taylor, and Acciari. We’ve gotten some marginal production from the other guys, but, really, they’ve been playing very, very well.
“They have their role, and they’ve sort of adjusted and defined their roles. Can they keep doing that for us? We’re going to find out.”
The Hawks don’t have as much depth as they had in each of the past two years when they finished a combined 33-0-1 in the regular season and won back-to-back state titles. With the likes of Connor Moore, Andrew Baldini and Steven Mollo, Hendricken had eight players rank among the top 13 in scoring last season. Two years ago, the Hawks boasted 11 double-digit scorers.
With significantly less depth this year, Creamer had to sell his backups on the concept of being role players, which is no easy task at the high school level.
“We haven’t had to do that the last couple of years,” he said. “We’ve had the benefit of having a lot of guys that were able to produce on a daily basis. This year’s team is a little bit more tiered. We have some guys that can produce on a daily basis, and some guys it’s been a struggle for.
“To sell them on the idea that they need to do something else to help us win – the kids who’ve come up through youth hockey might’ve been the main guy on their team, and then when they get to us, they realize they need to play a little better defensively, or learn a different assignment on a fore-check, or be asked to learn different things.”
The role players eventually bought into the concept, and the team subsequently reached its peak toward the end of the regular season. Since losing to Mount on Feb. 8, Hendricken has won its last five games, including a sweep against Toll Gate in the semifinals. The Hawks finished 12-3-1 in the regular season, beating everyone on their schedule except the Mounties.
“I think they might’ve had an identity crisis,” Creamer said. “I think we had some kids here that thought they could really, really produce, and they weren’t, which is fine. Everybody’s got a role, and they’ve sort of said, ‘You know what? We can contribute here. We can play a certain style of hockey that’s going to help us win.’ Once they identified that and recognized that, they’ve played better, we’ve played better, and it’s helped us tremendously defensively.”
The development of Hendricken’s second and third lines coincided with the maturation of freshman goaltender Shane Benjamin, who absorbed a beating at Adelard Arena in February in which he allowed seven goals in the second period of a 9-4 loss.
“I think it was a good experience for him, in some respects, to get that out of the way,” Creamer said. “He bounced back and ended up being a much, much better goalie after that game.”
The Mounties are aware of the damage Hendricken’s first line can inflict, but they’re confident they can win this series through the production of their second- and third-tier players, particularly Fattore, DeAngelo and Beauchamp.
“We get goals from our second and third line, and their team has very little depth,” Guay said. “It’s easy for us to match lines. We can put our second line against their first, and then our first line will get a lower line. It’s all mismatching, and that should come to our advantage.”
Still, the Mounties must contain Buco, Taylor and Acciari, who’ve combined for three goals and eight points in the playoffs. Hendricken’s top line also scored 11 power-play goals during the regular season – close to 70 percent of the Hawks’ special teams’ output.
“When you’ve got three outstanding forwards like they have and you put them on the power play, it’s quite an advantage,” Mount assistant coach Dave Belisle said. “So we have to stay out of the box.”
The focus will shift to the less-heralded players when this series begins Monday night at Schneider Arena. The Hawks can skate with anyone’s top line, but they’ll need a monumental effort from their role players to compete with the Mounties.
“When we played them, we had some guys who were hurt, so we didn’t get to play with our full team,” Buco said. “I think, over the past couple of weeks, our team has improved drastically, and I think we have a good chance to beat them if we play the way we know how to play – the way we’ve played the past couple of weeks.”