The East Boston Jets may be short on numbers, but they sure aren’t short on talent.
A roster comprised of just 13 skaters and two goalies, head coach Robert Anthony’s “little team that can” has already won twice as many tournament games this season (two) as it did in his first 15 seasons behind the bench combined (one).
“This is the smallest the roster has been in years,” said Anthony, who’s been on the staff in Eastie since 1998 before taking the head job for the 1999-2000 season. “Our numbers are never big, we’ve never been able to pack in 22 players.”
Success has been cyclical for East Boston, a playoff team in each of Anthony’s first four seasons behind the bench (including the lone win, a 5-3 victory over Lowell in the 2001 Division 3 North first round). The Jets would miss the postseason from 2004-2006, reappear from 2007-2009, and suffer through five more seasons without a tournament berth until last winter.
During all this time, East Boston’s competition in the Boston City League (BCL) was dwindling. A 10-team hockey league when Anthony took over the job at his alma mater, the BCL currently consists of just three teams: the Jets, the Latin Academy Dragons and the O’Bryant Tigers.
A co-op agreement is in place so that students from Charlestown and South Boston high schools – former BCL rivals – can play for Anthony and the Jets. But this season, the roster is pureblooded East Boston High School.
Entering the tournament with an 11-9 record and a plus-19 goal differential (80-61), the No. 7-seeded Jets weren’t exactly at the top of the list of teams expected to emerge from the Div. 3 North field. But behind outstanding goaltending from sophomore Thomas Gaurino and the one-two scoring punch of junior twins Kenny and John Lockhead, East Boston ventures deeper into unchartered waters, prepared to take on the No. 6 Wayland Warriors (12-6-4) tonight at 6:10 p.m. at the Chelmsford Forum.
“These kids have opened up another avenue to high school hockey [in East Boston],” said Anthony. “These kids that I have, they’re giving 110 percent.”
John Lockhead, a right winger, is the Jets’ leading goal scorer, with 25 goals along with 16 assists for 41 points. Kenny Lockhead, who can play both forward and defense, leads in points with a 17-30—47 slash line. Both brothers have already surpassed the 100-point mark for their careers, with John at 113 and Kenny earning his 100th just last game.
“Kenny is a two-way player,” said Anthony. “He’s someone I wouldn’t hesitate, if it’s a big game, to drop him back [defensively] to protect our lead.”
Gaurino, who’s played each and every minute for East Boston this season (990, to be exact) between the pipes, has posted six shutouts with a 2.82 goals against average and a save percentage of .872. His most recent shutout came in the last round, a 3-0 upset victory of the No. 2 Lynn Jets in the Div. 3 North quarterfinals.
“Since I’ve been coaching here, I’ve never seen the kids give up so much of their body that game,” said Anthony, whose team solved Lynn goalie Jack Stafford in a way few had all season long. The Lynn Jets had given up just 18 goals all season to teams not named Marblehead (the still-undefeated Div. 2 juggernaut, which put up 12 goals in two games vs. Lynn). “We must’ve blocked 16 shots in that game, and they put 29 shots on us.”
It’s hardly been smooth sailing this year for Anthony and East Boston, which has taken just as many lumps as the ones they’ve doled out. The Jets won six games by five goals or more, but also lost three games by at least five.
This sample size included a 6-0 shellacking at the hands of Latin Academy in the City Championship game on Feb. 18, leaving East Boston with virtually no momentum entering the tournament.
“When we lost the game to Latin Academy in the city championship, 6-0, we were kind of down,” explained Anthony. The Jets also lost to the Dragons on Feb. 7, that time only by a 5-2 margin. “It took the air out of the bubble. But the kids didn’t give up, we got on them and explained to them we thought they should have played a better game and that was kind of a turning point for us. It lit a fire underneath them.”
East Boston had two whole weeks to stew over the defeat before opening the tournament vs. the No. 10 Newton South Lions on March 3. Newton South scored the game’s first goal before giving up three unanswered tallies, which proved enough to give the Jets a 3-2 win and their first postseason victory in 15 years.
Anthony, a Boston Police officer by day, raves about how tight-knit this specific team is and the selflessness with which they play.
“I don’t have any kids coming to the bench complaining about their ice time,” said the coach, who is also passionate about his job as the historian of the BPD. “They’re all on each other’s backs. The camaraderie on this team is unbelievable.”
Win or lose tonight, the ice Anthony has the Jets on is anything but thin. With a solid support group of team parents, there’s no reason to fear East Boston will be going the way of its former BCL rivals – extinct – any time soon.
“I can’t tell you how good it is for our team that we have active parents involved with our program,” said Anthony, who reinvests some of his coaching salary back into the program. “That instills a lot, it opens up the doors for these kids to realize ‘hey, we may the biggest team in Boston, but we’re going to put our heart and soul out there and play hockey like it should be played.’”