The first period of St. Sebastian’s school day begins at 7:45 a.m. By 2:30 p.m. most days, the final class gets out.
For the senior hockey players, the day never ends then. Practice and workouts, whether for a club team or their school, usually beckon.
But these seniors always head back to one spot no matter where the day takes them: their senior lounge in the library. It’s one they have earned.
“It’s just for us,” senior forward Isaac Mitchell (Harvard, Mass.) said. “It’s our personal space that we really take a lot of ownership and pride in.”
Not every team on campus gets a senior lounge. All 15 — yes, fifteen — seniors from the hockey team have theirs tricked out with desks, couches, a few TVs and an Xbox.
Some nights, after the homework is done, the group will watch movies — “Miracle” is a popular choice. They recently started an “NHL 24” tournament. Senior forward Brian Hall (Sudbury, Mass.) was the No. 1 seed as of late October.
They’ll watch Boston Bruins games. The group watched intently as Connor Bedard played his second career game, which took place in Boston. When ESPN aired Frozen Frenzy, its rendition of the popular NFL RedZone, the St. Sebastian’s seniors took in each game.
“I’m here until 10 o’clock each night just soaking it in,” goalie Pelle Russo (West Newton, Mass.) said.
Russo is far from the only one who stays until the lights shut off. The whole class joins in.
“You feel bad if you don’t stay late,” forward Nolan Flynn (Natick, Mass.) said. “Like, all my buddies are there. I kind of want to be there, too.”
The group’s hangouts have evolved with time. In seventh and eighth grade, they would do homework together and go on walks until around 5 p.m. Then COVID hit and suddenly they were sophomores.
“People say it goes by fast, but this is really flying by,” Flynn remembers thinking.
Those 5 p.m. end times turned much later as the class realized they were over halfway through their time at St. Sebastian’s. Even as sophomores and juniors, they’d find a spot in the library after workouts or practice and bond.
“The mantra at Seb’s is ‘time wasted with the boys is time well wasted,’ ” defenseman and captain Aidan Connors (Westboro, Mass.) said.
Connors is correct — that time has been wasted well. All those hours brought this massive class closer and has positioned them to fulfill a dream.
Connors’ two uncles and his older brother, Liam, both attended St. Sebastian’s. All three raved about it, making it an easy choice for Connors.
That didn’t make the first day of school any easier.
St. Sebastian’s begins in seventh grade, so when Connors was dropped off for Day 1, he didn’t know many people. The first person he saw was another seventh-grader in a similar spot: Matt Cataldo (Norfolk, Mass.).
“We just kind of stuck by each other’s sides the whole day and got it all figured out,” Connors said.
Everyone has their own path to St. Sebastian’s, but it typically revolves around family. Both of Cataldo’s older brothers, Chris and Mike, attended. The same was true for senior forward Colin Gorman’s (Westwood, Mass.) older brothers, Brendan and Liam. Senior defenseman Jack Harney’s (Needham, Mass.) older brother, Joe, along with his father and two brothers, are alums.
Those kids with family ties drew in new names to St. Sebastian’s. When Mitchell joined the Boston Junior Eagles during his youth hockey days, his friends were choosing St. Sebastian’s.
He was hooked.
“All my friends were there,” Mitchell said. “Even if I got into Belmont Hill, St. Sebastian’s was going to be where I went. It felt like home.”
Flynn and Russo arrived a year before the rest of this senior class. Flynn served as the player shadowed by prospective students, like Will Smith (Lexington, Mass.), Charlie Leverone (Sudbury, Mass.) and Harney.
Flynn knew those players, and others in the grade below him, from his time with the Junior Eagles. It was an easy decision to reclassify into their year.
“I wanted to be with those guys,” Flynn said.
During middle school, gathering for St. Sebastian’s home games was a priority for the group.
“Just going to those games were like the craziest thing in the world and being in the student section,” Flynn said. “It felt like you were playing. It was like you would prepare that day in school just to go watch. It was the coolest thing of all time.”
Players like Cataldo, Gorman and Harney were fortunate enough to have a front-row seat for their brothers’ experiences.
“It built the reason why you wanted to play cause you got to feel that pure excitement,” Cataldo said. “You were in Henry's Corner watching the older guys score the goals. You got to go nuts.”
“I definitely watched them and idolized them growing up.”
When the final bell rang on eighth grade, one thing was for certain: this class wanted to be on the other side of the glass. And definitely wearing a St. Sebastian’s sweater.
COVID-19 halted the world in March 2020, and the impacts were still felt when the 2020-21 hockey season started.
St. Sebastian’s was full of talent, but there was really no set season. Ten games were scheduled with a bunch of practices in between. Players wore masks while they played. It was far from a normal season.
However, there was one lasting impact, and it came when St. Sebastian’s beat Belmont Hill in the final game of the season.
“That game sticks with me,” Harney said. “It’ll stick with me forever. It was the last game for the seniors, and seeing how hard it was for them to take the jersey off even after winning made me never want to take a game for granted.”
Things returned to normal in 2021-22 and the expectations were high given how good the roster was. Brendan Gorman (Westwood, Mass.), who went on to play at Princeton, led the team in points with 49. Michael Callow (South Boston, Mass.), now at Harvard, had the most goals on the team (26) and was drafted by the Anaheim Ducks in the fifth round of the NHL draft soon after. Nolan Joyce (Dedham, Mass.), a Boston College commit, was one of the best defensemen in prep hockey, posting 38 points in 25 games. Forwards Jayden Grier (Needham, Mass.) and Mike Cataldo (Norfolk, Mass.) also had large impacts.
But the sophomores had legitimate roles. It wasn’t always easy.
Mitchell, who had been on the fourth line as a freshman with no real expectations for production, suddenly was riding shotgun with Gorman and Callow in the top six.
“There was just a lot of pressure and it was a huge change for me,” Mitchell said. “It was a lot to adjust to.”
That was the case until Gorman, a senior captain at the time, pulled the ’05 aside.
“He believed in me,” Mitchell said. “He said, ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right. Just play your game.’ That’s just what I did.”
Mitchell settled in, posting eight goals and 23 points in 25 games. Connors played a prominent role on the back end, notching three goals and 17 points in his first full varsity season. A freshman named Teddy Mutryn (Norwell, Mass.), an ’07, burst onto the scene with 10 goals and 21 points.
“When I saw that kid come in, people were like, ‘This kid is an ’07?’ ” Colin Gorman said. “I’m like, ‘Shut up, this kid isn’t an ’07.’ ”
Colin Gorman, Matt Cataldo and Flynn got valuable varsity experience. On the back end, Harney, Leverone and Owen Lynch (Foxboro, Mass.) experienced defending prep hockey’s best.
An 18-5-1 season earned the Arrows the No. 6 seed in the Elite 8 tournament and a date with rival Belmont Hill in the quarterfinals. After St. Sebs clawed back from a two-goal deficit in the third period, Belmont Hill emerged with a 3-2 victory.
It was over.
“That was heartbreaking,” Gorman said. “We put everything into that season. We wanted to win so bad. We looked up to the seniors on that team so much and it was their last season, so when we lost that game, everyone was crying. It lit a fire under me and to be honest, I want to win the Elite 8 that much more now.
“I think it was the first time I saw my brother cry, which was eye-opening.”
When the focus shifted to the next season, an interesting development emerged. Joyce, the team’s lone junior, departed a year early for the USHL’s Chicago Steel.
That left the former sophomores as the leaders of the 2022-23 team.
“It was definitely tough making that jump from going from a sophomore underclassman, just kind of doing my own thing and listening to leaders, to then having to speak up in the room,” Matt Cataldo said. “But it was a jump that I loved.”
Head coach Sean McCann decided to go with no official captain last year, instead opting for three assistants: Cataldo, Connors and Leverone.
Even with the big amount of talent lost, the Arrows had their sights set on the Elite 8. The naivety of those expectations began to show as the season wore on.
The group opened the season 9-3. And then the wheels fell off.
Injuries plagued much of Gorman’s season. Sickness hit, causing players to miss extended time, most notably Mitchell losing seven games at the end of the season.
Russo, who was in his first season as the full-time starter, started strong like the rest of the team and experienced struggles in the back half.
“Toward the end, I just kind of fell apart, which sucked,” Russo said.
Despite all of that, the most damning stat may have been that the group had only one road win all season, on Dec. 14 at Brooks.
“That can’t be the case this coming year,” Russo said.
St. Sebastian’s fell out of the Elite 8 conversation and landed as the No. 4 seed in the Large School tournament. Tabor had no problem taking care of the Arrows, 6-3, in the quarterfinals.
“I really thought it was a letdown for the standards of this school knowing that it’s been such a prominent hockey school,” Cataldo said. “I don’t think a first-round exit in the Large School division should be something to be happy about.”
Still, it wasn’t all bad.
Up front, Cataldo led the team in goals (19) and points (39), committing to Brown midseason. Teddy Mutryn was right behind him in points (34), and his younger brother Casey, an ’08, emerged as a legitimate scoring threat. Ben Merrill (Hingham, Mass.), a sophomore ’05, saw a large jump in production, posting 11 goals and 24 points.
Russo finished with a 2.48 goals-against average and a .926 save percentage as one of the better goalies in the ISL.
“We were just a little less experienced than some other teams that we were playing,” Leverone said. “But we played pretty good. … Yeah, we struggled a little bit at the end with those games that we had lost or that were close that we tied and our record didn’t get us as far as we would have liked. But it was a good year.”
Both the good and the bad left a mark for their senior year — the last dance.
“We learned from it,” Leverone said. “We know what we want this year and hopefully we can go out there and get it.”
There is no confusion over what St. Sebastian’s is trying to do this season. Look no further than the name of the text group chat: Redemption.
A lot happened this offseason that could’ve put a dent in those plans. Teddy Mutryn scored an invite to the exclusive U.S. National Team Development Program’s Evaluation Camp. Even though he didn’t make it, he was taken 22nd overall in the USHL Phase 1 Draft by the Chicago Steel.
Merrill went to Steel camp in June and was added to their roster. Still, the 6-foot-4, 190-pound center opted to stay at St. Sebastian’s. So, too, did Mutryn.
The two talented forwards keeping their Arrows sweaters on is a testament to the senior class that did it before them. In an age when players are constantly switching plans in search of more playing time, better roles and greener pastures, these 15 never wavered. The only player to leave from this class was Will Smith, who left for the NTDP in 2021, was selected No. 4 overall by the San Jose Sharks in last June’s draft and is currently headlining at Boston College.
“I think we just feel like we owe it to the school,” Mitchell said. “We all just made a promise that we couldn’t leave each other. We couldn’t leave the school with nothing. I feel like we haven’t proved anything yet.”
This group shows early signs of being able to prove it. Seniors Cataldo, Mitchell, Gorman and Flynn, juniors Teddy Mutryn, Brendan Keaveney (Westwood, Mass.) and Merrill, sophomore Casey Mutryn and freshman Rian Chudzinski (Needham, Mass.) all have legitimate cases for the top six. Brian Hall will play a big role as a depth player
Brian Hall and Ben Stavardidis (Wellesley, Mass.), both seniors, will play big roles as depth players.
Ultimately, it’s the biggest on-ice strength of this team: wave after wave of scoring.
“Oh, we’re loaded,” Russo said. “It’s fun to watch. I sometimes forget I'm in the game because I'm just like a fan just watching some of the boys.”
Connors and Leverone, two of the team captains along with Cataldo, will be vital on defense. All 6-foot-9 of Harney will be impactful shutting down opposing top lines. Owen Lynch, Jack Connors (Westwood, Mass.), Ben Stavardidis (Wellesley, Mass.) and Aiden Barclay (Dover, Mass.) will play important roles, too.
“I have complete trust in all those guys. … Those guys are just complete dogs,” Russo said of the defense. “Definitely very fortunate to have those guys. A good, physical group.”
It’s been 21 years since St. Sebastian’s last hoisted a trophy at the end of the season. Since McCann was hired as head coach in May 2009, the Arrows have reached the Elite 8 tournament only twice. Teams with just as much talent have failed to get across the finish line before. With it being school headmaster William Burke’s final year, the team would like him to see one last championship.
“Our rink kind of looks naked right now without anything in it,” Mitchell said.
These seniors know that after last season’s bitter ending along with St. Sebastian’s history, it’s going to take extra to get over the hump.
And it will make it all the more special if St. Sebastian’s is finally able to win the Elite 8.
“It’d be a dream come true,” Gorman said. “I’ve been thinking about it since I was probably 7 or 8 years old. This is what I’ve been thinking about, so it would be the most special moment in my life. It would be a dream come true.
“These are all my best friends for the past six years. And with the teams that came before us, with the players they had on those teams that weren’t able to do it, it would be unbelievable.”
Related prep reading:
- Team-by-team breakdowns: ISL Keller | ISL Eberhart | Housatonic | Lakes | Independents
- First and Second Teams: All-ISL Keller | All-ISL Eberhart | All-Housatonic | All-Lakes | All-Independents
- Individual team previews: Kimball Union | Milton Academy | Taft | St. Mark’s | Nobles | Avon Old Farms | Belmont Hill
- Breakout players: 23 forward candidates | 17 defensemen and goalie candidates
