After a long and grueling season, the St. John’s Prep hockey team is one win away from glory – the Division 1 state championship. 

For many teams, a trip to TD Garden is a dream. For the Eagles, they’re in familiar territory. 

But just because top-ranked St. John’s Prep – which faces No. 11 Winchester at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday – is seeking its second state title in three seasons, doesn’t mean it was an easy journey.

“There’s a lot of highs and lows. Every team goes through it and everybody’s journey is different, but we all experience the same type of things along the way,” said coach Kristian Hanson. “For us, we didn’t start great. We lost the opener to Hingham, played well after that, and then we lost two consecutive games to Catholic Memorial and Arlington Catholic. I don’t think we started the tournament great, but we improved and I think we’re playing our best now.”

Senior captain Jake Vana believes the early-season losses were wakeup calls.

“It’s been a rollercoaster for sure. This season has probably been the most adversity I experienced in my three years. We were steamrolling teams in the preseason and had super high expectations. We ended up losing to one of our rivals to start the season in Catholic Memorial,” Vana said. “Everyone wants to go undefeated, but, sometimes, those losses are good wakeup calls. We’ve been laser-focused after those losses.”

The Eagles boast four senior captains in Vana, Christian Rosa, Johnny Tighe, and Jack Doherty. For Hanson, they’ve done a great job leading in more ways than one. 

“Everyone relies on their captains. We’re fortunate to have great senior leadership, overall, and we also got great leadership from our captains, too,” Hanson said. “All four captains have played at The Garden as sophomores. It’s a nice group to have led the way.  We know Sunday will be their last game, since they’re all seniors. I think both programs (Prep and Winchester) are proud of what their captains have done.” 

Vana couldn’t have agreed more.

“We have huge senior and junior classes, so we have good experience on this team. We try to focus on ourselves because you’ll see all the media and articles that are focused on us. In the past, it might have made us a bit tight to start games, but right now, we know how hard we worked to get to where we are,” Vana said. “This year, we emphasized doing everything together. At the end of the day, we’re doing it for the guys on the ice.” 

As for Winchester, Hanson refers to the opposition as a “tough out.”

“They’ve had great success in the tournament. They pretty easily dispatched an excellent Catholic Memorial team, 4-1. They beat Arlington Catholic, a team that beat us, and they beat Arlington High School, which was highly ranked,” Hanson said. “They’re going to be a tough out. They have some excellent forwards and a tremendous goalie. You don’t get this far without being a great team. They’re very dangerous.” 

Vana has seen Winchester take the ice, and credited the program for outworking its opponents. 

“Watching them play, and some of my friends played against them, they outworked every team. They have three great lines and a really hot goalie,” Vana said. “They’re going to give us everything they have. That’s the beauty of the state championship – there’s nothing after it, so everyone will leave everything out on the ice.” 

Hanson says that in hockey, anything can happen, but he wants his team to play its game come Sunday evening. That’s all his boys can do.

“Hockey has so many variables between puck luck, penalties, etc. I know they’re going to take a similar approach to us of going out there and playing their game,” Hanson said. “That’s all that we can do: be prepared and continue to do what we did the last two games.” 

Vana – also a lacrosse star – wants to end his high school career with one more ring. 

“We were fortunate enough to win it (hockey) my sophomore year and we fell short last year. It was kind of a wake-up call to us because it’s easy to think once you get there, you’ll get there again,” Vana said. “We learned from last year and have been working super hard to get back to this game.”