The Pilgrim hockey team swept its best-of-three series with the West Warwick/Exeter-West Greenwich Co-op team after a hard-fought 4-2 victory Saturday night in the second game of a playoff doubleheader at the West Warwick Civic Center.

The Pats jumped out to a 1-0 series lead the previous night at Thayer Arena by the same score and proceeded to finish off an aggressive Wizards team and earn them a trip to the Division III finals this weekend at Brown University’s Meehan Auditorium.

“It’s been a long season and a long three years for these kids, they are very excited about going to the finals,” said first-year Pilgrim head coach Michael Boyajian, Jr. “It was a rough game, but we played through it. You just have to answer the bell and we did tonight. You have to give it to our team.”

After moving down from Division II to Division III this season, the Pats compiled 28 points to lead their league, one point ahead of the Woonsocket/Scituate Co-op team, earning them a No. 1 seed in the playoffs.

The two teams played a scoreless first period with the Pats’ best chance to score coming on a Pat Reilly slap shot on Wizards’ goalie Sam Paiva, which went off his chest.

Pilgrim put the pressure on Paiva in the second period with 20 shots on net. Ronald Minear scored the game’s first goal at the 13:41 mark in a period that was played mostly in the Wizards’ zone.

The Pats would have three power play opportunities in the second period and cashed in on one of them, a Andrew Canning tally, which was assisted by Jack Clements with 6:01 remaining in the period to give Pilgrim a 2-0 lead. The Wizards would take advantage of a Pilgrim turnover deep in its own zone, with Ernesto Watsky finding the back of the net with a little less than three minutes left to play in period No. 2, setting up a tense third period.

The Wizards tied the game at 2 at the 7:59 mark of the third period when Zachary Magiera took a pass from Nicholas Pecchia, finding a wide open left side of the net.

Pilgrim scored its second power play goal of the contest with 4:12 left to play, which turned out to be the game-winner. Matthew Pacheco gave his team the lead, which it would not relinquish. The Wizards pulled Paiva with a minute to play, but the Pats netminder Kyle DiMascio weathered the storm with two nice saves.

“Kyle’s saves are timing, that’s how he has been all season,” said Boyajian, Jr. “When we need a big save, he comes up with it and he did it again tonight. You have to give him credit, it’s not the quantity of shots he saves, it’s the quality of his saves.”

Skating 4-on-4, the Pats would put the game out of reach on an empty-net goal by Clements with four seconds left on the clock.

Boyajian, Jr., spoke about the opposing goalie.

“We know how to put the pressure on goalies, that’s what you have to do,” Boyajian, Jr., said. “Luckily we ended up on the right side of things. We have to give credit to the Wizards’ goalie. He had a hell of a series. We tested him as much as we could but, ultimately, the tenacity of our team won.”

Paiva would end up with close to 40 saves, while DiMascio would finish with a dozen saves.

Pilgrim co-captain, senior Ty Morgan, talked about the aggressive play in the game and the excitement playing for a championship.

“It’s hockey, you have to play through the rough play, you can’t sit there and whine about it, we played solid hockey tonight,” Morgan said. “When the game is on the line, we started playing our game. Four years in the making, this school had not made the playoffs since two years before my freshman year. We are very excited. I think the whole team stepped up tonight, it was a group effort to make it this far. Whoever we play next, we will be ready.”

The Pats will play the winner of Woonsocket/Scituate and Mt. Hope, who played Game 3 of their best-of-three series last night. Results were not available at press time.