MIDDLETON — Another year, another new-look lineup, and yet another trip to the Div. 1 state quarterfinals for the defending state champion St. John’s Prep boys hockey team.

In a dominant showing to outshoot No. 15 Natick by over 40 shots on goal Friday night, the No. 2 Eagles (17-5) advanced to their seventh straight state quarterfinal appearance with a 7-1 win in a Div. 1 second round matchup at Essex Sports Center.

Three first-period goals in the span of a minute set a tone too strong for the dangerous RedHawks (12-6-5) to come back from, and two goals from seniors Sam Croke and Chris DiBella gave SJP all the cushion goalie AJ Farese (14 saves) needed to secure the win.

St. John’s Prep has now reached this stage in each of the four years since the MIAA restructured the state tournament.

That comes with striving high every given year.

“The kids come in day one kind of aiming to reach that bar that’s been set by the previous team,” said head coach Kristian Hanson. “When they leave the program, they expect that next group of seniors to kind of fill their shoes and emulate what they did. Nobody wants to fail. We have a lot of competitive kids in that room, they know what previous teams did. They want to be there, too.”

“From us, that’s just the expectation at this point,” added senior captain Ryan DeLucia. “The expectation is to go to the Garden and win, obviously, but to see us get (this) far so consistently says something about our program.”

The Eagles stormed out of the gate red-hot, peppering Natick goalie Malcolm Brauer (49 saves) with 17 shots on goal in the first period and had several near misses wide or high of the cage.

Brauer stood on his head, but a snipe to the top-left corner from Andrew Macaulay just inside the point gave St. John’s Prep a 1-0 lead with 4:56 left in the first.

Sam Croke followed a rebound for another goal only 45 seconds later, and the Eagles suddenly led 3-0 when DiBella potted Mason Luciano’s rebound 15 seconds after Ward’s goal.

“We were ready to play, ready from the time the puck was dropped,” Hansen said. “We were very aware of (Natick’s) success this year, we knew they were a dangerous, quality opponent. … Going into that, I think our mindset was attack them as much as possible. Use our speed and get to the net, and create traffic. I thought we did a really good job of doing that.”

Penalties racked up in the second period (nine combined) as tempers flared a bit, which SJP’s Brandon Ward and Natick’s Mikey Zahornacky used to trade power-play goals and make it 4-1.

The RedHawks generated higher-quality offensive chance throughout the rest of the second as the Eagles played a bit sloppy, but the hosts stepped on the gas again in the third with an 18-2 shots advantage.

DiBella, who also scored twice in the first round, potted his second only 56 seconds into the frame for a 5-1 lead. Senior defenseman Matt Cushing added another with only 2:22 to go, and Croke tipped in the last one a minute later.

“There was some stat coming into the year, like, 90 percent of our goals (last year) were scored from guys that (graduated),” DeLucia said. “Everyone was kind of questioning who was going to step up. We weren’t worried.”

St. John’s Prep will play the winner of Saturday’s No. 7 Arlington-No. 10 St. Mary’s of Lynn in the quarterfinals.