Sweet Home is young, confident, and, most importantly, they’re 2-0 for the first time in a very long time. The latest win was a 4-2 victory over Lockport on Saturday afternoon in which sophomore Dan Lund’s first varsity goal was the game winner and sophomore Joseph Torrillo had three assists.
“I was proud because I helped my team win, and that’s really all that matters, so it’s just sort of nice to get that,” Lund said. “It’s a great feeling.”
Sweet Home coach Dave Gerspach expected a close game against Lockport.
“I thought it’d be an up-and-down game,” he said. “I thought it’d be a pretty even game. I thought goaltending would definitely be the difference. We’re pretty confident with our goalie. And we were hoping if we get to three or four goals, we would win the game.”
As for the goaltender himself, senior captain Zach Farkas was confident, and he believes that confidence is key.
“Of course, we always want to win,” Farkas said. “We come into every game thinking we’re gonna win.”
Lockport took an early lead as Kellen Corrallo scored 1:09 into the first, and the Lions held onto their 1-0 lead through the first period.
“Giving up a goal in the first two minutes of the game is not the way we want to start,” Gerspach said. “We got a little nervous there and people start to get a little tight with the sticks, and getting not confident and shooting pucks from anywhere, things like that.”
Andrew Mach tied the game for Sweet Home 4:53 into the second, and the Panthers soon took control of the game. With 4:40 remaining in the period, sophomore Tyler Edholm scored to put his team up 2-1 and Lund’s goal came just 23 seconds later. Ryan Boci scored for Lockport less than a minute later, but another Sweet Home goal 1:16 into the third by Zachery Devore secured the 4-2 lead as well as the win.
Torrillo assisted each of the Panthers’ last three goals, and his job wasn’t easy. With Sweet Home short a few players, Torrillo played with a couple different lines, but he just did his job, and the transition could hardly have been more smooth.
“We had some different line combinations,” Gerspach explained. “We’re not very deep, we have a couple guys out, and we had to move Joe around a lot, and he seemed to form a pretty good bond with Edholm and with Devore today.”
“It was good because Coach was saying that we had to work on time of possession,” Torrillo said. “And we did good settling it down and being patient, and we all just worked together. And whoever was out there, we all just jelled and did our forecheck well and just moved it, just figured it out, and did it.”
“He’s a good player at making the plays, and he’s real good with that,” Lund said. “He sees the ice well.”
Gerspach also liked what he saw from Mach, Lund, and Farkas on Saturday.
“I believe [Mach] scored the first goal for us off a rebound,” Gerspach said. “And Danny Lund, the little defenseman that was hitting all over the place, he scored the third goal with the slap shot, but I think he played a hundred and 10 percent the whole game, and he played really well. And then Farkas played really well in net in the third and kept any chances at bay.”
Torrillo gave credit to his goalie behind him as well in what he expected would be a tough game against Lockport.
“We knew that they were gonna come out strong, and they did in the first period,” Torrillo said. “And we had to adjust to them and we had our goalie behind us, who bailed us out a couple times, and we just found a way to put it in the net.”
The game certainly wasn’t an easy one, and the Panthers found themselves killing off a four-minute penalty with just more than six minutes remaining. But they did more than that as they outshot the Lions during those four minutes.
“I thought we did a phenomenal job killing off a four-minute major penalty there where I believe we had more shots on net and more chances than they did,” Gerspach said. “So that’s something we worked on a lot the other day with penalty kill, and the kids pulled it off really well.”
Farkas finished with 27 saves as Sweet Home outshot Lockport 32-29.
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter how many saves are made,” Farkas said. “The win is all that counts, so at the end of the day as long as we’re two-and-oh, I’m happy with it. We win, you put the game behind you, and you come back the next game even stronger, so that’s all that really matters.”
The 2-0 record to begin the season is something everyone is excited about, and Gerspach would rather his team learn by winning than by losing.
“It’s been a long long time since we were two-and-oh,” Gerspach said. “We’re still a really young team, so it’s nice to win and then learn along the way instead of lose and learn along the way, so we got another division game coming up this week, but we got a lot of things we need to improve on, so if we can get better every single week, we’d be all set for the playoffs hopefully.”
“Especially since the last couple of years we haven’t really started off well, to get two league wins is huge for us going down the road,” Torrillo said.
Farkas expects to keep winning, and the two wins so far only add to his confidence.
“We’re gonna play one of the best teams in the league coming up,” Farkas said. “We wanna win. We’re playing Niagara Falls. We wanna win. We expect to win. I don’t think we’re ever gonna expect to lose. That’s key if you want to go and be one of the top teams in the league — you gotta have a ton of confidence. And I think we’re young and we have a lot of confidence, so that’s how we’re gonna get wins.”