Kenmore East has skill; what the Bulldogs lack is depth. That’s to be expected, as Kenmore East is a small school playing in a large school division this season. Sometimes, the skill is enough. Sunday night against St. Joe’s, it wasn’t.
But the game was also another example of any team winning on any given night, as this year’s coaches are learning quickly. Sunday’s game ended in a 2-2 tie between the Bulldogs and Marauders.
Kenmore East took the first lead of the game with two first period goals by Trevor Pray. He scored the first just 4:19 into the period, and less than three minutes later, Pray scored again.
Kenmore East carried the 2-0 lead into the second period and then into the third. By then, the Bulldogs’ skill wasn’t enough to combat the Marauders’ depth.
“We knew our talent at the top,” Kenmore East coach Kyle Pray said. “I would probably take our top five or six guys at the top, but we knew they had a tremendous amount of depth, and so we knew we had to jump on them early, which we did. We were happy about that, but as the game wore on, you could see that we wore down a little bit — double-shifting guys at times and everything else, and it kind of showed in the later part of the game.”
St. Joe’s was coming off of a 2-1 loss to Williamsville North on Thursday night, which coach Rich Crozier felt was a blow to the Marauders’ momentum.
“That was the disappointing thing about Thursday night,” Crozier said. “I just felt like we didn’t play well and we gave an opportunity away to really keep some momentum going.”
And Crozier’s first impression of Kenmore East was that it would be another challenge for his team.
“They’re good: they have some good players,” Crozier said. “We knew it was gonna be difficult. They got some nice players on their team.”
Because of that, Crozier was as happy as he could be about coming out with just one point against the Bulldogs.
“There’s all sorts of ties, right?” Crozier said. “When you’re down two-nothing to a really good team and you come back in the third and you’re able to tie it up, I guess I’d categorize that as a good tie.”
The Marauders’ struggles with putting the puck in the net as of late were somewhat resolved in the third period Sunday night. Trevor Conschafter came through first for St. Joe’s 6:24 into the third to cut Kenmore East’s lead to 2-1. Less than three minutes later, Jack Attea tied the game at two.
Crozier knows his team is frustrated, but he’s also seen the way the players stick by each other when things aren’t going their way, and that makes a difference.
“It’s a funny game,” Crozier said. “Sometimes the puck goes in effortlessly, and then other times, it’s very very hard to score, and we’re going through a little bit of a stretch right now where we’re just not getting the bounces, but I’m proud of the way we handled it. I’ve been on teams and coached enough to know that if you start getting frustrated or down on your teammates or your bench is negative when they’re not going in, that’s just counterproductive. This is a good group. They’re always supporting one another. We kept saying it’d be a matter of time, and we’re just breathing a sigh of relief that it went in here in the third.”
It was all either team could do to keep the game tied for the rest of regulation and through overtime. And although the players in the Kenmore East locker room were exhausted after 50 minutes of hockey against the Marauders, their confidence was boosted by the result of the game.
“It’s definitely a huge confidence builder, hanging with these guys and their program and everything,” Pray said. “A lot of them are gassed. They’re tired, disappointed that we let the two-goal lead get away, but at the same time they know it was a good accomplishment to get a tie here, but they would have loved to win this one as well.”
Crozier, meanwhile, wants to see more consistency from his team, but he feels that the players in his locker room learned that lesson on Sunday, even if they hadn’t on Thursday.
“If we’re not good, we’re not gonna win,” Crozier said. “Tonight, there were times tonight, we were not good. And they were, and they made us pay for it. So it comes down to a couple things. One, consistent play, which we need to improve on. We need our team to be more consistent, and two, peaking at the right time.”
Last year’s St. Joe’s team was undefeated at this point in the season but lost in the Section VI final, and as Crozier said, “I don’t have a ring on my finger from last year’s team. We didn’t play well when we needed to in the end, so the goal here with this year is to keep things in perspective, continue to get better. It’s another lesson about what we can do when we put our minds to it.”
Both teams have a few days off for Christmas before their schedules start up again. And although it’s just a few games in, Crozier is excited for what this season has to hold.
“Right now, my overall perspective of the league is like, wow, this is gonna be fun. Buckle your seatbelts,” Crozier said. “It’s gonna be a fun season.”