Tom Parshall stood on his head. Through three periods on Sunday night, St. Joe’s outshot Parshall’s Timon team 43-9, and Parshall allowed just one goal. But none of the Tigers’ nine shots found the back of the net, and the Marauders added an empty net goal with less than two minutes remaining in regulation to come away with a 2-0 win.
St. Joe’s first goal didn’t occur until the third period either, and coach Richard Crozier was unimpressed with the effort he saw from his offense up until that point. The Marauders had 30 shots after two periods, but they weren’t going hard to the net like Crozier wanted and looking for rebounds.
“If you’re gonna be successful in this league, you gotta go hard to the net and get in the trenches and find the rebounds,” Crozier said. “Timon won like every battle in front of their net. It reminded me a little bit of the North game. I don’t understand it. We wanted to play like this perimeter game where we were gonna be satisfied with shots from the outside. It’s a Federation goalie; you’re not gonna beat him. You gotta get to the net, get loose pucks, and bury them.”
“It’s hard when you get, I think shots were like 30 to three at one point going into the third,” junior forward Mike Greco said. “You just gotta stick with it and kinda hope and know that it’ll come eventually if you stick with it and keep going to the net. And Coach was just telling us, ‘Go to the net, that’s where you’re gonna get ’em.’ Their goalie’s a good, big goalie. He wasn’t gonna get beat in the first shot, so it had to be on a rebound or with a screen or something like that.”
It was Greco who heeded his coach’s instructions and buried one 2:55 into the third period, assisted by Nathan Berke and Mark Gilbert.
“Relief,” Crozier said. “Relief is the word. I’ve been in enough games where we let a team hang around. They must have had a lot of belief in that locker room between the second [and third] period. I’m sure their coach was telling them, ‘Just one shot.’ But fortunately Danny [Mikolajczak] made some nice saves there, and Grecs, he had some family here. I was happy for him. From California. So that’s a good story for him.”
“I got it in the slot,” Greco said. “It was a good pass from Berke. I got it taken off my stick the first time, and luckily it just popped right back to me, and I just tried to get a quick shot off, and it went through.”
St. Joe’s had a 1-0 lead, and with strong defense and goaltending from Mikolajczak, they realized that one goal might be enough.
“We kinda thought if we get one, we’d kinda be alright, just because we were playing so well defensively, and they weren’t getting a lot of shots,” Greco said. “It’s kind of funny to say, ‘If you get one goal, you’ll be okay,’ but in a game like that, that’s what it comes down to.”
Erich Thur’s empty netter with 1:22 left in regulation gave St. Joe’s some insurance, and Timon was unable to score on six shots in the third. Crozier is aware that it was a win against a good Timon team that hadn’t lost a league game yet, but he also believes that his team is capable of more.
“People might think I’m crazy, and that’s okay,” Crozier said. “I know our record is 9-2-1, but I’m also very aware of the way this team is capable of playing, and unfortunately tonight, I just personally wasn’t impressed with the way we went to the net. I thought we outworked them; we outshot them; we just didn’t work smart.”
But a win is a win, and Greco was happy after Sunday’s game. St. Joe’s followed up a 2-1 loss to Williamsville North on Dec. 17 with a tie against Kenmore East on Dec. 20 and a tournament win in Rhode Island, the first time the team had ever won the MSC Holiday Tournament.
“It feels good,” Greco said. “After kind of a bad performance against North, to be able to tie a pretty good Ken East team and then go, I think, 4-0-1 over break. It feels pretty good, and we’re just looking to keep that momentum going.”
St. Joe’s is scheduled to face Orchard Park on Friday night at 7 pm.