Every one of West Seneca East’s losses this season has been by just one goal, including two overtime losses. As the Trojans’ schedule picked up in January, beginning with a game against Kenmore West on Sunday night, WSE coach Phil Prynn thought his team finally had it figured out.
It was again a one-goal game against Kenmore West, but this time WSE came out on top with a 4-3 win in which Dom Khoury scored the game-winning goal shorthanded with 2:30 remaining in the second period.
“Our speed showed up,” Prynn said after the game. “We work a lot on speed and explosiveness in practice, and I think we saw it tonight. I think our last game against Orchard Park, the guys realized they could play with teams from Division 1, and they played a one-goal game against them, and they were feeling really good about their game. And we did a lot of little things right tonight.”
The Trojans started off by taking a 1-0 lead less than halfway into the first period on a goal by captain Ryan Krzykowski.
“My winger gave me a good chip off the boards and followed up with the play, and it ended up being an odd-man rush, two-on-one,” Krzykowski said. “The goalie was covering the whole net, so I just kept it on the ice and put it five hole. It was good. I like when I score the first goal to get my team amped up and obviously a good start, and it keeps the momentum rolling into the rest of the game.”
Kenmore West came back to tie the game less than four minutes later on a goal by Jake Green, and by the end of the first, the Blue Devils had taken a 2-1 lead with a goal by Evan Tucker.
Eli Boccolucci tied the game for WSE just 42 seconds into the second period, and when a Nolan Waggoner goal again gave Kenmore West the lead, Drew Werner tied the game again just more than a minute later.
“Eric Korczynski just made a great play by keeping it in the zone, and he just chipped it, it came right to me, and I just tucked it home,” Werner said. “I just thought it was a great play. Got the momentum going, and it just got the team going.”
Korczynski was off the ice by the time the goal was scored, so although he deserved one, he didn’t receive an assist on the play. It was one of the things Prynn mentioned when he said his team did the little things right.
“We made a key play in our zone,” Prynn said. “Guy doesn’t get an assist on the play, doesn’t get a plus because he had gotten off the ice, but Eric Korczynski has a monster shift down low and then gets off the ice five seconds before we score. Little things like that, I noticed throughout the game, went our way, and that was the difference, I thought.”
It took just more than another three minutes for Dom Khoury to score the game winner. With 2:30 left in the second period, Khoury took advantage of a 2-on-1 to score the goal that gave WSE a 4-3 lead.
“I just saw the puck, I passed it on the boards, and I had a 2-on-1, and I had an open corner, and I just shot it,” Khoury said.
All the Trojans had to do now was finish out the game and keep Kenmore West from scoring again. An insurance goal might have been nice, but with the trend of one-goal games, it was not to be.
“It was good to see them get the win in regulation and to finish the game out,” Prynn said. “That was the message after the second period was, we’re up by one, let’s finish it. And I thought they played a nice game to finish it up.”
“It was definitely good to come out on the right side of it tonight,” Krzykowski said. “We definitely just wanted to win, and we wanted a new start, so we definitely put in a lot more hard work in practice to come out on top.”
“We’ve been losing a lot, and all our games have been one goal, so it was good to carry out the win,” Khoury said. “Should be a fun bus ride home.”
It was especially nice for sophomore defenseman Josh Jensen, playing his first game of the season after missing the beginning of the season with an injury.
“It was pretty nerve-wracking, and I was pretty nervous,” Jensen said. “Had to get back into shape with the practices I had, and I felt pretty good out there.”
The win was one that the players hoped to carry momentum from, and they’ll need it with this month’s busy schedule.
“The first month of the year, the games were spread out one per week,” Prynn explained. “We played four Mondays in a row with no other games in between, and the message was, this is the start of the new year here. Now we got two, three games a week. I think we have 20 or 21 ice times this month, and I think 12 of them are games. So all of a sudden we have a lot of hockey, and it’s about time for them to start elevating their play every game, and last couple of games, I’ve seen them start to do that.”
“That’s definitely gonna boost us forward,” Werner said. “We’re definitely gonna have momentum coming into the next game.”