John McFall has been coaching the Hamburg varsity hockey team for eight years, and what keeps him coming back every year is the quality of not just players, but people, who play hockey for Hamburg.
“It’s not by accident,” McFall said. “We try hard with that, and we push that, and it’s important. I think with this group, it starts with [captain Jason] Lucarelli, and it goes right down the line. He’s the ultimate captain when it comes to that, not just in hockey play, but in getting the right attitude and leading by example and then expecting it from other guys too.”
“I like to tell them that it’s gotta be intensity all the time,” Lucarelli said. Then he quickly deflected the attention away from himself by pointing to his teammate, sophomore forward Jared Milley.
“He always brings intensity. Milley always has it. That’s the big thing because if we don’t play with more intensity than the other team, usually we can’t keep up, so we have to bring it each and every game. We have to bring everything, or else we’re probably not gonna have a chance.”
On Monday morning, Hamburg faced off against Division 1 Orchard Park, which had defeated Williamsville East just two days earlier by a score of 6-1. Orchard Park’s offense had a breakout day on Saturday, and defenseman TJ Maloney said he believed that the Quakers had the best forwards in the league.
On Monday, those skilled forwards were no match for Hamburg’s defense, goaltending, and, McFall said, effort and attitude, as the Bulldogs came from behind to win 4-1.
“Attitude and effort is greater than ability,” McFall said. “I think overall, they’ve got a lot more abilities throughout their lineup, but I’ll take our attitude and effort any day, and it’s just building from game to game to game. We see good things happen.”
Tyler Bienias gave Orchard Park a 1-0 lead late in the second period, with assists from Maloney and Ryan Riter. But the Hamburg players’ confidence wavered only slightly, if at all, and they came back to score four in the third and win their second game of the season.
“We knew they were gonna be a tough team to play against, but right after the first shift, we knew we could stick with them and gave them a [heck] of a game,” Hamburg goaltender Griffin Coppola said. “And I’m proud we came back to battle, and after that second period, we all came back in the locker room and talked, and we knew we were in this, even though we were down. We knew we had it, and we came back, played tough out there, and we got it.”
“Once they scored that goal, I think it dropped us a little bit, but I’m glad that we came out strong in the third period because we really came back at ’em,” Lucarelli said. “I’m glad we showed the resilience.”
Lucarelli brought the positivity that McFall has come to expect and appreciate so much, even when — especially when — his team was down by a goal.
“Try not to make a big deal out of them scoring one goal, know that we can get it back in a second,” Lucarelli said. “And we got one early in the third, and that changed the attitude quick.”
It was Lucarelli who tied the game just 25 seconds into the third period, assisted by Brian Kazmierczak. Sophomore defenseman Owen Gonter scored 6:12 into the third, assisted by Jared Milley.
“I like coming up and playing in the rush and stuff,” Gonter said. “And I saw there was just one-on-one so I joined the play, and then it became three-on-one, and Milley played an outstanding game, and just a beautiful pass [from Milley], and I buried it home.”
“Our player of the game was Jared Milley, sophomore kid, just played out of character,” McFall said. “He’s a tough tough boy, but he played his best game of the year and came through and set up a great goal.”
After taking too many penalties and struggling to stay disciplined, Gonter was happy to do something to help his team as his goal stood as the game winner.
“It felt awesome,” Gonter said. “I’ve been struggling lately with discipline and let my team down, and getting the winning goal feels great right now. Everybody’s all pumped up, fired up.”
Joey Dubill added two more goals in the third, his first two of the season, to complete the 4-1 win.
“I just moved my feet and got it through, and we just moved the puck well,” Dubill said. “The goalie kind of gave some shots up too, but it was kinda lucky on that one. The guy fell and it got through him. But just hard work got us through.”
“Then we got Joey Dubill, hasn’t scored a goal yet, gets two to ice the game,” McFall said. “The third and then the open netter. So play out of character, play above what you’ve been doing, and they showed that today. We’re feeding off of these games going through.”
Coppola came off a couple of rough games against Canisius and Kenmore East to allow just one goal on 26 shots on Monday. He never takes a day off, except when his coach tells him he must. After allowing seven goals to Canisius on Thursday night, Coppola wanted a practice the next morning — Hamburg’s ice time is at 5:30 am.
“That Canisius game, he asked me on the bus ride home, ‘Can we get a practice tomorrow morning?'” McFall said with a chuckle. “This is at nine-thirty, ten o’clock on a Thursday night. I’ve got the key to the rink; can we open up the rink and have practice? I said no, we need a little break. He wanted to work on a few things that he wasn’t happy with yesterday [against Kenmore East] either. In fact, I know he wanted a couple of those back. So he takes it personal and he just pushes himself to excel every single time, and he had a heck of a game today. We did a good job keeping them outside, and the shots they did get, Griff got ’em. All they had was one little crazy tip on the power play today, so that’s awesome.”
“Just tried my best for my team out there,” Coppola said. “They played a [heck] of a game in front of me, so I just tried to keep it going for them back there.”
Hamburg just completed a stretch of four tough games against state-ranked teams Williamsville North, Canisius, Kenmore East, and Orchard Park, and came away with a win, a tie, an overtime loss, and a loss.
“We just finished what I call murderers’ row, the old Yankees term,” McFall said. “We played four state-ranked teams in a row, and we came away with a tie against North; tough game against Canisius, just one period; and an overtime loss and a big win … So they know that they can do this, and they deserve to be where they’re at, and they’re getting better with every game.”
“I thought we played up to their level today — a little above it,” Gonter said after Monday’s game. “I came in thinking it would be even a little harder than that, and we came out flying today, and it was great. Everyone was buzzin’.”
“It’s pretty nice,” Dubill said of the win. “We got the points, and we lost to Will East at the start. It was a rough game, and because they beat Will East, it kind of shows that we can match up against some of these teams.”
Coppola still wishes they could have gotten that extra point against Williamsville North and Kenmore East as well as against Frontier earlier in the season, but he was certainly happy with Monday’s win.
“It’s huge,” Coppola said. “Helps us in the standings, get two points. Those ties, we wish we could get those points against Frontier and Will North, and yesterday against Kenmore East, if we could get those wins — but we’re happy with this. Yep, really happy with the two points today.”