West Seneca West defeated Niagara Falls 6-2 on Jan. 11. Exactly two weeks later, the two teams met again, and the Indians came in with hopes of sweeping the season series with the Wolverines, but they knew it wouldn’t be easy.
“We were expecting a better competition than last time we faced ’em because we beat ’em last time,” said sophomore forward Colin Deubell.
Niagara Falls made the second meeting a closer one with strong goaltending and defense to start, but WSW came away with another win, this time 3-1.
“We didn’t want to take them lightly,” said senior forward Anthony Amoia. “We knew we beat them previously, but we didn’t think it was gonna be that tough to pull out the W. We just thought, keep it simple, because they started playing a trap early in the game, so we tried getting it deep every time we could.”
“We thought they would sit back a little bit, and they did,” said WSW coach Kevin Rozo. “I don’t think we did a good enough job finishing chances and putting pucks in deep. I thought we tried to get too cute in the neutral zone, and give ’em credit — they hung around.”
Deubell gave his team a 1-0 lead 6:08 into the first, and the Indians held onto the lead until just past the same time in the second period.
“It was a pretty dirty goal,” Deubell said. “I just tapped it in. It was just sitting there. Nothing special.”
He hoped, of course, that his team would keep the lead.
“We didn’t do too good at that, but we came back,” Deubell said. “Nothing too bad.”
“I felt we were in good shape, like we were controlling the play,” Rozo said. “But we kept saying on the bench, ‘One bounce, and next thing you know you’ve got a tie game and a dog fight on your hands,’ and that’s kind of what happened.”
Niagara Falls’ Cody Bielec scored the game-tying goal 6:50 into the second on the power play. He shot from behind the net, and luck was on his side as the puck bounced off WSW goaltender Dan Browne and into the net.
But Amoia gave his team the quick start it needed in the third with the go-ahead goal just 3:17 into the period.
“I don’t really know how I got it in, but I just kinda got it underneath his armpit, and made it in there, so pretty glad about that,” Amoia said. “I was thinking we were just gonna hold out to the end and definitely we want to get the next goal for sure. And we ended up getting another one, so we pulled out the W.”
The third goal came with just three seconds remaining as Jack Myers put one in, but the intensity of Niagara Falls in the third period and Wolverines goaltender Thomas Orfano’s 40 saves were enough to make WSW nervous up until Myers’ goal.
Rozo didn’t believe his team played its best on Monday night, but the ugly goals and two points were enough for the night as the Indians held onto their one-point lead over West Seneca East in Division 3.
“We need to do a better job executing the transition and getting pucks deep to establish our forecheck, but sometimes you gotta win ugly,” Rozo said. “The goal was two points. We ended up getting the two points. We’ll take it. It’s never an easy night if you’re not at your best. Anybody can beat you, so we’ll take the two points and move on to Amherst.”
West Seneca West and Amherst are scheduled to play Saturday at 3 pm, and Amoia’s hope is that the team plays well and improves in the games leading up to Feb. 7’s rivalry match up against West Seneca East.
“I think we’re pulling together as a team very well,” Amoia said. “We started a little slow, but if we just move the puck more and try to keep it simple, play our systems, we’ll do better. We got a lot of tough games coming up, and we definitely want to beat East again, so that’s our main objective.”