Kenmore East’s focus is simple in its last six games: play a team game. Coach Kyle Pray saw glimpses of that in an overtime win over Frontier on Sunday, but it really came together in a 3-1 win over Canisius Monday night. Pray called Monday’s win the best team effort he’d seen all season.
“We’ve just been stressing playing more of a team game, and I think we started to build that yesterday, and then today it was definitely our best team performance of the year,” Pray said. “Guys just doing the little things with the system that we asked them to do. So there’s a lot of things away from the puck that we did well today that was even better than yesterday. And that’s what really was the big difference in us winning this game tonight.”
The Bulldogs expected a tough game against last year’s Catholic school state champion, but that only motivated them to come out stronger.
“We knew that they were a tough team coming in, and we’ve played them before, and we always knew that they were hard,” said Alex Bluff.
“We obviously knew they were a really tough team, so we expected them to come out hard, just like they did, and just an even back-and-forth game,” said goalie Brad Hermann.
“It’s not hard to get up for these games,” Justin Watson said. “It’s really exciting when you play a team like that, and we were really looking forward to it. We were ready as soon as we got on the bus for this one.”
Through the first period, it was a back-and-forth game, until captain Anthony Tulipane took the puck with just seconds remaining. With just half a second left in the period, the captain found the back of the net to give the Bulldogs a 1-0 lead. He was unaware of how close he’d come to running out of time.
“I looked and there was like point-five left, so yeah,” Tulipane said. “It’s a good goal late in the period to help the team.”
In the second period, Justin Watson added to the lead with his third goal of the season. Pray has seen Watson as a potential goal scorer from the beginning, and he’s glad to see the junior find the back of the net more as the season goes on.
“It was a lot of hard work by the boys, and then I was in front of the net, and I got a nice pass, and I was lucky enough to put it in,” Watson said.
“It’s good to see Justin getting confidence and starting to score a little bit more because he struggled at the beginning of the year, and he is a good goal scorer,” Pray said. “He’s been productive as of late, and he’s working very hard, so it was good to see Justin score.”
To add to Monday’s complete team effort, Alex Bluff scored his first goal of the season in the third period to give Kenmore East a 3-0 lead.
“I saw Gage Holler going hard for the puck, and I just went to the net so I could assist it,” Bluff said. “Hopefully that would just put a little comfort zone.”
“Alex Bluff hit a post yesterday against Frontier and had been getting more and more chances with that line, so it was great to see,” Pray said. “He went really hard to the net on that goal, and it paid off — the hard work did, because he scored that goal which put us up three-nothing at the time.”
Canisius robbed Hermann of the shutout with just over half a period left to play, but Pray couldn’t say enough about how reliable the goaltender has been both this season and last. Last year’s highlight was the Section VI semifinal, in which Hermann held rival Hamburg scoreless through regulation and four overtime periods before Kenmore East finally came away with the 1-0 win.
“When he’s on, he plays very good, and he just had key saves at the right time tonight when we needed them,” Pray said. “We had a couple giveaways there in the third, and he really came up big in holding them off, and he’s been like that. We’ve used him in big games for the last year and the four-overtime game last year against Hamburg. He’s always been good at coming up big when we need him to.”
Hermann kept Canisius scoreless through the rest of the game, and the Bulldogs came away with a 3-1 win and a very valuable two points with just four games left. They need just two more points to clinch the No. 1 seed for the small school playoffs over Hamburg and Williamsville East.
“We’re excited about that because that’s always a plus going into the playoffs,” Pray said. “But the big thing is, these last six games we really set a goal just to make sure we play the best team hockey we can, and we’re off to a really good start with that with these two games, so we’re happy with that.”
His players agreed.
“I thought we played a good solid team game, and we got a big week ahead of us still, so we’ll see how it goes,” Bluff said.
“I think we played really good,” said Watson. “It was a good team effort all the way through, and then we just want to keep this rolling through the rest of the season.”
“I think it was our best three periods of the year,” Tulipane said. “Just intensity wise, we can play a whole three periods and finish out games.”
“It’s obviously a huge game for us,” said Hermann. “Big two points and looking forward to the next game against Clarence.”
Kenmore East is scheduled to play the Red Devils Thursday night at 7 pm before playing again Friday night against Niagara Wheatfield.