Williamsville East proved to be the stronger team through a physical matchup with West Seneca East in Sunday’s small school quarterfinals. The Flames didn’t allow a goal until the third period and came away with a 3-1 win over the Trojans.
William Mann started off the scoring with 6:36 left in the first, and the Flames killed off three penalties later in the period to maintain the lead.
The Flames’ next goal came on a play that Dylan Wild referred to as a mix-up of roles. Wild had missed several games due to injury, and when he returned for the last game of the season, it seemed to spark the team. Assistant coach Rick Ruggiero called Wild a difference maker on the ice.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that, actually,” Wild said.
Alex Finley assisted Wild’s goal to give the Flames a 2-0 lead, and Wild said he isn’t usually the one to score the goals.
“I’m the kid who works in the corners and gets it to the people who can score, and I guess today was just kind of a mix-up of roles here,” Wild said. “Finley got in the corner, and I got it.”
Regardless, the Flames had a 2-0 lead, and Mike Steffan added to it with a power play goal less than a minute later. Finley picked up his second assist of the game.
“Honestly, just getting in the corners and trusting my teammates and then crashing the net, screening, doing whatever I could to help them,” Finley said.
The Trojans gave the Flames five power plays in the second and killed all but one, but losing regular season leading scorer Danny Flynn to a game misconduct may have hurt the most. West Seneca East coach Phil Prynn didn’t agree with some of the calls made against his team.
“Tough game,” Prynn said. “Tough outcome. Tough second period. I thought 5-on-5, we were right with them the whole game. One-one game if you’re counting 5-on-5, but I think for the number 7 seed that we were, I thought that was a big plus for us, but we spent the whole second period in the box … Even though the officiating was terrible in the second period, we were able to finish the game and set ourselves right for next year with most of our players returning.”
Eli Boccolucci scored the Trojans’ third period goal, and although Wild had the honor of having the game-winning goal, he had hoped that wouldn’t be the case.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” Wild said. “I was actually kind of hoping that we would let Mann have the game-winning goal. I didn’t want a goal against, so I was hoping to get a shutout.”
Williamsville East had a tough time playing in a large school division this season, but the Flames seemed to adjust and come together as a team just in time. Sunday’s game required more adjusting, but coach Mike Torrillo was happy with the way they did.
“[West Seneca East] likes to play a physical game,” Torrillo said. “They did, and I think they got under our skin a little bit, but the kids adjusted to it. Obviously I’d like to have a little better results on the power play, but I thought we played well. Anytime you get 44 shots to their 20, we should be in good shape. I thought the kids battled today. We wanted to play our game, and they kinda wanted to play theirs, and I thought we fought through the little spurt there of the physicalness, and then we started skating again. I thought we did a good job, and I really liked the way we played with a two-goal lead at the end. I thought we did a good job of keeping the puck on their half of the ice and just playing a little bit of a defensive shell. Kids did a nice a job.”
The Flames’ key to maintaining their composure against the Trojans’ physical game was simple: listen to Coach.
“Listen to Coach and know that you can’t be taking crap from them and getting mixed up in all that because you’ll get the penalty instead of them,” Wild said.
“Listen to Coach,” said Finley. “We didn’t get involved with any of the penalties, stayed out of the box, stayed clean.”
Finley liked other aspects of Sunday’s game as well.
“Everyone was working hard and winning one-on-one battles, so that makes a huge difference because you get the puck,” he said. “It was good. We got our butterflies out with that first playoff game, so now we’re ready to go and hopefully keep winning.”
“Just gonna keep the same effort we’ve been doing, play the same game, and hope it works,” said Wild.