Last season was a “growing year” for Grand Island.
“We knew that after graduating 14 seniors from the year before, that it was gonna be one of those seasons where we’d take little steps forward and maybe a lot of steps backward,” said coach Don Pray. “And we did last year. We’re overall happy with where we ended up. We saw a lot of improvement out of our sophomores, so we’re looking for those guys to be leaders this year, even though they’re juniors.”
The Vikings also have three senior defensemen as captains to look to for leadership this season. Zach Valvo has been on the team since his sophomore year and was a captain last year as a junior. Simon Panullo has been on the team just as long, and Will Hughes was a call-up that season and brings a demonstrative personality along with his experience and, according to Hughes, a 100 mph shot.
“What do I bring as a leader?” Hughes said. “What don’t I bring — that’s the question. I bring physicality, and I’m just a good leader overall. If we’re all down, I’ll bring everyone back up.”
“They’re my go-to guys,” Pray said of his captains. “On the ice, they need to display strength; they need to display character; they need to display that they’re not gonna fold when times get tough. And right now in practices, they’ve been very positive leaders. We still do have kind of a young team. We got a lot of sophomores, a lot of juniors. They’re looking for leadership, and those three have definitely provided it so far.”
“We’ve been playing varsity for the longest out of the whole team, and we bring a lot of maturity to the team on the ice and off the ice,” said Valvo. “We’re kind of the bigger sized guys on the team. We have a lot of smaller kids, so we gotta bring physicality to the game too.”
“I guess I’m just intimidating,” said Panullo. “Everyone really doesn’t wanna take anything from me, so that’s the same with all three of us — me, Valvo, and Hughes. We’re all just the bigger kids on the team. Everybody really wants to listen to us and they think we can go far with us being captains.”
The Vikings hope to go further this year than last year, when they fell to West Seneca East in the small school prequarterfinals.
“Section final — that’s what we want,” said Hughes. “We want to get to the arena with our captain leadership and our great goaltending. I think it could get us there. Just all around great team.”
Panullo agreed.
“I definitely wanna take it all the way, at least go to the championship game and definitely win it there,” Panullo said. “Our team definitely has a chance to make it. We got a lot of talent.”
With the valuable experience the team gained last season, two returning goaltenders in Joe Samplinski and Nick Jennings and another added from JV, strong defense, and balanced lines, the Vikings are confident. They were in agreement that speed will be their biggest strength this season.
“Speed is key for us,” said Samplinski. “We’ll be a very quick team. Passing is very good; shooting’s good. We’re developed around our defense and our goaltending.”
“Yeah, throughout all of us — forwards, defense, our goalies are quick,” Panullo said. “We don’t really have a weak spot on the team.”
“The guys are pushing one another hard, whether it’s a skating drill, whether it’s a 2-on-1 or 3-on-2 drill, whether it’s a scrimmage. We’ve seen a lot of speed and we’re very happy with that,” Pray said. “We’re really gonna try to use that speed, try to get pucks to the net, take advantage of rebounds. We don’t have that skilled guy. We don’t have that Trevor Pray from last year on Kenmore East, we don’t have the Michael Steffan on Williamsville East, so I guess our style’s gonna be three fast balanced lines. We’re gonna forecheck hard. We’re gonna pursue the puck, look for turnovers, and hopefully win some more games than last year.”
Without that one skilled player, each knows that he’ll have to contribute as much as he can. Valvo and Panullo hope to add more scoring than they did last year and work hard on the ice.
“This year, I wanna try to get more points for the team,” Valvo said. “I’d say I’m a hard worker, I’m good in the corners, not really too flashy, but I get the job done on D and get the puck out when we need to get it out.”
“I feel the same as Zach — definitely need to take less penalties and put some more points up for the team,” said Panullo. “I’m not the fastest kid, but I’m definitely not slow. Definitely got a cannon at the point, maybe not as hard as 100 miles an hour like Will Hughes. Other than that, nothing too fancy, not a lot of moves. Definitely could get around you if I wanted to, though. Not like Zach — I don’t hit a lot, but I play the puck.”
Hughes isn’t afraid to hit. He wants to set the tone everywhere he goes, from team bonding activities to the locker room to the ice.
“Since I’m such a good captain, I started this team bonding,” Hughes said. “On the ice, laying the boom, getting the tone set. Setting the tone, getting everyone pumped, score goals, win games.”
Hughes’ team bonding is a start, but the captains and their coach were in agreement that chemistry needs to grow even stronger for the Vikings to be successful this season. Pray would like to see improvement on special teams as well.
“We’d like to get our power play percentage up from last year,” Pray said. “I think we were around nine percent, only, that we converted on. We’d like to get that up near 18, 20 percent conversion rate. We’d like to get our goals against down. I think with our speed and if we can keep the goals against down, we can compete pretty well in this league.”
“Our passing and team chemistry — that’s the biggest thing we need to improve this year,” said Valvo.
“As long as we play together as a team and our key players come in big moments, we could be a really good team here,” said Hughes.
He expects himself and the other captains to be those key players, along with the goaltenders and junior forwards Thomas Cecere and Brandon Snyder.
“Thomas Cecere has improved a lot,” Hughes said. “I play with him on my travel team with Coach Pray. And he’s developed a lot of speed and his shot’s a lot quicker. Not as good as mine, but it’s very good. Snyder, he’s grown a couple inches too, he’s gotten very good, and our third- and fourth-liners from last year have also developed, and they’ll be a lot better.”
Including Cecere and Brandon Snyder, Hughes might have put it best when he said “everyone grew up.” Pray hopes for less rookie mistakes this season, and he expects that to be a key component to the Vikings being competitive in a challenging race in Division 3 this season.
“We were a very young team, had a lot to develop, and this year everyone grew up,” said Hughes. “We got our chemistry going, and we got our stone wall in net again, and our defense is stacked. Other teams, keep your head up.”
Hughes isn’t just hopeful; he’s confident.
“We’re basically the best there ever was, in my opinion.”
Grand Island opens its season Nov. 28 against West Seneca West at Hyde Park. Puck drop is scheduled for 8:45 pm.