Williamsville South got what it expected in Thursday night’s opener against Niagara Falls. The Billies didn’t expect their opponent to go down without a fight, but they also had a secret weapon in Thursday night’s lineup.
“We knew that they were a tough big team,” said junior forward Jake Wehr. “We knew that they were poetically gonna come out hitting. We had to come out prepared, strong. We had [Zach] Rehbaum in our lineup today, so that helped. He was just skating around everyone. We expected a hard fought game; that’s what we got.”
Rehbaum is a junior now and already verbally committed to play Division 1 hockey at Brown University. This year is the first time that Rehbaum’s travel hockey schedule has allowed him to play for South, and he’s already made a difference. He finished Thursday’s game with two goals and an assist in a 4-3 Billies win.
“He’s very very excited about playing for his school and contributing,” South coach Sean Green said. “Obviously, he brings a certain element to us, offensive capabilities, but he’s also been a great team leader off the ice with the kids. He really adapts well, and offensively he brings a tremendous amount, but he’s also a great character and a great team leader inside the locker room, which is what we build our whole team on.”
Wehr scored twice in Thursday’s win as well. His second goal was the Billies’ fourth — the game winner — and Wehr scored it on the power play with 4:22 left in the third period.
“I just told him in the locker room, that was probably the best game we’ve seen him play as a high school player,” Green said. “He was just a tenacious player, power forward, really used his body and physical strength to help him out and help the team out. Stayed disciplined all the way through, had a couple great goals, and was a true power forward.”
Defenseman Brady Homberger didn’t record a point on Thursday, but it isn’t always the players on the score sheet who are important to the wins. Green was impressed by Homberger’s play and leadership on the ice Thursday night.
“Just his overall competitiveness and just the way he’s calm and effective as a defenseman,” Green said. “When we needed him to shut down, he shut down. When we needed him to play offense, he played offense. He’s just rock solid out there for us on the back end. He makes a lot of smart plays, he plays with a lot of confidence, so he won’t throw the puck away, and then brings a tremendous amount of leadership to us.”
“We were told to come out of the gate, work on the breakouts, make sure passes were crisp and everything, come out hitting, and I think we did that pretty well tonight,” Homberger said. “My head was up, just more aware of what was going on around me. Made some nice passes across ice, and I think it was just all around a hard fought game.”
After losing a few of last year’s top players to graduation and starting this year without another due to injury, the Billies are still looking at every game and every situation as a learning experience early in the season.
“We’re still installing a lot of our systems and trying to talk through things that were taking place as the game went on,” Green said. “We’re trying to highlight certain systems and certain plays that we’ve been working on to show, okay, here’s a situation we’ll work on. A lot of teaching in the first game, a lot of talking.”
South’s next game is scheduled for this Thursday (Dec. 8), and the Billies hope to carry momentum forward and play even better against Grand Island.
“We just gotta carry the momentum out throughout the whole season,” Wehr said. We gotta build off this because we got a lot of new kids on the team this year. We gotta get them updated to the standards of playing in the Fed, and we just gotta show them how hard fought the games are. Most of the games are usually close one-goal games.”
“Keep the momentum,” said Homberger. “Some of the stuff we did pretty well today, we gotta do even better next game, and then we just keep it going.”