Kenston rolls to big victory

A weekday afternoon ice slot — and a nonleague game at that — three days before Christmas is tricky. But Dec. 22, Kenston navigated it efficiently enough.

The Bombers got a key short-handed goal from Nick Kendra and three tallies in a 3-minute, 10-second span of the second period to blow open a 6-1 win over White North leader Amherst Steele at The Pond.

Kenston (13-2) has now won nine in a row.

“Our forwards have a lot of speed, so when we skate wide with the puck, it creates problems — most teams we play can’t handle our forward speed,” Bombers coach Tom Fritsche said.

“So if our ‘D’ are big and strong and do a good job getting the puck out of the zone, we can skate and try to go wide.”

Valentino Carriero opened the Bombers’ account at 4:51 of the first on the power play, going to the backhand at the left bar.

Jacob Kramer answered for the Comets (10-2) 62 seconds later, and Amherst appeared to have an opening early in the second, going on the man advantage after a five-minute major.

But Kendra rendered that moot. At 5:02 of the second, the senior took care of a slapshot from the right circle for a 2-1 lead. John Barto, Liam Griffin and Tyler Holub lit the lamp in the aforementioned 3:10 span to blow the game open.

“To be honest, I think we really felt that we needed to up our intensity with us getting that (five-minute major),” said Barto, who also contributed a third-period goal. “One goal sparked it — Nick’s goal on the penalty kill really sparked it. It was a domino effect. We kept going.

“We’ve just had a great mentality with the team. We’ve been going into every game the same — wanting to come out with a victory, the same routines. We’re having a lot of fun keeping it going.”