KITTANNING — Knoch hockey coach Joe Honzo is looking at the season as a three-step process.

“We cut the season into thirds,” Honzo said. “We played a lot of kids out of position early. It was like a fire drill, but we've settled in now.”

The Knights dropped their first six games by a combined score of 42-15, but they have been battling back since then.

After the 0-6 start, the Knights routed South Park 10-3 and Beaver 11-1 before a 6-1 loss to Hampton Monday and a 7-2 loss to Kittanning Thursday at the Belmont Complex.

“We outshot Hampton and we were outshot 37-26 (Thursday),” Honzo said. “We're getting shots. We just need to do a better job finishing.”

Still, the Wildcats showed why they are among the favorites for the PIHL Class A title.

Kittanning tallied the last four goals of the game over the final 18 minutes to pull away.

“The shots were pretty much the same,” Honzo noted. “The score was not indicative of how we played. You take two or three calls out and it's a 4-2 game. I'm happy the way we played.

Kittanning (8-0), which has outscored its opponents 75-14, jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period when Heinz Koster scored on a pass from Troy Schall 4:02 into the game, then doubled the lead when Ryan Toy's shot hit the post and ricocheted into the net.

Knoch (2-8) cut the deficit in half after Nick Brubach took a pass from Neil Shearer off a faceoff in the Wildcats' end just 12 seconds into the second period.

Kittanning answered with a goal when Koster scored 16 seconds into a power play.

Matt Eshelman pulled the Knights back to a one-goal deficit with 3:26 to go in the period when he took a Nate Medic assist past Wildcats goalie Cameron Langham.

Kittanning seized the momentum just 26 seconds later when Schall took a crossing pass and buried it past Knights goalie Grant Donnelly.

Donnelly recorded 30 saves while Langham had 24.

Jake Enders, Hunter Grafton and Koster all tallied third-period goals to close out the scoring for Kittanning.

Having suffered a 9-1 loss to the Wildcats on Nov. 1, the Knights haven't fared well so far against Kittanning, but there's still time to change that, especially now that the team is in the midst of the second-third of the season.

“We'll get better. I'm very optimistic,” Honzo said. “We play Kittanning five times this year. A lot of teams would say, ‘Oh no,' but we're saying ‘Oh, yes.'”