The Pine City Area boys hockey team defeated Becker/Big Lake 6-3 on Thursday night to earn their first win in the Mississippi 8 conference era. This was also the first win for head coach Seth Sauter and the new coaching staff. Pine City Area started 0-4 on the season, but have made the right adjustments and have gotten things back on track with the win.
The first period was a great back and forth battle with Mason Mikyska getting things going for the Dragons scoring the first goal. Mikyska recently moved up to the first line with Smetana and Sell and that has been a good adjustment for the Dragons as those three seem to be working very well together. Ethan Tobako tied the game for the Eagles about half way through the first period, but McCoy Leger got the Dragons back on top two minutes later. Pine City went into the intermission leading 2-1.
The second period was chaos. Things got heated as both teams combined for 14 penalties in the period. Including a game misconduct on the Dragons that saw them go down to 5 on 3 for a full two minutes and had five minutes of penalty kill overall. The Dragons fought through that and didn't allow a goal and coach Sauter called that the turning point of the game. Things could've gone down hill for Pine City very quickly, but the teams traded goals in the second period sending the Dragons leading 3-2 into third. Tyler Schmitt scored for Becker/Big Lake and McCoy Leger grabbed his second goal of the game for the Dragons.
Both coaches did a great job calming down their teams during the second intermission and it showed on the ice with a much cleaner third period. Just thirty seconds into the third period Schmitt scored for the Eagles tying the game at three goals a piece. Pine City has had a couple games this year where they couldn't hold a lead late and the kids had to be mentally tough to make sure that didn't happen again. That is exactly what they did and played a very solid third period. It was Peyton Smetana's heroics at the 9:18 mark that gave the Dragons a lead they wouldn't relinquish sending them to their first win of the season. Mason Mikyska grabbed another goal on a beautiful snipe from the blue line to give them the insurance goal and Smetana added the empty netter to finish off the victory.
Mason Olson made several very nice saves in the victory keeping his team on top. Pine City moves to 1-4 on the season and will host Princeton on Tuesday.
Scoring
Pine City Area
Parker Sell 0g 1a
McCoy Leger 2g 0a
Mason Rydberg 0g 1a
Mason Mikyska 2g 0a
Seth Linnell 0g 1a
Aidan Welch 0g 1a
Daniel Sluka 0g 1a
Jared Carpenter 0g 1a
Peyton Smetana 2g 1a
Mason Olson 30 saves 3GA 90.9%
Becker/Big Lake
Tyler Schmitt 2g 0a
Ethan Tobako 1g 0a
Jacob Bahe 0g 2a
Mitch Reasoner 17 saves 6ga 73.9%
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