The Pine City Area Dragons came back to the Civic Center on Friday night after splitting games in their season opening tournament in Marshall. The Dragons fought hard in a tough game with Proctor, but fell just short 4-3 in Overtime.
This was the first time all fans were allowed back in the Civic Center in a long time and the Pine City community showed up to support the Dragons. The Dragon players did not disappoint playing strong in their battle with Proctor. McCoy Leger opened up the scoring in the first period for Pine City redirecting a pass from Ryder Youngbauer into the back of the net to give the Dragons a 1-0 lead. Pine City would spend the majority of the rest of the period playing down a man as penalties stung the Dragons in this one. But the penalty kill worked well for Pine City as they held their lead heading into the first intermission.
Penalties continued to play a factor in this game as Pine City had 15 minutes of time in the box on 6 infractions including a five minute major penalty in the second period. After Carson Pavlowitch scored an even strength goal to tie the game for the Rails, Kennan Reyelts added another while his team was on the five minute advantage to give the Rails a 2-1 lead halfway through the second period. Fortunately for Pine City, Proctor was also having problems staying out of the penalty box and Pine City's power play unit was strong. The Dragons scored twice on five chances including Gavin Broz scoring his second goal of the season late in the second period to tie the game at two goals a piece.
Teams cleaned their play up in the third period with just one penalty a piece. At the 5:09 mark of the third period Cooper Johnson netted the go ahead goal for Proctor giving the Rails a 3-2 lead. But Pine City did not hang their heads, the Dragons battled back and Jimmy Lindblom tied the game about five minutes later sending this one into overtime.
Pine City came out of the overtime controlling possession and played strong right away but just two minutes in Proctor had a two on one chance on the counter attack and Reyelts netted his second of the game to give Proctor a 4-3 victory.
After the game coach Seth Sauter told WCMP, "I'm proud of the way the boys played. I thought we had a chance their in the first period to separate the scoreboard but we didn't take advantage of that. We have to play smart disciplined hockey. We had too many guys in the box especially already being shorthanded." Sauter went on to say he was proud of the way the power play and penalty kill played after they worked on it in practice this last week.
The Dragons fells to 1-2 on the season and will host Cambridge-Isanti on Tuesday night while Proctor improved to 3-1 on the year.
Photo Credit Four Seasons Photography
