The Pine City Area Boys hockey team hosted Princeton on Thursday night. The boys fell behind early 4-0, but kept fighting and fell just short 6-5.
Things could not have started worse for Pine City who played at the Pine City Civic Center Thursday night for just the second time since Christmas. Just 14 seconds into the first period Dalton Wille netted an early goal for Princeton. The Tigers used that early momentum to pump in three more goals in the first period and Pine City found themselves trailing 4-0 in a game they desperately wanted to win. Pine City kept their heads up and kept skating hard and Aidan Welch was able to sneak one past the Princeton goalie to send it to first intermission 4-1.
A three goal lead with two periods left is not game over for Pine City, but you knew the Dragons needed to come out firing. And that is exactly what they did largely dominating the last two periods of the game. The "green line" of Aidan Welch, McCoy Leger, and McCall Leger were firing on all cylinders. McCoy Leger scored the next two goals of the game and Pine City were trailing just one. Princeton slowed the Dragons momentum down just a little bit when they scored on a 4-on-4 play late in the second period, but Aidan Welch answered back again late in the period and the Dragons headed to the locker room trailing just one.
Early in the third period Dalton Wille scored a hat trick goal for Princeton on the power play that proved to be the deciding factor of the game as Pine City's Gavin Broz scored a late goal to keep it within one but the Dragons weren't able to find the game-tying goal and fell 6-5.
Pine City head coach Seth Sauter said "Give credit to the boys. They never stopped trying. There have been a lot of losses this year where we have been happy in the locker room."
He went on to say "These guys have faced a lot of adversity with a lot of games missed and the top two lines really gelled tonight... that's a good sign we are moving in the right direction even though we didn't get the W"
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