The fans who came out to support the Dragons in their first home game of the 2022-2023 season did not leave disappointed after the Pine City Area Dragons fought hard to come from behind and defeat Princeton 5-4 in overtime.
Pine City Area came into Friday night's Mississippi 8 conference matchup with a 2-1 record after falling 8-0 on Tuesday night to Cambridge-Isanti. The Dragons were looking to bounce back after the tough loss quickly, but things did not start their way. Just 57 seconds into the first period Princeton took a 1-0 lead off the stick of Jake Baumann and Pine City found themselves trailing early. The Dragons shook off the early struggles quickly and freshman McCall Leger found the net just about one minute later to tie the game at one goal a piece. Both teams put equal pressure on for the remainder of the first period but the goalies stood strong and the teams headed to the locker room tied 1-1.
The second period of this game gave the fans a little taste of everything. Pine City saw scoring early the second period as McCall Leger grabbed his second goal of the night quickly followed by Blake Painovich's first goal of the season. And with just three minutes gone in the second period Pine City was on top 3-1. That's when the game quickly turned on its head for Pine City and it was mostly caused by penalties. The Dragons had multiple penalties in the second period including a major penalty and unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Ryder Youngbauer that eventually led to the Dragons having to fight off a two-man advantage. The Dragons penalty kill saw a lot of time on the ice but performed very well allowing two power play goals in nine tries from Princeton. The Tigers used that advantage to grab one goal back from the Dragons late in the second period by Jake Baumann and then Lane Olson followed with another one to tie the game at three goals a piece heading into the third. The Dragons felt themselves fortunate to be tied at the end of two as goalie Oscar Gribauval had to save a penalty shot that could've given Princeton the lead and potentially the win.
The third period saw much of the same for Pine City as they were much the better team when they were playing 5-on-5 hockey, but had trouble staying out of the penalty box. Princeton took an early third period lead after Gribauval picked up a rough penalty early in the period and Baumann capitalized with a power play goal. Pine City's Ryder Youngbauer was ejected from the game just three minutes later after a game misconduct penalty.
But even with all of the penalties the Dragons were able to keep their heads about them the rest of the third period and calmed the game down. Sophomore Logan Kirby tied the game at the 11:54 mark of the third period to send it to overtime.
The overtime period did not last long as the Dragons came out flying. They put heavy pressure on Princeton early and 2:34 into the period Isaac Jahnz fired a shot that bounced the Dragons way and went into the back of the net for victory. Pine City proved on Friday night that in hockey good things happen when you can put forward pressure on and put pucks on the net.
After the game Pine City head coach Seth Sauter said, "It was chaos for about 35 of the 51 minutes. A lot of injuries, a lot of penalties, I was scrambling to put lines together.. but we'll take it." He also talked about how tough it is to play when with all of the penalties: "We don't get into a rhythm... we would love to get our third line out there more, but when you get penalties both ways it kind of hinders that too but the boys did a good job stepping in and we had a lot of guys who played JV today stepping in the end period and they did a good job so definitely some good things came out of the win."
The Dragons improve to 3-1 on the year while Princeton fell to 1-3. Next up the Dragons travel to Chisago Lakes for a matchup with the Wildcats on Tuesday.
Scoring Summary
Princeton
Jacob Patnode 0G 2A
Jake Baumann 3G 0A
Lane Olson 1G 1A
Timothy Donnay 0G 1A
Levi Nelson 0G 2A
Colton Dorweiler 23 saves 5GA .821 save percentage
Pine City
Cody Klein 0G 1A
Ryder Youngbauer 0G 1A
Logan Kirby 1G 0A
McCall Leger 2G 0A
Hunter Haug 0G 1A
Blake Painovich 1G 0A
Isaac Jahnz 1G 0A
Andrew Thole 0G 1A
Oscar Gribauval 34 saves 4GA .895 save percentage
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