The Pine City Dragons went on the road on Tuesday night to take on their rivals from Mora. After winning three in a row including huge home win against St. Francis, Pine City was feeling great about their team's play heading into a tough week that would see two section opponents and a top team in Class A.
Pine City came out hot right out of the gate and really never looked back. It was a dominating effort all around for the Dragons. Pine City not only dominated on the scoreline they also controlled the puck for a majority of the game.
Pine City pumped in two goals in the first from Parker Sell and Dusty Bergstrom to take an early 2-0 lead. Bergstrom's goal came right as time expired and proved to be a huge momentum boost for the Dragons heading into the first intermission. The Dragons added three more in the second to take a commanding 5-0 lead. They received scoring from Luke Fabini, Tim Thole and Jared Carpenter added his first career goal late in the second. Mora was able to get one back in the third but it was too little too late as Pine City would also add another one from Carpenter, one from Miller and Ryder Youngbauer got on the score sheet as well.
Once again the Dragons saw scoring come from top to bottom on the roster proving this team is dangerous no matter who they have out on the ice. They were aided by another strong performance from their defense and senior goalie Alex Laven. For the fourth time this season, Laven will leave the ice with a phenomenal game well deserving of a shutout but not quite leaving the goose egg on the board. The Dragon fans will be very happy with his performance thus far because if he can continue to hold Section 5A opponents to just one goal this season the Dragons will be winning a lot of games this year.
Coach Grant Nicoll said, "The boys came out of the gates hot and never looked back. The game was pure domination from start to finish. They had no answer for our depth. We did a great job of sustaining pressure from all of our lines top to bottom. This showed on the game sheet. In the 8 goals we scored, we had 7 different scorers! This makes it hard for any team to defend against us. It was a great team win, and the boys were very happy on the way home!"
PC 2 3 3 = 8
Mora 0 0 1 = 1
Scoring Parker Sell - 1g, 3a Dusty Bergstrom - 1g, 1a Tim Thole - 1g Jared Carpenter - 2g Luke Fabini - 1g Ryder Youngbauer - 1g George Miller - 1g, 3a Gabe Westbrook - 3a Jimmy Lindblom - 1a McCoy Leger - 1a Alex Laven - 11 saves on 12 shots
The Dragons move to 5-2 on the season. They have two more big games this week with Sauk Rapids-Rice and Simley coming to town on Thursday and Saturday.
Photo Credit John Olson
