High School Hockey game action
by Craig Sheppard
January 8, 2006
The Pinedale HS age hockey team played their first games since before the Christmas break this last weekend. They went to Rock Springs and played two games against the Rock Springs “A” division team and then traveled home to play two non-league games with Riverton.
Friday night the Pinedale team could barely get the puck out of their own zone against the Rock Springs club, only managing to get 12 shots on the RS goalie while Rock Springs shot at Pinedale’s goalie, Chris Manning, 52 times. Chris had a great game in goal for Pinedale, but Pinedale lost 5 to 0.
Saturday morning Pinedale tightened up a little bit defensively and got Rock Springs shots down to 31 shots, but still they could only manage 11 shots of their own. At one time in the game Pinedale was up 3 to 2 before RS scored 5 unanswered goals to end the game. Scoring for Pinedale was Forrest Michnevich assisted by Emily Elder, Nate Olsen assisted by Drew Guenthner and Emily Elder unassisted. Chris Manning, in goal for Pinedale, made 23 saves. This was an expensive game for Pinedale for they lost Nate Olsen for 6 to 8 weeks with a broken collarbone. Nate is one of the Pinedale team’s top scorers.
Pinedale then traveled home to face Riverton in a Saturday night late game. This was going to be a preview of the following weekend’s WAHL action when Pinedale travels to Riverton for resumption of WAHL action. The two teams played a hard-fought defensive game in the first period with neither able to score. The second period was exactly the opposite with six goals being scored by the two teams.
Pinedale opened up first with a goal by John Colton assisted by Drew Guenthner and Kathryn Konicek. Riverton tied the game up, but then only a minute later Pinedale took the lead again with a goal by Michael McDaniel, assisted by Lincoln Proud and Jake Hunt. Then Riverton took control of the game and scored 3 unanswered goals to end the second period up 4 to 2. Pinedale tried to comeback with a goal by Jeremiah Silvey assisted by Drew Guenthner, but Riverton scored again and then finished with an empty netter with only 10 seconds to go. Pinedale lost 6 to 3. The good part about this game was that Pinedale finally outshot the opposing team 37 to 30. Chris Manning made 24 saves on 30 shots for Pinedale.
The final game of the weekend, Sunday morning, saw Riverton and Pinedale playing almost exactly the same in the first period as they did the night before. However Pinedale did manage to get one goal by Drew Guenthner, assisted by Emily Elder. The Pinedale team would score a goal in each of the next two periods (Preston Schwab from Guenthner, and Silvey and Michnevich from Elder) before Riverton would finally get a goal with only a minute and 51 seconds left in the game. Pinedale would insure the win with a final goal with only 1 minute 19 seconds left to go in the game by Preston Schwab, assisted by Silvey and Kathryn Konicek. Chris Manning had another good game in goal making 23 saves on 24 shots while the Pinedale team had a total of 35 shots on the Riverton goalie. Pinedale won 4 to 1.
Pinedale travels to Riverton next weekend for WAHL action playing undefeated Douglas, Riverton and Cody. They hope to continue their winning ways against Riverton, upset Douglas, and then avenge a pre-Christmas loss to Cody. All of the points won in these games will go towards helping Pinedale make the six-team WAHL Midget B State playoffs to be held in Pinedale February 24-26. Their next home games will be January 28 against Casper.
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