Tough night in Tomahawk; Raiders also drop home finale
MEDFORD BOYS HOCKEY
The Medford Raiders will end the hockey regular season Saturday in the seventh-place game of the Great Northern Conference tournament after a tough night Tuesday in Tomahawk.
The Hatchets jumped on Medford with a five-goal first period and went on to bury the Raiders 15-3 in a consolation semifinal that was not nearly as close as the 8-6 game the two teams played at Sara Park back on Jan. 6.
According to head coach Galen Searles, it was a tough night for both of Medford’s goalies and Tomahawk’s physical style successfully stopped Raider forwards from generating many quality scoring chances on the offensive end. Tomahawk also got three power-play goals in five chances.
The Raiders will play Northland Pines at 10 a.m. Saturday in the first of four games to be played at the Lakeland Hawks Ice Arena in Minocqua. Tomahawk will play Antigo for fifth place at 1 p.m., Rhinelander meets Waupaca for third place at 4 p.m. and Mosinee and Lakeland will square off for the championship at 7 p.m.
Austin Lamer led Tomahawk’s offensive barrage Tuesday with four goals and three assists, Caleb Dickens had three goals and an assist, Logan Seymour had two goals and three assists and Mitch Jimenez added two goals and an assist.
Lamer got the game’s first two goals 3:02 and 6:15 into the opening period, Dickens got one at 8:38, followed by a Seymour goal 10 seconds later. Dickens got another with 45 seconds left during a five-minute power play.
The Hatchets put three more on the board before Connor Gowey’s unassisted, short-handed goal got Medford on the board 11:23 into the second period. Goals by Tomahawk’s Trevor Schumann, Sawyer Hanna and Jimenez made it 11-1 going into the third period.
Cameron Bull scored 46 seconds into the third and Brayden Machon answerd a Dickens goal, scoring on a power play at 5:06, assisted by Bull.
Tomahawk outshot Medford 39-26.
Ben Brunner was in goal for the first and third periods, stopping 18 of the 27 shots he faced. Talan Albers stopped six of 12 shots in the second period. Medford was one for five on power plays.
Medford, now 6-14 overall, drew the sixth seed in the eight-team WIAA Division 2 Amery sectional and will face the third-seeded Amery Co-op (15-7) in a regional final Feb. 17 at 7 p.m. in Amery. The winner gets either the seventhseeded Burnett Blizzard Co-op (4-13) or second-seeded New Richmond (8-13) in a sectional semifinal Feb. 22.
Top-seeded Rice Lake (12-7) plays the eighth-seeded Chequamegon Co-op (4-14) in the opening round, while fourth-seeded Hayward (9-12-1) hosts fifth-seeded Marshfield (11-10-1).
Team SEaL 3, Raiders 1
In front of a big Youth Night crowd in the season’s final home game at the Simek Center Thursday, the Raiders had a big edge in shots, but good opportunities got more scarce as the game went on and tie-breaking goals 16 seconds apart late in the second period stood for the Chequamegon Co-op in its 3-1 win.
Team SEaL earned a split in the season series in this almost-always competitive non-conference rivalry. Medford won 5-4 in overtime in Park Falls in its second game of the season Nov. 23.
“We don’t outshoot and outcontrol too many teams and not win,” Searles said. “They took advantage of their opportunities. It was one of those things where it hurts when they score bang-bang like that, especially at the end of a period.”
Medford held a 37-21 advantage in shots on goal and had many of its best opportunities in the first period, when it outshot Chequamegon 15-10 and had a shot from Cameron Bull squarely hit the post and bounce out. But senior goal tender Chris Vittone, who has some good games against Medford in the past, stopped all 15 shots he could reach in that period and wound up with 36 saves.
“He’s always been a decent goalie,” Searles said. “He was giving up rebounds, but he was seeing everything. Both times between periods we said we have to get traffic in front of the net. We have to try to take away his sight. We just couldn’t get it done.”
The only goal of the opening period came 4:36 in when Justin Niece slapped a shot that got under Brunner’s glove hand. Niece was assisted by Daniel Hartfi el and Harland Kasowicz. Both teams failed to capitalize on power play time late in the first and early in the second periods. Medford was denied by another post on a shot by Miles Searles nine minutes into the second.
But at 10:26, the Raiders finally got on the board when Machon became a oneman wrecking crew, taking a face-off to Vittone’s left, controlling the puck out of it himself and fighting his way through a couple of defenders before flipping the puck past Vittone for a short-handed goal.
“He took that draw and he normally doesn’t take draws,” Galen Searles said of Machon. “He went through three guys with the puck and scored. We were trying to put a little extra pressure, so I had all of our big guns out there a lot (for faceoffs). Maybe I should do that more often.”
The momentum, unfortunately, didn’t last long.
Mason Freiburger beat Brunner from close range on a quickly-developed play at 13:20 with assists from Dustin Krueger and Kaden Krueger. Just 16 seconds later, Grant Kief carried the puck from endto- end to beat Brunner with a nice fake and backhand shot.
Though Medford outshot Chequamegon 14-4 in the third period, Vittone had good looks at nearly all of those shots. The Raiders pulled Brunner for an extra skater in the final 1:20 and only got one hard shot from Machon in that time.
“They were really good at defending the house, the box in front of the net,” coach Searles said. “There were no passing lanes.”
Chequamegon improved to 4-13 at the time. Brunner had 18 saves in the loss.
“It was a good back and forth action, clean game,” Searles added. “We’ve never really had any chippy games with that team. For us, Logan Koski had a shift out there that might have been his best of the season. Jake Noland and Noah Machon have been getting more consistent. They’re making plays, making good passes.”
