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Pine City 2, Chisago Lakes 1

As head coach Corey McKinnon put it, the Wildcats "did everything but score" against Pine City last Tuesday, December 9 at Pine City. The Wildcats outshot the Dragons 36-26, but the Dragons came out ahead on the scoreboard, sending the Wildcats down to a 2-1 defeat.

Cory Lushanko scored the first goal of the game just over two minutes into the second period. Using the defenseman as a screen from the top of the right circle, he snapped a shot into the net to put the Wildcats up 1-0. The Dragons scored a power play goal on a rebound just over a minute later to tie the game at 1-1. And skating shorthanded five minutes into the third period, a Dragon forward picked off a bad pass in the neutral zone and scored on a breakaway to give Pine City a one-goal lead. The Wildcat pulled the goalie for an extra attacker with a little over a minute to go and furiously assaulted the Dragon net with shots, but Pine City stood firm and hung on for the.

"We missed some big chances," said Wildcat head coach Corey McKinnon. "We generated scoring chances all night on the power play. But we didn't penetrate the slot enough, and we need to be able to shoot and get on the rebounds in a tight game. To Pine City's credit, they went into major defense mode after they took the lead. They iced the puck a lot and only had two shots from inside the blue line the entire third period. It's disheartening to outplay a team and have a loss to show for it, but we're trying to take it one game at a time and use each game as a barometer of where we are at that point."

St. Paul Academy 6, Chisago Lakes 2

Things looked good early for the Wildcats against St. Paul Academy as sophomore Brett Lizotte stole the puck and scored on a breakaway just 45 seconds into the first period for his first varsity goal. But SPA scored three goal in an eight minute span of the second and third periods and never looked back, beating the Wildcats 6-2 in the Wildcats' home opener last Saturday, December 13.

Mike Falvey scored goals three minutes apart in the first period to put SPA up 2-1 after one. He added another goal on a power play just over a minute into the second period. That gave Falvey a hat trick and made it a two-goal lead for SPA. Falvey scored his fourth goal of the game on another power play midway through the third period to stretch the SPA lead to three. The Wildcats' Tommy Johnson answered with an unassisted goal just over a minute later to cut the lead back to two. But the referees called a controversial penalty on the Wildcats with just under three minutes left in the game. Despite skating a man short, the Wildcats pulled the goalie for an extra attacker with about 90 seconds remaining in the game. With 57 seconds left in the game, SPA scored an empty-net power play goal to put the game out of reach at 5-2. SPA added another goal with 30 seconds left to make the final score SPA 6, Chisago Lakes 2.

"We need to work on our penalty kill," said McKinnon. "We gave up three power-play goals in this one. They outshot us 42-21 for the game. It would be interesting to see what the shots would have been without all the penalties. Even though we're a young team, we don't want to use youth as an excuse. We've got a lot of smart, hockey-minded kids and we have high expectations of them. We expect them to learn how to make adjustments when necessary."

McKinnon continued. "Our starting goalie, Kyle Buchanan, played a good game. He did a good job of being in the right position to stop the puck. He's doing a great job coming in as a goaltender new to high school hockey."

The Wildcats have three home games before the holiday break. They were scheduled to take on fifth-ranked Rochester Lourdes Tuesday, December 16. They'll take on the St. Paul Saints tonight at 7 p.m., and then welcome Cambridge-Isanti to Chisago Lakes Arena this Saturday, December 20 at 7 p.m.

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