Raiders get season’s first win in OT thriller at Chequamegon

MEDFORD HOCKEY

Senior Brayden Machon capped his second career hat trick by scoring 2:43 into overtime Tuesday to give the Medford Raiders their first victory of the new hockey season, 5-4 over the Chequamegon Co-op in Park Falls.

Machon’s goal capped a back-and-forth battle that the Raiders never trailed, but Team SEaL always answered them until they couldn’t in the sudden-death overtime period.

The win put the Raiders at 1-1 heading into their 7 p.m. Great Northern Conference and home opener tonight, Thursday, against Mosinee at the Simek Recreation Center.

Team SEaL lost its third straight onegoal game and fell to 0-4 in a busy start to its season.

In one of the rare games this season the Raiders will have a slightly deeper roster than its opponent, Medford jumped ahead 2-0 with unassisted goals by Cameron Bull at the 6:27 mark of the opening period and Machon’s first goal at 13:24.

The hosts, who outshot Medford 8-6 in the first 17 minutes, answered with a mini blitz to end the period, getting a Marcus Vittone goal at 15:13, assisted by Kaden Krueger and Grant Kief, and then a Kief goal with one second left, assisted by Dustin Krueger.

Machon put Medford back on top with his unassisted goal just 1:14 into the second period. It stayed 3-2 through the rest of the period as Medford burned off two Chequamegon power plays and goalie Ben Brunner collected nine saves.

But Vittone’s short-handed goal 5:48 into the third period knotted things again at 3-3. Kief had the assist. The roughing call 17 seconds before the goal was Chequamegon’s only penalty of the game.

Raider junior Connor Gowey used assists from Kaden Kennedy and Miles Searles to put Medford back on top at the 8:51 mark, but Vittone got his hat trick with a Dustin Krueger assist at 12:42 to even the game at 4-4.

That’s how it stayed until Machon won it with assists from Noah Machon and Searles. Machon’s only other high school hat trick came in a 15-0 win over the Shawano Co-op on Jan. 3, 2020 when he scored four times.

Brunner stopped 32 of the 36 shots he faced in the winning effort, while Medford put 23 shots on Chequamegon’s Zach Poetzl. He stopped 18. The Raiders killed off all three of Chequamegon’s power plays in the win.

After tonight’s matchup with Mosinee, Medford will host potential sectional opponent Rice Lake in nonconference play Tuesday. Antigo comes in for a GNC contest Dec. 9. Both games start at 7 p.m.

Tigers 10, Raiders 2

Medford opened the season on Nov. 23 with a solid first two periods, but the legs started to go late in that second period and Marshfield took advantage with a blitz of six goals in just under six minutes and rolled to a 10-2 win over the visiting Raiders.

Payton Smith had a hat trick and Ian Sennholz and Triston Reissmann each scored twice for the Tigers. Searles had both goals for Medford in a first-period span of 1:19 that put the Raiders out in front and the Raiders held that lead for over 10 minutes.

Searles’ first goal came on an unassisted one-on-one chance with Tiger goalie Cole Halvorsen 5:33 into the first period and tied the game at 1-1. The goal answered Noah Peterson’s opening score that occurred just 25 seconds earlier.

The second goal by Searles came at 6:52 and capped Medford’s best forechecking sequence of the night. The offensive pressure on that shift and Brayden Machon’s assist.

Smith tied the game by cleaning up a loose puck after Brunner had made a save at the 3:18 mark of the second period. That was the first of Marshfield’s two power-play goals in the game. Sennholz was able to set up just to Brunner’s left and pushed in the go-ahead goal at 7:32 off a Henry Hoerneman assist.

The avalanche of goals that put the game away started with 1:07 left in the period when Triston Reissmann picked up the puck at center ice, skated to the point and fired a wrist shot that found its mark. Just 18 seconds later, Hoerneman fed Sennholz again to make it 5-2.

On the power play, Marshfield made it 6-2 just 51 seconds into the third period with Reissmann scoring off assists by Jacek Mancheski and Smith. Smith skated up the left boards and fired a scoring shot at 1:20 and Tyler Reissmann scored off a Peterson assist at 1:49 to make it 8-2. Hoerneman got an assist from Smith on a well-executed two-on-one at 4:27 and Smith put in a wide-open rebound off a Mancheski shot with 1:04 left in the game. Brunner had 29 saves, including 13 apiece in each of the first two periods, while Halvorsen had nine saves, three in each period. Marshfield was two for four on power plays. Medford only had one 41-second power play as the game ended.