len Searles said. ….

len Searles said.

Medford had a couple of early scoring chances in overtime that went wide of the net. The biggest play may have come from senior Logan Searles and it won’t show up on the stats sheet as he drew the penalty that set up the face-off and gamewinning goal. “That penalty that Logan drew at the end of the game was big,” Galen Searles said. “He battled off two guys. It looked like they were going to have an odd-man advantage. He came back and fought, he upset the guy that he stole the puck from and he slashed him. That kind of effort is great.”

“I think we were running out of energy, but we went strong,” Pernsteiner said of the game’s finish. “The last few shifts there we had some opportunities, had some close ones. We were fighting back and forth. It was short face-offs that we won. We had it set up where we got it off the draw. It was a faster one.”

Medford put 22 shots on goal and was outshot by four.

“This was the first contest that we’ve had where we had a lot of sustained offensive pressure,” Galen Searle said. “A lot of our goals come from odd-man breakaways or something like that. We practice controlling the puck in their end but we don’t always seem to get a lot of practice at it in the games. That’s something that we talked about in between the periods, moving the puck around, when you don’t have the puck find open seams to bust for passes.”

Medford will look to make it two in a row tonight, Thursday, when it hosts winless Tomahawk at 7 p.m. in Great Northern Conference play. The Raiders will make up an early-season postponement Saturday with an 11:30 a.m. game at Viroqua before returning home to face GNC contender Lakeland on Tuesday and non-conference rival Chequamegon on Jan. 14.

Pines 7, Medford 0

Visions of a major Great Northern Conference upset danced in Medford’s heads for a period on Dec. 29, but a shorthanded goal early in the second period got Northland Pines going and the Eagles went on to a 7-0 win in the Raiders’ home opener.

Despite being outshot 10-4, Medford played an even first period with the Eagles, getting a couple of good scoring chances and getting some solid play on the defensive end that limited the quality shots Pines got. When the Eagles did get chances, Brunner was up to the challenge, stopping all 10 shots, including a big one on a play right in the crease with just under a minute left.

“He made the saves that he needed to make,” Galen Searles said of Brunner. “We skated with them fine. They outshot us, but we got some shots at least and got it out of our end. Partway into that second period, our lack of a third line started to show.”

The Raiders went on a power just 34 seconds into the second period hoping to grab a lead. Instead, the Eagles were the ones getting the game’s first goal at 1:54 when Josh Chesney deflected a Medford pass near the Pines blue line and tipped it to Michael Mailette, who skated in for the breakaway, short-handed goal.

At 6:17, the Eagles took advantage of a tripping call on the Raiders, scoring a power-play goal from Riley McGee, assisted by Luke Wessel.

Mailette broke free for another unassisted goal at 7:32 and, just after the Raiders’ Austin Stauffer just missed on two good looks during a power play that expired with no scoring, Pines added its fourth goal of the period with 1:22 left with a score from Max Brown, assisted by Wessel and Tyler Glauner.

Mailette completed a hat trick 8:01 into the third with assists from McGee and Brown. Wessel scored an unassisted short-handed goal at 10:15 to make it 6-0 and Chesney closed the scoring with a power-play goal at 14:21, assisted by Mailette and Andrew Hartwig.

Mitch McCanles had 19 saves, including 10 in the second period while collecting the shutout win between the pipes for Pines. Brunner had 26 saves for Medford, including nine in the third period.

Pines was two for three on power plays while Medford didn’t score on five power plays and gave up the two short-handers.

Still, compared to last year’s 15-0 blowout in Eagle River, Searles said this performance felt like a major improvement.

“We did play with them, we didn’t get embarrassed,” he said. “It was a fun game to watch. One thing about this group this year compared to last year, these guys don’t get down. Last year if something bad happened and then something bad happened right after that, it felt like I had to go around being a morale booster for everybody. This year, they play more light-hearted. It’s good.”