Raiders end regular season with close loss, fun win

MEDFORD GIRLS HOCKEY

S

The Medford Raiders held on through a dominant second period by the Baraboobased Badger Lightning, but they ran out of gas in the third and dropped their girls hockey regular-season finale Friday 4-1.

The Lightning scored the go-ahead goals in the final period after tying the game in the final minute of the second period. Outshooting the Raiders, 39-15, the Lightning eventually broke through in crunch time to end their regular season at 9-13. That includes three wins over Medford.

Medford got the game’s first goal 14:28 into the first period from junior Eryka Seidl, who beat Lightning goal tender Alyssa Gada with assists from Kyla Kennedy and Delaney Hraby. Medford outshot the Lightning 7-6 in the opening period and held that 1-0 lead for nearly 19 minutes despite getting outshot 21-2 in the second period.

Medford nearly escaped the second unscathed, but the Lightning’s Bella Bowden finally snuck the puck past Raider goalie Alyssa Brandner with 47 seconds left to tie it. She was assisted by Kayla Garbacz and Reese Olson.

Things started to even out shot-wise in the third, but once the Lightning got the tie-breaker 10:22 in, momentum went squarely to their side.

Mallory Ruland got what turned out to be the game-winner with an unassisted goal. Eryn Benson got another unassisted tally at 12:13. Ruland finished things off at 14:24, assisted by Kayla Capener and Signe Beglaske.

Brandner finished with 35 saves, including nine in the third period. Gada had 14 saves, including six in the first and third periods Medford had the game’s only power play. That came in the third period with the game still tied, but the Raiders were unable to take advantage.

The Raiders finished the regular season at 4-15 and drew the seventh seed in the WIAA sectional bracket. They’ll be at the second-seeded Hayward Co-op (15-9) tonight, Thursday, for a 7:30 p.m. regional final with the winner getting either the sixth-seeded Northern Edge (3-11) or third-seeded Superior-Northwestern (7-16) on Tuesday in a sectional semifinal.

Co-head coach Jenna Wieting said last week, she’s proud of the progress the young team has made.

“They’ve been doing really well,” she said. “Obviously with such a huge group of freshmen coming in there’s always thoughts are they all going to get along? For the most part we’ve had a lot of really good things going on with the whole entire group. They’ve really cheered each other on.”

Raiders 7, Sabers 4

Medford couldn’t have asked for a much better home finale for the 2021-22 season on Thursday as the Raiders posted a 7-4 win over the Chippewa Falls-Menomonie JV squad in front of a sizable and energetic crowd at the Simek Recreation Center.

Wearing purple uniforms on Suicide Prevention Awareness Night, the Raiders broke the game open with a four-goal second period and led 7-1 before the Sabers put together a late rally in the last six minutes.

“We’ve been struggling to put together a second period pretty much the whole entire season,” Wieting said. “It was good to get that out of the way. But then our third period was a little bit lacking also, so we’re still looking for that full game effort. It was definitely good for the girls to get a win, especially with the night that we had going on with the suicide prevention. It was good to have a good crowd and pull out a win.”

The first period was a bit on the lackluster side, but the Raiders still came out of it with a 2-1 lead. The Sabers’ Mya Post scored the game’s first goal just 1:44 in with assists from Georgelle Benson and Kinley Laux. Medford countered with a Grace Schmidtfranz goal at 2:58, assisted by Victoria Konieczny. Emily Kiselicka scored at 7:25 with an assist from Hraby.

The period ended with both teams having nine shots on goal.

The Raiders opened the second period with 57 seconds of power play time and they took advantage of it with Konieczny banging in a loose puck at the 51-second mark to cap a mad scramble in front of the net. At 3:21, Kiselicka got a shorthanded goal, rebounding a Schmidtfranz shot and sneaking it between the post and left pad of Saber goalie Rhyenne Fuerstenberg to make it 4-1.

“Early and in the middle of the season we kind of went back to basics,” co-head coach Scott Brandner said. “We were having just a couple issues with some basic stuff. I think they’re fixing it. Tonight I saw a lot of good positioning all the way around. Tips were there. We’ve been working on that and it’s showing up. Our rebounding has kept us in a lot of games.”

At 6:07 Carly Koski carried the puck into the zone and zipped a shot past Fuerstenberg for an unassisted goal. Hraby got the next goal, taking a pass from Konieczny at the face-off circle to Fuerstenberg’s left and going top shelf at 14:21.

“Tori had a really awesome play to Delaney there,” Wieting said. “Delaney called for it. They found a good lane.”

“Those two have been working really well together this year,” Brandner said. “They are really starting to pick it up.” “It seems like when we can bring it back to our defense, really good things can happen out of it offensively,” Wieting said.

Kelli Petrick’s unassisted goal 2:58 into the third period put the running clock into effect temporarily. The Sabers got goals from Tessa Leisses with 5:51 left, Laux with 4:12 left and Benson with two seconds left to close the gap somewhat.

“In the third period we didn’t get outpositioned, we just quit playing,” Brandner said. “We got caught standing and watching.”

After the even first period, the Raiders wound up outshooting the Sabers 54-16 with Alyssa Brandner recording 12 saves. Medford had an amazing 31-0 advantage in shots in the second period.

“They were just all working together,” Wieting said. “Kind of where we fall apart is everybody just tries to do it all by themselves sometimes. I think that second period they just really went out and worked together and were talking and getting their heads up. All the little things.”

Various raffles during the game raised $1,055 for the Medford Cares Model, which provides counseling to area students.

“The girls came up with it,” Wieting said. “Heidi Brandner ran with it along with Rhonda Seidl and they pulled it together in a pretty short time. It was like a two-week thing where they asked do you think we can do this? I think it went off pretty well.”

“We had a lot of people help out, get donations for jerseys so we can hopefully keep this thing going,” Scott Brandner said.