St Joseph's Prep Hawks

Canon McMillan 4 Thomas Jefferson 3 ROSTRAVER – Thomas Jefferson [11-7-0] enters this evening’s game currently in the 6th slot in Class AA for the upcoming Penguins Cup playoffs and is looking to lock down home ice advantage for the opening round. The Jaguars struggled during early in the 2nd half of the season and for coach Don Powell, it may have been a nice luxury in the back of his mind that he had Cody Krynock in the lineup and the comforting thought is that Krynock is a goaltender by trade and returned in between the pipes to fill a void that many clubs would love to be able to call on. Canon McMillan [9-6-3] has clinched a playoff spot in the upcoming Penguins Cup playoff and is in a log jam with Kittanning and Greensburg CC battling for spots 7 and 8 behind TJ. The Big Macs will need to run the table to even have a chance of a home ice advantage, especially since Greensburg CC owns the tiebreaker by virtue of a 6-4 victory over the Big Macs earlier in the season. A win over TJ would is critical to those plans for coach Dave Fryer’s squad. Nate Bohn opened the scoring for CM at 9:59 firing a wrist shot just inside the pipe for a 1-0 lead. The Big Macs opened up a 2-0 lead with 2:48 remaining in the opening period as Jesse Patnesky buried a wrist shot high over the glove side of Krynock. The Jaguars got on the scoreboard in the second period as Dan Jantzi scored on a rebound at 11:31 to cut the CM lead to 2-1. The Jaguars outshot CM 15-6 in the middle period. On to the third period and after the Big Macs could not beat Cody Krynock at one end, TJ took advantage of a defensive error at 11:27 as Brock Heinauer found a loose puck at the side of the net and deposited it past Mike O’Neill to tie the score at two apiece. The ‘Concerned Citizens of Canon McMillan’ rose to their feet with 6:37 remaining as Jesse Patnesky raced the puck from the center zone in on the breakaway and beat Krynock on the backhand to give the Big Macs a 3-2 lead. With 4:55 remaining Joe Moore scored on a long shot from the right point to tie the score 3-3. Then the goal of the season thus far as Justin Cormack and Jesse Patnesky exchanged a give and go at the Thomas Jefferson blue line and then Patnesky doing his best Denny Savard spina-rama putting the Jaguar defenseman in shock and fired a bullet wrist shot high over the glove side of Cody Krynock with 1:28 remaining to give Canon McMillan a 4-3 lead, bringing the Canon Mac faithful in Murph’s pub to their feet and even possibly got Dave ‘Robin the Boy Wonder’ Fryer and assistants Tim ‘the Green Hornet’ Fryer and Eric ‘Kato Moon’ Boring. TJ pulled the goaltender but could not score the equalizer and the Big Macs held on for a big 4-3 win over the Jaguars.