Prowlers Cap Off Their Season With 8-7 Win Over Columbus

Columbus, GA - On a night the River Dragons were paying homage to the new baseball team coming to town (the Columbus Chatt-a-Hoots), the Prowlers spoiled the celebration and took a regulation win over Columbus 8-7.

Port Huron opened the scoring first after a puck deflected off of Austin Fetterly in front after a pass from Larri Vartianen fro behind the net.

Columbus would answer back quickly with Jake Howie firing a seeing-eye wrister past Blake Scott just 30 seconds later to make it 1-1. Then, Columbus would take their first lead of the game with Connor Fries firing a quick sot up high in the top-right corner from the right circle to make it 2-1.

Port Huron would answer back with Dalton Jay scoring at the 9:39 mark on a one-time feed set up by Matt Graham to tie the game at 2.

From there the game featured runs from both teams.

Near the end of the first period, Columbus scored three goals in a span of 4:02 to make it 5-2. Austin Daae, Jay Croop (on the power play) and Connor Fries again were the goal scorers, with Croop's goal being a fitting one for baseball night. A foul tip in the slot would be strike one in another sport, but it trickled past Scott to send the crowd into a frenzy.

After that run though, Port Huron responded with a run of their own.

On a Dalton Jay goal (his second of the game) at the 18:00 mark of the first all the way to the early stages of the third period, Port Huron could not be stopped offensively. In the second period, Alex Johnson and Matt Graham (twice) would get goals to give Port Huron the lead after 40 minutes, the final goal of the period was scored with 4 seconds left in the frame and was a shorthanded tally for Graham as well to give the Prowlers some extra juice.

In the third, Matt Graham completed the hat trick with a goal 3:31 in to the third period on a slick snapshot past Jacob Caffrey.

All of a sudden facing a 7-5 deficit, Columbus had another run in them and responded with goals from Nick Mangone and Jake Schultz, the latter of which was scored on a great circle-to-circle passback with less than 10 minutes to go in the game.

But Port Huron would not flinch at the newly tied score, and it was Michael Moran who ended up netting the eventual game winner just 1:17 after the tying goal from Schultz.

Blake Scott got his first win of the season in this game stopping 40 of 47 River Dragons shots. Jacob Caffrey takes the loss with a 26-save effort tonight.

The River Dragons now look ahead to the Ignite Cup Finals against the Elmira Enforcers, a schedule will be released early this week.

Three Stars of the Game

Matt Graham
Connor Fries
Jake Howie