Our Fall coverage of Before/After hockey continued Thursday in Faribault. The U16 Elite Development Team took on the Shattuck Midget/AAA team. 

The U16 team is made up of a nice roster of players including several '99 players that skated in St. Cloud in the HP 15 camp last Summer (James Marooney, Griffin Ness, and Connor Mayer) and a couple that made it out of the St. Cloud camp to New York for the National Camp (Kyler Yeo and Dylan Mills). On top of that, they have a few nice '98 players sprinkled in as well, 2017 NOW Prospects Montana Streit, Justin Kelley, and Zach VanSant.

The Shattuck team is made up of players that were too old to play U16 or likely did not make the defending National Champion Prep team. Furthermore, there are players rostered who are U16 eligible but did not make the U16 team. This team is far from the Land of Misfit Toys. They could skate, they played with purpose and most of all they were stronger than the U16s. 

The first period was fast paced with both teams getting good scoring chances. Shattuck got on the board when Sam Oden scored in the first minute to make it 1-0. Later in the first, Hunter Huson knotted the game at 1-1 when he took the puck away from a SSM defender and cruised in with a defender on him and beat the Goalie top shelf to tie it. 

The second period was all Shattuck. Woodbury's Mitch Dolter ('97) beat Ryan Bischel for his first goal of the game halfway through the second. Bischel played solid for the U16's in his half of play. Upon entering the game, Holy Family's Jaxon Stauber faced a flurry of shots. Two of them he could not stop, one by Connor Geshan (Oakton, VA) and Jackson Shanley (Vail, CO). With the score 4-1 and SSM about to put the game away, Shanley made a great breakaway save on Dolter (SSM's leading scorer) to keep the score 4-1 after 2. 

Early in the third, Kyler Yeo took advantage of a bad line change by SSM and scored on a breakaway. The goal was somewhat controversial as the puck clearly crossed the line, but was not in the sight of the referee. After a short conference the men in stripes got the call right...4-2 and the U16 had some momentum. What momentum the U16s had was quickly diminished by a nice Power Play goal by Dolter his second of the game on a one time feed in the slot to make it 5-2. The Sabres would add two late goals (Legor Gerasymenko and Jake Friedman) to ice the game 7-2.