League Action: Roughriders 5 Pikes Peak Miners 3

The Rocky Mountain Roughriders beat the Pikes Peak Miners 5-3 Saturday night at the Promenade. In the second league meeting between the two teams in a week. From the opening faceoff it was evident that both teams showed up ready to play, clearly a strong rivalry is in the works.

The Roughriders got on the Powerplay early as Nash Worden was called for an interference. The Roughriders Powerplay is really starting to take shape. The team moved the puck with purpose and were able to get the puck on net several times, although they were unable to get it passed the Miner's netminder, Jared Young.

 Clearly the Miner's game plan was to beat the Roughriders with physical play, however this began to work against them as they took back to back Checking from Behind penalties resulting on a 5 on 3 for the Roughriders. Colin Biebel made no mistake when he caught an open net at 12:21 of the first period for a power play goal, with assists from Durkee and Crete.

Braiden Miller got things started in the second grabbing his first goal of the season on a nice pass from RJ Salvato with the second assist going to Joey Marchese.  Good things must come in two's as Miller squeezed the puck 5-hole on Young for back to back goals after Marchese worked the puck hard against the boards and strong support from McCarthy.

Roughriders Enjoy the Lead

Less than a minute later, Michael Buonincontri (think born in country) grabbed a pass from Hunter Clarke and was all alone in the zone. Two moves later and it was all over except for the crying as the Roughriders stretched their lead to 4-1. The Roughriders headed to the locker room with a comfortable lead.

Right out of the locker room Bobby Valdez redirected a Thomas Jarman shot to light the lamp at 15:09 of the third period for a nice insurance goal.

As in any great rivalry, it isn't over until the final buzzer. The Roughriders were quickly reminded of this when the Miner's went on the power play and Robson Cramer quickly found paydirt closing the gap to 5-2.  Exactly eleven seconds later Anthony Olguin let a slapshot that could he heard around the world go that found the back of the net in a hurry closing the gap to 5-3. Coach John Paris, Jr. called a timeout and ever so gently reminded his boys that there was still 2 minutes of hockey left to play. The Roughriders killed off two minutes of clock and got out with the win.

Joakim Jutras was in net and fended off 35 of 38 shots. The Roughriders move to 2-0 in league play.

Next Up: Colorado Rampage U16 at CSC East at 5PM

Official Game Sheet