The Coffee County Elementary League had a full slate of games on Saturday at the Joe Frank Patch Gym. Results are as follows,

In girls action:
Westwood 28, East Coffee 0
College Street 21, Deerfield 20
Hickerson 27, North Coffee 6
Hillsboro 21, New Union 18

In boys’ play:
Westwood 30, East Coffee 8
College Street 32, Deerfield 6
Hickerson 29, North Coffee 14
New Union 40, Hillsboro 16

UNOFFICIAL Current Standings

Girls
College Street – 4 & 1
Hillsboro – 4 & 1
New Union – 4 & 1
Westwood – 4 & 1
Hickerson – 3 & 2
North Coffee – 1 & 4
Deerfield – 0 & 5
East Coffee – 0 & 5

Boys
College Street – 5 & 0
Westwood – 5 & 0
Hickerson – 4 & 1
New Union – 4 & 1
East Coffee – 1 & 4
Hillsboro – 1 & 4
Deerfield – 0 & 5
North Coffee – 0 & 5

The Elementary League will be off on Saturday and will return to the court on December 5th

Pete Weber’s Postgame Report

Predators forward James Neal approached Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk near the end of Saturday night’s game and told his offseason golf partner he hoped Dubnyk wouldn’t post a shutout.

Unfortunately for Neal, Dubnyk wasn’t in a joking mood after Neal knocked out Wild star Zach Parise earlier this season.

Dubnyk made 23 saves for his third shutout of the season and Ryan Suter had a goal and two assists against his former team, leading Minnesota to a 4-0 victory.

“He told me that he hopes I don’t get a shutout; I imagine you don’t, you’re on the ice,” Dubnyk said of the interaction. “I went golfing with him this summer. I still didn’t really want to be laughing with him. I don’t really like, obviously, what he’d done to Zach.”

Neal was involved in a collision with Parise on Nov. 5 that sidelined the Wild forward with a sprained MCL. Parise skated with the Wild on Saturday morning but missed his seventh straight game.

A testy game between Central Division foes featured two fights, numerous altercations and a 10-minute misconduct against the Predators’ Mike Ribeiro. Many times it was the Predators, who have been outscored 8-0 the past two games, instigating the exchanges.

“Discipline’s playing into it,” Predators coach Peter Laviolette said. “We’re not very disciplined right now.”

Suter said he didn’t think there was carry-over from the previous meeting when Parise was injured, but the loss of their leading goal scorer was still on the Wild players’ minds.

“To see guys dropping their gloves out there, obviously you never expect them to, but it shows how we feel about what he did to our best player,” Dubnyk said. “It’s important just for the symbolic part of it, that guys are going to go out and fight for each other.”

Suter, who left Nashville in 2012 when he teamed with Parise to sign matching 13-year contracts with Minnesota, opened the scoring with a power-play goal in the first against Pekka Rinne. It was the first time in five games the Wild had scored first.

“As soon as that went in that was a lot of relief for our team,” Suter said. “We had been chasing and I think that’s what’s taken away from our structure and the way that we were used to playing. To get the first goal was important.”

Rinne made 23 saves, but Nashville was again undone by numerous trips to the penalty box. The Predators have been short-handed 29 times in the past eight games. They had killed their past 13 penalties before Suter’s goal.

“We keep talking about it,” Predators defenseman Shea Weber said. “A lot of your best players kill penalties and when they kill penalties the whole game they can’t do offensive things. I don’t know how long we can sit here and talk about it until we actually start doing something.”

The Wild were 2 of 4 on the power play as Nashville accumulated 30 penalty minutes. Mikael Granlund, Jonas Brodin and Thomas Vanek also scored for Minnesota.

The Predators travel to New York on a game on Monday night with the Rangers.  Face-off is set for 6 PM and you can hear the game here on Thunder Radio.

Pete Weber’s Post Game Report

The Predators gave up two early goals to the Blue Jackets and ended up losing a terrible game to the 2nd worst team in the league by a score of 4-0. Gregory Campbell, Ryan Johansen, Boone Jenner, and Scott Hartnell tallied for the Jackets and they were backed up by Sergei Bobrovsky, who was outstanding in net for probably his best performance of the season.
The Predators travel to Minnesota on Saturday night for a 7 PM contest. Thunder Radio will bring you the action on the Fifth Third/Nashville Predators Radio Network.