Photos: Sudbury Light Event Photography
SUDBURY, Ont. – The Blind Beavers picked up two goals apiece from Hunter Berry and Evan Fraccaro to help lead them to a 5-2 victory over the Greater Sudbury Cubs in Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League play Thursday at the Gerry McCrory Countryside Sports Complex.
After a 30-minute late start due a bus breakdown en route to Sudbury, the Elliot Lake Red Wings provided their team bus for the visiting Beavers to use the rest of the night.
Showing no ill effects from the delay Blind River opened the scoring six and a half minutes into the contest.
They got that goal by breaking out of their own zone on a three-on-one that was eventually fed by Ben Cesario to Ryan Doucette who kicked the pass up from his skate before neatly tucking a backhand between the legs of Cubs’ starter Jake Marois.
Adding to their lead during a man advantage opportunity deep in the first period, Berry made it 2-0 as he put a feed in front that hit the pad of Marois, but the rebound clipped off the skate of a Greater Sudbury defender and slid into the open side.
Heading to the middle stanza, the Beavers kept coming and went up by three as Jesse Dupuis pulled up on the left side and set-up a hard-skating Berry in the slot where he wired one into the top right hand corner.
Forcing a turnover in the neutral zone, Blind River came back with another that was finished off by Fraccaro from close range.
That resulted in a goaltending change with Joel Rainville entering the game for the Cubs.
Getting one back midway through the match-up the NOJHL’s leading goal scorer, Kyler Campbell, broke in alone on Beavers’ netminder Gavin Disano and promptly buried one blocker side to make it 4-1 with the 12th tally of the campaign.
Pulling to within two before the second intermission, Billy Biedermann powered his way out of the corner and roofed one for his fifth of the season.
It stayed 4-2 for the guests until the late going when the hosts pulled Rainville for an extra skater, but Fraccaro sealed the victory with an empty netter at 18:54 for his third point of the night.
Shots on net favoured the Beavers by a 36-22 count with Disano earning the win.
Marois suffered the loss, allowing four against on 21 attempts while Rainville handled all 14 chances he faced in relief.
With the result, Blind River improves to 7-5-1-0 on the season as they moved past the 7-7-0-0 Cubs into a share of second spot in the NOJHL’s West Division standings.
VIDEO “Highlight of the Night” – NOJHL YouTube Channel