POWASSAN, Ont. – A Cameron Lemcke marker with less than five minutes remaining in regulation proved to be the game-winner as the Powassan Voodoos went on to defeat the Kirkland Lake Gold Miners 6-4 Wednesday night in a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League contest at the Powassan Sportsplex.
A free-wheeling first frame saw the two sides combine for five goals, in under a 10-minute span, including the final three by the Gold Miners.
Picking up the night’s initial power play, Powassan scored first, 5:43 into the proceedings, as Ben White saw a shot from the right circle by Alex Little hit him in the shin pad and skip past Kirkland Lake starter Zachary Reddy.
Owen Ferguson then made it 2-0 a couple of shifts later as he finished off a Brett Richardson attempt from in close that he slammed into the open side.
Regrouping, the Gold Miners stormed back with a trio of tallies in rapid succession to take a 3-2 lead into the intermission.
John-Paul Scaringi got the guests going at 9:15 when he buried a loose puck off a goal-mouth scramble.
Coming right back, Nicklas Albrecht tied it with his 15th of the season, being the beneficiary of a give away while wiring one from the right circle that beat Alex Bugeja in the Voodoos net.
The Gold Miners then tacked on another thanks to Camille Marcoux who cut through the Powassan defence before ripping one into the right hand corner.
Heading to the middle stanza, the home side tied it as Mike Levin was left alone and allowed to skate in on a breakaway where he neatly tucked a slow back hand through Reddy’s legs.
Not done there, Voodoos stuck again 62 seconds later as Chase MacQueen-Spence provided a crafty spinning back pass that found Rodion Tatarenko cruising between the hash marks where he snapped in his 13th tally of the campaign.
Down a skater and coming out on a two-on-one, Kirkland Lake made it 4-4 that saw Ryan Evenhuis make a nice move, taking a sliding Powassan defenceman with him, before dishing a feed over to Jacob Hiltz, who zipped in a one-timer from the left of Bugeja.
Forcing a turnover, in the late going, Lemcke darted down the ice and while driving towards the net he jammed the decider underneath the Gold Miners’ goaltender with 4:55 to go.
Tatarenko then iced it for the hosts in the final moments with an empty netter tap-in from within a couple of feet to round out the scoring.
Bugeja made 35 saves on the night to collect the win while Reddy was extremely busy for his side, being pelted with 51 shots against in defeat.
