Miners and Crunch battle to 3-3 Stalemate

In an East division match – up on Thursday October 29th in Cochrane, the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League 13 – 3 – 1 Crunch hosted the 10 – 4 – 1 Kirkland Lake Gold Miners at the Tim Horton Event Centre.

On a Crunch power play, Cochrane’s Hunter Atchison fires the game opener at 10:35 of the first to give the hosts a 1 – 0 lead on Atchison’s 18th on the 2015 – 2016 season with Jeran Knorr and Seamus Maguire earning the assists. At 5:06 of the second, Tyler Minoletti sinks the Crunch’s second of the game with a Cochrane goal behind Kirkland Lake’s netminder Tyler Mazzocota. Jeremy McNeil and Jon Marzec had the contributors on Minoleeti’s fifth of the season.

Brayden Stortz scores his 12th of season to bring Kirkland Lake within one at 13:09 of the second on a Gold Miner power play with helpers from Logan Fredericks and Brandon Wolfe. Kirkland Lake 20 year old defenseman Blake Anderson sank his first NOJHL goal at 16:20 of the second to even game at 2 – 2 on a Gold Miner power play with assists from Sam Oden and Brayden Stortz.

Scoring his second of the contest, Stortz finds the back of Cochrane’s goaltender Brett Young’s net 2:57 into the third to give the Gold Miners a 3 – 2 lead with a pass from Brandon Wolfe. With 12 seconds left in the game, Atchison sinks the tying goal for Cochrane with being set up by Jon Marzec of the Crunch.

After two five minute overtime periods, the Crunch and Gold Miners skated to a final 3 – 3 tie on Thursday evening in Cochrane.

Crunch forward Alex Goulet told the Junior Hockey Network that “I thought we played a great game offensively and defensively, everybody played hard every shift and I think we deserved the ‘W’ tonight, and we just have to keep plugging away and start capitalizing on the bounces that are given to us and keep playing some solid defence in order to beat some of the top teams in the league.”

“It was a very high pace in both sides of the rink and both teams fought hard for the point, and for the voodoos we just need to take care of our end first and we will generate our chances and make sure to capitalize on their mistakes,” said Gold Miner goaltender Tyler Mazzocato.

Kirkland Lake’s Adam Desgagnés told the Junior Hockey Network that “I think we played a good game overall, but in the circumstances we can’t be satisfied with a tie.  I think our priority is to get ready for Powassan this Sunday.  We need to work on retrieving pucks in our own end, but I’m confident that we can the ‘W’ this upcoming Sunday.”

The Crunch are back in action on November 5th when they play host to the East division 4 – 12 Iroquois Falls Eskimos while the Gold Miners will face the 13 – 0 Powassan Voodoos in Kirkland Lake on November 1st at the Joe Mavrinac Community Complex.