Photos: Allyson Demers
KIRKLAND LAKE, Ont. – The surging Timmins Rock stayed hot to win their 17th consecutive game as they held off the Kirkland Lake Gold Miners 3-1 Sunday in a tightly-contested Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League matinee at Joe Mavrinac Community Complex.
With the result, the Rock also increased their lengthy winning streak against the Gold Miners to 55 straight contests.
Timmins got on the board first, connecting 6:36 into the contest, when they broke out of their own zone with pace that led to Thomas Beard taking a dish off on the left side from Diego Da Silva and pumping it past Kirkland Lake netminder Glen McInnes.
With the tally, Beard ran a point streak to nine.
On the power play to begin the middle stanza, the Rock wasted little time in converting as they pushed the play ahead off the draw and saw Braedyn Cyr shovel a pass over the Kaeden McArthur who tucked in his 23rd goal of the season, just nine seconds in.
With the marker, McArthur established a new personal single-season high in tallies, while the assist for Cyr gives him points in each of his last six outings.
Kirkland Lake cut into the deficit early in the final frame as Isaiah Allen fired a long feed up ice that Matthew Neuman collected and raced in on a partial break as he drove around a defender and put an attempt on Timmins’ goalkeeper Frédéric Cousineau that was stopped by the pad, but he stayed with it and jammed in his fourth of the season at 1:08.
The Gold Miners then had late man advantages to try and equalize and force overtime, but the Rock sealed the victory in the last minute with a long-range shorthanded empty net effort from Beard to wrap things up.
In extending their winning ways, the Rock raise their overall record to 23-5-0-1.
With the narrow defeat, Kirkland Lake dropped to 11-19-0-3.
The same two teams will meet again Friday in a 7:30 p.m. start at McIntyre Arena in Timmins and on FLOHockey.tv.
