Photos: Helene Rancourt
BLIND RIVER, Ont. – The Blind River Beavers rode the strength of three third period goals to pull out a 3-1 come from behind victory over the Espanola Paper Kings Saturday in Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League action at the Blind River Community Centre.
A tightly contested match-up saw the two sides provide a scoreless opening 20 minutes.
Espanola would eventually break the deadlock 5:38 into the second stanza.
There, Graydon Guthrie picked up his sixth of the campaign as he was sent in alone on Blind River goalkeeper Gavin Disano off a long-range feed from Justin Seguin and made no mistake by ripping one upstairs.
The scored stayed 1-0 Paper Kings into the third when the Beavers drew level off a nice play by Gavin Rocha during a faceoff deep in Espanola territory.
There Rocha pushed the play ahead off the draw and went to go around the net, but instead quickly passed it out in front where a waiting Caleb Minns chipped it by netminder Jake Marois.
Coming back with the eventual game-winner, Jack Robinson notched his initial NOJHL tally with 8:39 remaining as he spun in the slot and whipped it under the pad of Marois.
The Beavers then capped off the home-ice triumph in the final minute when Michael Gallagher potted his 15th of the campaign, as he won a race to the puck and put it into an empty net, to round out the night’s scoring.
With the result, Blind River improves to 28-10-2-2 while Espanola dropped to 20-17-2-2 overall.
