Photos: Allyson Demers
KIRKLAND LAKE, Ont. – A solid effort in their home opener saw the Kirkland Lake Gold Miners collect goals from five different skaters as part of an eventual 5-1 victory over the Blind River Beavers in a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League encounter Friday at Joe Mavrinac Community Complex.
Going to work on the night’s first power play, Gold Miners’ captain Nathan Harper took a play put to him in the left circle by Tysen Andersen and ripped it past Beavers’ goaltender Ian Blair, 5:42 into the game.
Still 1-0 Kirkland Lake into the second stanza, they extended their lead as Owen O’Grady benefitted from a fortuitous bounce while wiring a shot from between the circles that sailed over the net but hit off the end boards and sailed back in front where the puck hit off Blair and fell into the net.
Special teams added another for the Gold Miners thanks to Mikaleb Blier connecting on a man advantage when he neatly redirected in a pass put his way from O’Grady, who had wheeled out around the net with pace.
Breaking it open, the hosts tacked on one more moments later thanks to Lucas Dubois, who was left with an open net to score, finishing off a rebound via a Thomas Hudon right point wrister.
That resulted in a goaltending change for Blind River as Samuel Carreiras-Pata enter in relief.
Not done there though, Matthew Neuman made it 5-0 after 40 minutes when he converted at 19:04 when he took a Ben Lyons feed from down low, then took it wide and stuffed it in.
In the final session, the Beavers dashed the shutout bid of Kirkland Lake’s Aaron Ammann with 48 seconds remaining in regulation after Alex Ivanov took a cross-ice feed from Ellyott Dundas and powered down the right wing with speed and after cutting in, knocked in his own close-range rebound, to round out the scoring.
The victory was the first in the NOJHL for Gold Miners’ head coach Dean DeSilva.
