Blind River Beavers Cochrane Crunch Elliot Lake Red Wings Espanola Paper Kings French River Rapids Greater Sudbury Cubs Hearst Lumberjacks Kirkland Lake Gold Miners Powassan Voodoos Soo Eagles Soo Thunderbirds Timmins Rock | Hockey Canada Canadian Junior Hockey League Northern Ontario Hockey Association

GALLERY: Maltais tallies twice in Canadians win over Beavers

CHELMSFORD, Ont. – Rayside-Balfour Canadians captain Brad Maltais tallied twice to help lead his side to an eventual 5-1 triumph over the Blind River Beavers Sunday evening in a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League match-up at Chelmsford Arena.

The Canadians began the night’s scoring, early into a man advantage, as Maltais deflected from the slot a Giordano Biondi attempt that skipped over the shoulder of Blind River goaltender Wyatt Courchaine at 5:51.

A second assist on the play went to Nicholas DeGrazia, who extended a point streak to six straight outings with the helper.

Up a skater again later in the frame, Rayside-Balfour used some crisp puck movement that eventually set-up Gavin Brown in the left circle where he wired a blast into the top right hand corner for his third tally of the season.

From there, the remainder of the first was scoreless as the hosts took a two-tally cushion into the intermission.

Action in the second stanza saw a friendly bounce go the Beavers way as a dump in came off the end boards and right to Meguire Naughton alone in front where he chipped a shot over the shoulder of Jake Marois in the RBC net for his first NOJHL goal.

The Canadians got that back however at 13:30 when Maltais picked up his second of the night with help from Avery Chisholm and DeGrazia.

After being stymied on a number of chances by the stellar goaltending of Courchaine, Rayside-Balfour finally added some insurance in the third as Owen Perala got a piece of a Carter Geoffroy point blast to alter its path from the top of the crease just enough to see it sail in and help secure the victory with their third extra-man marker of the night.

A long-range shorthanded effort into an empty net by RBC’s Michael Campbell rounded out the scoring at 17:25.

DeGrazia finished with three assists in the game to raise his team-leading point total to 15 on the campaign.

Shots on net finished up 34-32 in favour of Blind River with Marois registering his first NOJHL win while Courchaine was saddled with the setback.

Game Photos: Sudbury Light