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.
