Herbster’s 4-point night leads Cochrane past French River

COCHRANE, Ont. – The Cochrane Crunch picked up two goals and two assists from Kyle Herbster to help lead them past the French River Rapids 4-2 Saturday evening in a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League match-up at Tim Horton Event Centre.

A late man advantage opportunity helped the Crunch get on the board first as Cochrane captain Connor Lovie notched his sixth goal of the season with 44 seconds left in the session.

Action in the middle stanza saw the Crunch go up by two as they connected late in period once more thanks to Herbster’s 17th of the season, which came at 19:06.

Having a power play that carried over into the third saw Levi Siau scored with the man advantage 65 seconds in for the Rapids giving the rookie forward points in the last 10 games he has skated in as well as 15 of his previous 16 outings.

Alex Brisson’s 10th made it 3-1 Cochrane at 5:58 before Christian Gaudreau’s 13th with 9:04 remaining in regulation brought French River back to within a goal once more.

However Herbster capped off his four-point night with 17 seconds left as he iced it with an empty netter to round out the scoring.

Cochrane starter Shayne Battler made 34stops in picking up the win while Rapids netminder Andrew Rocha was busy making 44 saves in defeat for his club.

With the result Cochrane improves to 19-10-2-1 on the campaign while French River slipped to 10-19-4-0.