Photos: Rob Fera – Points North Media
SUDBURY, Ont. – The French River Rapids roared out to a big lead early and never looked back in quelling the Iroquois Falls Storm 6-2 Wednesday in a match-up at the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League Showcase, presented by the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, at Gerry McCrory Countryside Sports Complex.
A fortuitous bounce off the side boards on a dump-in 3:22 into the contest saw French River get a break to begin the scoring.
On the play, Michael Morascyzk sent an attempt into the Iroquois Falls zone from centre ice that took a friendly hop off the wall and changed direction before sliding into an empty net as Storm starter Justin Sullivan tried valiantly to get back after leaving his crease to play the puck.
The Rapids then tacked on three more later in the session to take a 4-0 lead into the intermission.
Tristan Kitchen notched the second for French River as he collected a pass out from down low from Morascyzk and lifted it in.
More from Morascyzk at 16:20 saw him finish off a two-on-one with Kitchen before Bryson Villeneuve picked off an errant Iroquois Falls clearing attempt and ripped it past the blocker of Sullivan from the slot.
Heading to the second stanza, the Rapids kept coming and converted on an early three-on-one that saw Jacob Cantin tap in a feed through the crease from Jeremy Clark.
The Storm got one back six and half minutes into the middle session when Ben Sherwin took a pass off the stick of Landon Trethewey and wheeled down the right side where he pumped a drive by Storm goalkeeper Keiran Caughran.
Helping secure the victory midway through the final period, French River’s Joey Stiles ripped a bar-down sizzler from a prime scoring area to put it out of reach.
Iroquois Falls got one more in the final minute to round out the scoring, catching the Rapids on a line change, that allowed Alexandre St. Pierre and Lucas Willoughby to calmly exchange multiple passes on a clear two-man break, with St. Pierre getting the final touch on the tally.
Player of the game recognition for each team went to Caughran and Michael Karadinovic of the Storm.
