By Matt Stefano
With the Carmen Provenzano Trophy cliched by the T-Birds on Saturday, November 29th in a 10-1 victory in Blind River, the Soo Thunderbirds were also looking to get back on the winning track against the last place Blind River Beavers after a 3-2 setback to the Cochrane Crunch on Friday, December 5th. The Soo was minus their captain Anthony Miller who served his one game suspension after a five minute major for boarding and a game misconduct on December 5th. Meanwhile rookie forward Joey Ogden headed into tonight’s action on a seven game point streak which was fourth longest in the league.
Blind River would draw first blood 8:19 into the first as Regan Yew notched just his second of the season in his third game played with Chris Hrabec drawing the lone assist. Joey Ogden extended his point scoring streak to eight games just twenty seven seconds later scoring his eighth goal of the season from Joey Miller and Jaren Bellini to tie the game at one through twenty minutes.
Nick Tassone’s seventeenth of the season put the Soo up 2-1 just 2:14 into the second with Nick Sicoly and Matt Pinder drawing the assists. Another player would notch his seventeenth of the season as Jaren Bellini would put the Soo up 3-1 at 14:53 with Joey Ogden picking up the lone helper. With forty seconds left to go in the second, Joey Ogden would get his second goal of the game giving him nine on the year along with his third point of the night giving the T-Birds 4-1 lead after two from Joey Miller.
Assistant captain Matt Mitchell put the Soo up 5-1 with his fourth of the season at 8:13 from Nick Tassone. Hounds 2014 second round pick Boris Katchouk would notch his fifth of the season from Matt Caruso at the ten minute mark as the T-Birds pick up their twentieth victory of the season defeating the Blind River Beavers 6-1 at the John Rhodes Centre.
With game twenty six complete marking the half way point of the regular season, the T-Birds record improves to 20-4-0-2 good for second in the NOJHL with forty two points trailing the Kirkland Lake Gold Miners by one with the Soo still having two games in hand. Mario Culina picked up his eleventh win in goal tonight for the Soo against the winless Beavers.
Next action for the Thunderbirds is Saturday, December 13th against the Sudbury Nickel Barons with game time beginning at 7:30 from the John Rhodes Community Centre.
