Photos: Kerri-Ann Kanceruk – Kanceruk Photography
Thunder Bay and Dryden ended week six tied in first place with identical 10-2-1 records. The teams exchanged 5-4 overtime outcomes to snap each other’s win streaks. The Stars have points in 11 straight. Dryden has points in nine straight.
Sioux Lookout won both of their games over Ironwood and reside in third place, six points back of first.
Kam River accepted the resignation of head coach Dwight Lee and are two wins into Vern Ray’s interim period as bench boss. Jett Mintenko is fifth in league production, the only player other than a Dryden or Thunder Bay player to be in top 11.
Fort Frances is still above .500, and still has a plus/minus of +3. They are winless in four.
Red Lake dropped a home pair to the Walleye and have a won/lost percentage of .417.
Ironwood is on a three-game slide.
Kenora is winless in six.
As mentioned, Dryden has five players in the top 11, as does Thunder Bay. Dryden’s McLaren Paulsen leads the SI in points with 27. North Stars forward Tyler Jordan’s 11 goals leads the league in that department. Thunder Bay defenceman Tag Bryson has 19 assists. Seven players have 20 points or more. Paulsen, Jordan and Mintenko are the only players with 10 or more goals.
Dryden’s Kellan Mooney, Thunder Bay’s Ben Laurette, and Kam River’s Ashton Sadauskas lead the SIJHL in goalie wins with six.
Matthew Ofukany of Sioux Lookout has a GAA of 1.80 and a SV% of .935. Ironwood’s Kole Kronstedt has 610 goalie minutes.
The top powerplay belongs to Fort Frances at 34.9%. Thunder Bay’s penalty kill stands at 42 kills in 43 penalties, 97.7%. Dryden has four shorthanded goals. The league overall is 21.4% on the PP.
Emmanuel Nkombou (Dryden) leads the league in penalty minutes with 65. Mintenko and Jack Wood of Fort Frances are both in the top 20 and have zero penalty minutes.
Payton Hu (Dryden) has the longest points streak, six games, with 16 points in that stretch. Notably, Marcellus Francis of Thunder Bay, has six goals and 10 points in his first four games played.
So far 220 players have suited up to play in the league this year.
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AT DRYDEN GM ICE DOGS |
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| McLaren Paulsen scored three including the overtime winner as Dryden defeated Thunder Bay 5-4 before a crowd of 572. The top nine scorers currently in the SIJHL were playing in this one. Dryden held a 4-1 lead with 25 minutes to go, before the Stars rallied. Evan Simeoni scored first for Thunder Bay, counting from the high slot at 17:24. Paulsen got his first of the game with 23 seconds left in the first period, depositing a loose puck past Keenan Marks on a delayed penalty to tie it. Eli Antoine, Max Roby and Paulsen counted for Dryden to open up a three-goal bulge in the second frame. Paulsen assisted on Antoine’s two-on-one, Roby wristed home his ninth, and Paulsen went blocker side at 15:02. Rookie Marcellus Frances narrowed the gap to two with blocker side snipe on Kellan Mooney at 18:48. In the third period, Frances got his second for Thunder Bay at 12:12 and Alex Remenda tied the contest at 4-4 at 14:45 to send the game into overtime. Paulsen ended the contest on a wrap around before a minute ticked off in the extra session. Antoine added two assists. Paulsen had a four-point night. Simeoni joined Frances with two points for Thunder Bay. Mooney stopped 23 of 27 for his league-leading sixth win. Marks dropped to 4-1-1 with 31 stops on 36 shots. The Stars had four powerplay opportunities to Dryden’s two. All goals were even strength. The win ended Thunder Bay’s winning streak at nine, extended Dryden streak to eight wins, and placed the Ice Dogs one point ahead in first.           |
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| The North Stars overcame a three-goal deficit for the second game in a row, and Alex Remenda completed the job with an overtime goal at 3:31 of period 4 as Thunder Bay defeated Dryden 5-4 before a crowd of 840. New arrival Marcellus Francis struck for three goals, giving him six in four games, with four assists for 10 points. Both teams lost their winning streaks over the weekend but the Stars stretched their points streak to 11 games and Dryden hasn’t lost in regulation in nine contests. Things looked great for Dryden early on. Elias Eisenbarth scored on a shorthanded breakaway, Emmanuel Nkombou got his ninth on a give-and-go with McLaren Paulsen, and Paulsen got his 10th on a behind-the-net pass from Jordan Wales for a 3-0 Ice Dogs’ lead through 20 minutes. Francis and Co. reduced the deficit to one in a 17-shot second period. Francis got his first of the game at 3:47. Beau Helmeczi emerged from the sin bin, accepted a long pass from Tag Bryson, and beat Braxton Castagno on a breakaway at 12:41. In the third, Francis cleaned up Helmeczi’s shot off the post to tie the game at three-all. Carson Devine’s seventh of the year on a three-way passing play with Max Roby and Payton Hu gave Dryden a 4-3 edge. Francis’ hat trick marker with 2:29 left in the third tied it up once again. In overtime, Jamieson Franz found Remenda on Castagno’s doorstep and Remenda fired in his ninth for the win. Thunder Bay was 0-7 on the powerplay while killing off two Dryden powerplays. A pair of 10-minute misconducts inflated Thunder Bay’s PIMs to 26, while Dryden had nine minor penalties. Ben Laurette stopped 30 of 34 for his sixth win, while Castagno made 30 saves to drop to 4-1-1.             |
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