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North Stars take game 1 barn burner 7-4 over Bruins

Mar 31, 2017 | 10:50 PM

The Battlefords North Stars fired 55 shots on goal and dominated for much of game one of the semifinals against Estevan, but the final score wasn’t a blowout, as the home side came away with a 7-4 win at the Civic Centre on Friday night.

The season series between the two teams was extremely similar to how game one played out: tons of penalties for both sides and plenty of goals.

Before game one, both coaches thought this playoff series would be much different, expecting each side to be more disciplined and tighter defensively.

That wasn’t the case.

There were three fights in the game, as Troy Gerein, Conor Jensen, and Keaton Holinaty each dropped the mitts for Battlefords and the teams combined for 136 penalty minutes in the game.

“I think it comes down to emotions and focus,” North Stars associate coach Braeden Johnson said after the win. “I think I told [North Stars head coach] Nate [Bedford] I wouldn’t yell at the refs and obviously that didn’t happen. Hockey is a game of emotions. We’re going to tell our guys to control them but once the puck is dropped, we’d rather have guys with emotion than pulling on guys to get emotion out of them.

“It’s a good win for us but it’s also a learning curve and that’s what we wanted from our standpoint.”

Reed Delainey’s hat-trick led the way, while Owen Lamb had perhaps the best game of his junior career with two goals, including one shorthanded to open the scoring. Coby Downs and Ryan Rosenberg also scored.

“Our focus was to have a good start, which we did, and then we took our foot off the pedal,” Johnson said. “We were fortunate enough to see what works really well for us, and obviously, what doesn’t work for us. From the start of the game, in our opinion, we dominated the game. We came out the way we wanted to. We got up early but then it felt like our guys kind of relaxed a bit and that’s something we’re trying to work on now.”

After going up 3-0 in the first 14 minutes thanks to two goals from Lamb and one from Delainey, the Bruins scored two goals in 1:50, first a well-placed wrister from Jason Miller, and then a similar looking shot from rookie Michael McChesney.

The North Stars got things back under control in the second period by scoring twice, including shorthanded once more, thanks to Coby Downs. Rosenberg’s goal made it 5-2 before the middle frame was done.

“Obviously they’ve got some skilled guys who can put the puck in the net,” Johnson said. “We had the intermission to re-evaluate and I think the right things were being said from our leadership. We came out in the second period and played extrermely well.”

It took 15 minutes for a goal to be scored in the third, when Delainey’s second of the night appeared to put the game out of reach when he made it 6-2.

But the Bruins once again proved how lethal they are up front, when thy scored twice in a 38 second span to make it 6-4 with 2:29 to go in the third.

Delainey’s empty netter for the hat-trick put the icing on the cake with 15.9 seconds to go in the game.

The North Stars penalty kill continued to be a major strength, going 6-for-7 and scoring two of the team’s goals.

“Our PK did extremely well,” Johnson said. “I have to give a shout out to Owen Lamb for leading the boys tonight. He plays the game the right way. He’s extremely reliable and the guys are definitely behind him.”

Battleford’s power play went 0-for-7, but had numerous high quality chances.

Taryn Kotchorek got the win, to improve to 5-0 in the playoffs, but only made 18 saves on 22 shots.

Johnson wouldn’t reveal who starts in goal for game two on Saturday.

“Whoever is in the net tomorrow, the guys are going to battle extremely hard,” Johnson said. “It’s not that we played bad. [It was] a 7-4 game but I think we’re going to focus on living in the moment: we’re up 1-0 of the semifinals of the SJHL.

“It doesn’t matter who’s in net, the boys are going to play the same way.”

MacGregor Sinclair also left after taking a hard hit from behind in the second period from Jason Miller.

Troy Gerein came to Sinclair’s defence and challenged Miller, who appeared ready to oblige, but Bruins teammate Evan Scott instead quickly went after Gerein and the two dropped the mitts.

Miller was given two minutes for checking from behind and a game misconduct.

Game two will go at the Civic Centre once more on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m., with the Ultra Print pre-game show beginning at 7:15 p.m. on CJNB/CJNS.

 

 

nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

@NathanKanter11