Stars top Hawks thanks to overtime magic
With just over a minute gone in 3-on-3 overtime, Quintin Loon-Stewardson jumped over the boards to join his elder brother Elijah and Cody Spagrud on the ice.
Carrying the puck out of his defensive end and through neutral ice, Spagrud then relayed a feed to Elijah Loon-Stewardson who broke in. Picking up speed, and knowing without so much as a moment’s glance where his brother would be, Elijah then dropped the puck back to Quintin, as he had done several hundred times before, in the driveway and on the schoolyard rink growing up.
Upon receiving the pass, and again, just as though he had practised for this moment all throughout his adolescent hockey life, the rookie known as “Q-Loon” proceeded to snap a quick shot on goal, eluding the Hawks’ netminder through the five-hole to bring in the North Stars’ Christmas celebration and bring the Stars’ faithful at the Civic Centre out of their seats with joyous jubilee one final time before the mid-season break, as the Battlefords North Stars defeated the Nipawin Hawks 2-1 Sunday evening at the Civic Centre.
After a scoreless opening period that saw the Hawks take an 11-7 lead on the shot count, it was Nipawin who opened the scoring, breaking the goose egg just over a minute into the second, thanks to Josh Lester’s second goal of the season.