THUNDER BAY – With 10 affiliate players dressed, the English River Miners pretty well got what they deserved on Thursday night.
The Thunder Bay North Stars hammered the visiting Miners 10-0, peppering goaltender Cameron Ceci with 64 shots in his Superior International Junior Hockey League debut, as one-sided an affair as has been seen at Fort William Gardens in years.
North Stars coach Rob DeGagne said he told his players to go out and play hockey, avoid developing bad habits and not let up.
That they did not.
The host squad opened a 3-0 lead after one, scored twice more in the second and potted five goals in the third to hit double-digits for the second time this season.
“As a coach it’s probably our biggest nightmare,” DeGagne said.
“You just have to approach it, put your work boots on and go to work and just treat it like any other game. I told them to play like pros. A pro would play every game, no matter what it is. And it means something. It’s still two points and we can’t control what they do.”
While some of the scratches were due to injury, several were simply for rest purposes, the Miners playing the first of three straight road contests.
Stars forward Alec Maticic, a former Miner, said they didn’t really pay attention to who was in the English River lineup and who was not.
“You can’t take the game lightly because that’s kind of the times when you end up getting scored on and you end up falling behind,” said Maticic, who netted his 20th goal of the season in the first and added three helpers for a four-point night.
“Obviously we wanted to go out there with the mentality that it was just another game.”
The Miners never had a chance, throwing Ceci to the wolves.
The Stars Avery Siau scored in traffic to open the onslaught, but more often than not they found themselves wide open and quickly realized that firing shots from the point also tended to result in the puck touching the twine.
Ten different players lit a well-used goal lamp Thursday night.
In addition to Siau and Maticic, Ryan Mignault, Kyle Auger, Justin Muir, Dillon Ward, Carson Smith, Brendan Gillis and Logan Mihalcic slipped the puck behind Ceci, who still made 54 saves on a very busy night.
Brandon Bodnar, on the other hand, needed little effort to record his league-leading sixth shutout of the season, turning aside all 11 shots he faced, four apiece in the opening two periods and just three in the third.
It was the ninth whitewashing of his SIJHL career.
The win guaranteed the North Stars (32-12-5) will finish no lower than third in the standings, locking the Miners (23-20-4) into no better than fourth. Thunder Bay pulled to within three points of second-place Dryden, though the Ice Dogs have three games in hand.
Next up for the North Stars is a Tuesday date on home ice against the Fort Frances Lakers.
FIRST PERIOD
Scoring: 1. Thunder Bay, Siau 20 (Maticic, Behse) 3:44. 2. Thunder Bay, Mignault 20 (Thrower) 9:05. 3. Thunder Bay, Maticic 20 (Siau, J. Newhouse) 13:52. Penalties: None.
SECOND PERIOD
Scoring: 4. Thunder Bay, Auger 12 (Gillis, Thrower) 2:19 pp. 5. Thunder Bay, Muir 3 (Maticic, Siau) 17:59. Penalties: Milgate ERM (hooking) 0:35, Gillis TB (high sticking) 1:15.
THIRD PERIOD
Scoring: 6. Thunder Bay, Ward 13 (Leonidas, Smith) 1:43. 7. Thunder Bay, Gillis 18 (Thrower) 5:25 pp. 8. Thunder Bay, Smith 6 (Auger, Leonidas) 13:19. 9. Thunder Bay, Mihalcin 1 (Gillis) 16:43. 10. Thunder Bay, Siau 21 (Gerrie, Maticic) 18:55. Penalties: Milgate ERM (hooking) 4:18, Fortier ERM (slashing) 5:29.
GAME DATA – SOG – English River 4-4-3-11, Thunder Bay 18-27-19-64; Power plays (goals-chances) – English River (0-1), Thunder Bay (2-3); Goaltenders – English River: Cameron Ceci, Thunder Bay: Brandon Bodnar; A: 518.
