CHELMSFORD, Ont. – After falling behind early, the Rayside-Balfour Canadians countered with five unanswered tallies to pull out a 5-2 victory over the Elliot Lake Wildcats in Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League action Sunday evening at Chelmsford Arena.
Having been shutout in their previous three games and going without a goal in just over 210 minutes of action, Elliot Lake snapped their lengthy drought by opening the scoring near the midway mark of the first period on recently acquired forward Joseph Pacana’s first NOJHL marker.
Pacana then added his second league effort a couple of shifts later to put the guests up by a pair.
Rayside-Balfour cut into the deficit at 12:47 as Mitchell Martin connected on the power play to make it 2-1 after one.
Moving on to the middle stanza, the Canadians collected the equalizer just before the six-minute mark of the session off the stick of Dylan Bertrand.
The hosts kept coming and got the eventual game-winner from Joel Mongeon at 12:21 of the second.
Samuel Vachon then made it 4-2 late in the session as he picked up his seventh of the season.
Rayside-Balfour then wrapped up the scoring with the lone offensive effort in the third thanks to Gavin Brown to finish off the comeback triumph.
Benjamin Hatanaka chipped in with two assists to help the RBC cause.
Canadians netminder Nicholas Heinzle made 25 saves to record the win.
Wildcats starter Parker Simpson allowed four against on 45 shots while Jonathan Lemaire handled nine of 10 in 13 and a half minutes of relief.