CHELMSFORD, Ont. – The Rayside-Balfour Canadians collected the night’s first five tallies and never looked back as they went on to defeat the Elliot Lake Wildcats 10-2 in a Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League match-up Thursday night at Chelmsford Arena.
Graeme Siren started the offensive outburst for Rayside-Balfour 83 seconds into the contest before teammate Mitchell Martin added a shorthanded marker at 5:25 to put the hosts up by a pair after one period of play.
In the middle stanza, it was more Canadians in the first half of the frame as they tacked on three more, with Brady Maltais, Mathieu Dokis-Dupuis and Zacharie Giroux extending the cushion.
Elliot Lake did get on the board midway through the meeting thanks to Eric Vanderhoff’s team-leading 16th tally of the campaign.
After Samuel Vachon made it 6-1 for Rayside-Balfour, Connor Taylor converted on a Wildcats power play at 13:28 as he knocked in his 10th of the campaign.
The Canadians then put the game away in the third, getting additional goals from Martin and Dokis-Dupuis along with singles via Nicholas DeGrazia and Oliver Smith to round out the scoring.
Nine different skaters produced multi-point performances in the Rayside-Balfour triumph, led by Martin’s four-point night.
Shots on net also favoured the home side in a big way, by a 66-29 count, with Nicholas Heinzle picking up the win and Jonathan Lemaire the loss.