The Greater Sudbury Cubs fell 7-6 to the Espanola Paper Kings in Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League action on March 3.
The Cubs travelled to the Regional Recreation Complex in Espanola for this one.
From the opening buzzer, this was a physical and back-and-forth affair.
Espanola scored first, just 1:39 into the game to make it 1-0.
A few shifts later, Hudson Chitaroni would knot the game at 1-1 on the power play as he picked off a clearing attempt in the neutral zone and beat Paper Kings netminder Jake Marois.
Espanola would make it 2-1 just over a minute later thanks to Spencer Horgan.
The Kings would make it 3-1 about halfway through the first thanks to Owen Fergusson slipping in on a shorthanded breakaway and beating Cubs’ goalie Noah Metivier.
It would be a 4-1 Espanola game before the first period ended after Fergusson picked up another goal after forcing a turnover.
Just past the three-minute mark of the second, Marshall McCharles would score for Sudbury to to cut Espanola’s lead in half.
The Kings countered less than a minute later on a goal by Lucas Signoretti to make it 5-2.
Five minutes later, Nolan Newton would score for the Cubs to make it a 5-3 game.
Signoretti would score his second of the game to make it a 6-3 Kings game just past the 11-minute mark of the second.
The Cubs didn’t give up though and continued to battle. Noah Kohan cut the Kings’ lead to 6-4 at 14:26 of the second. Twenty-three seconds later, Newton scored his second of the period to make it a 6-5 Espanola game.
Espanola got the cushion it was looking for as the second period was ending. Blake Peters-Davey scored his second of the game with less than a minute to go in the period to make it 7-5.
Greater Sudbury would notch one more goal, the only one scored in the the third period, thanks to Josh Kavanagh stuffing in a wraparound to get the final score of 7-6.
With the outcome, Espanola moves to 33-20-1-0 on the year while with the loss, Greater Sudbury falls to 39-12-1-2.
With the loss, the Cubs have fallen a few points behind the Blind River Beavers at the top of the NOJHL. The Beavers are in first with 87 to the Cubs’ 81.
The same two teams will meet again Thursday in a 7:05 p.m. start at Gerry McCrory Countryside Sports Complex and on FLOHockey.tv.
The NOJHL playoffs kick off March 21 with Round 1. The three-round playoffs are best of seven series. Round three sees the East Division and West Division winners square off for the Copeland Cup-McNamara Trophy in the NOJHL final.
The winner of that game advances to the Centennial Cup, to be played sometime between May 9 and May 19 in Oakville.
