In a penality-filled affair at Chelmsford Arena, the Greater Sudbury Cubs tore up the Espanola Paper Kings 8-3 in Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League action from March 16.
Cubs’ forward Oliver Smith scored three times and added multiple assists to lead the team to victory.
The Cubs scored early and often in this one. Smith notched his 20th of the season just past the five-minute mark of the first, assisted by Pierson Sobush, to give Greater Sudbury a 1-0 lead.
Around five minutes later, Smith would do it again, this time on the power play, again assisted by Sobush and the Cubs were up 2-0.
Greater Sudbury would add another at 16:41 of the first as Cole Crowder jammed in his 23rd of the year off a goal-mouth scramble.
Smith added an assist and helped give the Cubs a 4-0 lead at around 7:30 of the second
when he made a spinning feed in front to a waiting Billy Biedermann who lifted the puck into the top left hand corner of Espanola’s net.
The Paper Kings would finally get on the board a few minutes later when Aiden Pethick fired a shot past Cubs’ goalkeeper Noah Metivier to make it 4-1.
“The home side countered with a trio of tallies to put themselves up by six after 40 minutes, beginning with a Sobush shorthanded effort half way through the contest after he was gifted one after blocking a clearing attempt, that left him with an open net,” the club said in a news release.
Following Sobush’s tally, Crowder added his second of the game, with Smith getting the assist, as he cruised down the left side and fired a shot through the legs of Paper Kings netminder Jake Marois at 12:16.
Up 6-1 at this point, the Cubs added another after Samuel Assinewai flew down the right wing and was left plenty of room to score with a sharp wrist shot. Espanola swapped Marois for Andrew Gaulton in net at this point.
With Sudbury up 7-1 early in the third, Smith completed his hat trick, set up by Assinewai, on the power play to make it 8-1 for the Cubs.
Espanola would add two before the final buzzer, with Blake Peters-Davey scoring on the power play and Benjamin Lacroix adding another, but it was too little, too late at the point, and the game ended 8-3 for Sudbury.
The win sees Greater Sudbury move to 45-10-2-0 on the year while the Paper Kings fell to 29-23-2-3.
