The Greater Sudbury Cubs took a bite out of the Powassan Voodoos on Jan. 12, with the win propelling the local Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League squad to the 30-win mark on the season.
And they earned the 3-2 win on a late goal from Cole Crowder with less than four minutes in the game.
Powassan jumped out to an early lead, scoring at around five minutes in the first period when Voodoos forward Mathieu MacMillan charged through the Greater Sudbury defence and snapped a shot by Cubs’ netminder Noah Metivier.
Despite some solid scoring chances for Greater Sudbury, Powassan managed to keep the puck out of the net.
It would’t last though. Greater Sudbury drew even at 15:38 when Samuel Assinewai (his 12th point in 12 games) flew into Powassan territory and ripped a rising wrister over the shoulder of Voodoos goalie Daniel Dirracolo.
Tied at 1-1, the Voodoos thought they had retaken the lead, but the officials waved the goal off after determining Metivier had been obstructed by a Voodoos player, which led to the goal.
It wasn’t until late in the second that the tie was broken. Red-hot Cubs’ star Pierson Sobush worked his way free in the slot after some solid work in the offensive zone and buried his NOJHL-leading 29th goal of the season over the glove of Dirracolo.
“The marker was also the 50th of his NOJHL career as he ran a consecutive game point streak to 11 in succession,” the team said in a news release.
Powassan managed to knot the game at 2-2 thanks to the advantage of a mid-period power play that saw Tucker Shields beat Metivier.
The teams would battle back and forth for the next five minutes or so, until Assinewai fired one at Dirracolo in the Voodoos’ net, who stopped it but couldn’t contain the rebound, which was picked up by Crowder, who capitalized and made it a 3-2 Greater Sudbury game.
The Voodoos pulled their goalie for the extra attacker but it wouldn’t do them any good and the Cubs took the win.
The NOJHL-leading Cubs have a record of 30-5-2-0. Their 62 points put Greater Sudbury well ahead of the Timmins Rock with 57 and the Hearst Lumberjacks with 56.
